Greatest impact on development of human civilization: fire or agriculture?

Question

Greatest impact on development of human civilization: fire or agriculture?

Answer 1

Agriculture.

The development of agriculture completely revolutionized the way human societies organized themselves.  99% of our existance has been as hunter/gather/foragers.  It is only the last 1% with the development of agriculture that our population has exploded, large cities developed, diseases, hierarchial societies, job specialization (potters, weavers, etc...) warfare.......

While agriculture may not seem important to some in modern times, we never could have gotten to modern times without it.  Also, it is still significantly important.  All the prepackaged food was grown somewhere, livestock is part of agriculture.  Many products are produced from soy, corn (plastics) etc.  It would not be possible to sustain modern populations without producing food.

Answer 2

The controlled use of fire represented a change in thinking for the early Homonids...(Perhaps a half million years ago)

The more recent development of agriculture, allowed Modern Man to store food, and live in close proximity to one another, in cities/civilizations...(10,000 years or less)

Answer 3

fire

Answer 4

you can't eat fire, can you?

Answer 5

Now was that discovering the ability to start a fire? An do you mean modern agriculture? The development of the plow?

Answer 6

This is a bit like asking: what is more important for human life, air or water? There is no doubt that without fire the human race would be totally different, as it would if not for agriculture.

Fire is probably the most important to life as we know it, however, because it allows humans to safely eat foods that would otherwise be harmful or impossible to eat otherwise, and continue to thrive in climates that it could not otherwise survive. This greatly expanded humankind's options for surviving and thriving, and civilization would have remained primitive without it.

Agriculture extended this effect by conferring even more options for suvival and allowed humankind to settle and create permanent communities. Without agriculture, humankind would have remained a hunter-gatherer society, and probably would have been permanently nomadic or migratory.

Without agriculture, it would be interesting to know how the necessity to move about might have affected various advances in civilization, perhaps stunting the growth of architecture and causing quicker progress in the development of transportation and, say, hunting weaponry.

Answer 7

Fire.  Nobody lives on farms anymore, so we don't need agriculture.

But everyone still wants to keep warm.

Answer 8

Fire.

Fire or heat is actually the basis of all changes. One can cook with it, build things from it, destroy things, etc.

Agriculture doesn't seem as important in modern times because we can use livestock for food and we'd still be complete on the food groups.

Answer 9

This is a bit like asking which is more important, food or water.  Without fire homosapien would not have survived to develop agriculture.  Fire allowed the bipedal hominid to survive long enough to evolve & develop agriculture, but agriculture is responsible for the development of large civilizations.

Because Homo Sapiens can survive without agriculture, even in the most hostile of environments, (Eskimos) fire must be the choice here. While the Eskimo village is not represenative of a large civilization, it is a form of civilization.