Hopefully, at some point in a person’s education, they have an opportunity to discuss this question: which were the most important moments in history. . . and why?
Human history is chock full of pivotal moments—inventions that enabled changes, events that sparked movements, and movements that changed the entire world. History is long and full of these moments, which are too many to count and impossible to compare. Nevertheless, I’ve endeavored to compile this list of the ten most important moments in human history.*
Most? There is no way to measure the relative importance of any moment, but I favored those events that impacted more people over longer periods of time.
Important? For this list, I tried to choose moments in history that had a larger impact—positive or negative—on a larger number of people, including repercussions those moments might trigger in future generations.
Moments? Some of the biggest “moments” began as small and unrecorded incidences—words or gestures, tiny sparks that touched off a series of cultural disruptions and new ways of thinking. I tried to locate a single event that started it all, but this was hard to do.
