What are some of the greatest things humans have achieved that most people don’t know about?

Andrew Grimm

Ever wondered why the world was basically the Middle East and the tropics for many generations and then some people moved to the colder places like Europe and such?

I have an answer and its one you probably didn’t expect.

Hay.

yes, that dry bundle of grass that most farmers now take for granted is one of the most important reasons why people were able to move into colder climates.

You see, hay is durable dry feed for animals during the winter months (especially horses), and before that, if you moved to the colder areas, you may have had yourself to feed, but you couldn’t run any livestock.

Hay changed all that.

From the period when Hay was first cultivated and used, this enabled people to finally travel to some of the much colder climates and actually last through more than a single winter without preserves and pickles.

Freeman Dyson:

"My suggestion is not original. I don't remember who gave me the idea, but it was probably Lynn White, with Murray Gell-Mann as intermediary. The most important invention of the last two thousand years was hay. In the classical world of Greece and Rome and in all earlier times, there was no hay. Civilization could exist only in warm climates where horses could stay alive through the winter by grazing. Without grass in winter you could not have horses, and without horses you could not have urban civilization. Some time during the so-called dark ages, some unknown genius invented hay, forests were turned into meadows, hay was reaped and stored, and civilization moved north over the Alps. So hay gave birth to Vienna and Paris and London and Berlin, and later to Moscow and New York."

So the next time you visit a major European city and look around at its 500 plus year magnificence .. you can thank the use of Hay on a regular basis for that.

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发明：人类有什么不起眼的伟大发明