Countless discoveries and inventions have been made throughout our history. Some of the developments have been minor, some of them have been major, some have been short-lived, and other events have been more critical and longer-lasting. There have been certain developments throughout our history that have been so vitally important to humanity that they are considered the sole factor behind all of humankind, collectively making progress and taking a critical and everlasting step forward.
For example, consider how the creation of farming equipment and fertilizers allowed for the exponential growth of food outputs from fixed pieces of land. Without these inventions and discoveries, the world would not have been able to support the explosive population growth that we have witnessed across the globe.
It was only a few hundred years ago that scientists and economists indicated the end of population growth, due to the fact that food production just grew at numerical rates, doubling or tripling every certain number of years, while populations grew at exponential rates, expanding to the power of two or more during that same period.
At the time, this meant that sooner or later there wouldn’t be enough food to feed everyone unless more food could be obtained from fixed pieces of land every year. Fortunately, this is precisely what happened. Science was able to deliver heavy farm equipment, fertilizers such as ammonia, and other improvements so that that food harvests could keep up with the population growth rates. This allowed for more people to be sustained in the same area of land as before. Without these developments, the world would be a very different place today.
