Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity

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Timelines 5 and 6 ...

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Timelines 7 and 8 ...

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Summary Timeline .......................................................................... Summary Timeline 13.7 billion years ...

c. 250 mya ....................................... First dinosaurs and ¿ rst mammals; supercontinent of Pangaea. c. 67 mya ..... ...

Summary Timeline 5,000 ya ........................................... First cities and states in N.W. Africa and S. Mesopotamia. ...

30 billion yfn ................................... Star formation ceases. Many billion yfn ............................. Univers ...

Glossary ......................................................................................... Glossary Note: Though some of ...

in the “domesticated” species. Agriculture is vastly more productive than foraging technologies. Its appearance marks a revoluti ...

Glossary big history: The attempt to construct a uni¿ ed account of the past at all scales from those of human history to those ...

chemical evolution: Slow change in complex but nonliving chemicals, operating in a similar manner to natural selection and possi ...

Glossary contingency: The idea that many events (in history or the natural world) are random and unpredictable. cosmic backgroun ...

metals) in the core, lighter materials in the mantle, the lightest elements at the surface, and gassy materials in the atmospher ...

Glossary Dreamtime: In indigenous Australian traditions this was the time of beginnings, of origins, and of the law. early Agrar ...

entropy: A measure of disorder; according to the second law of thermodynamics, in any closed system (including the Universe as a ...

Glossary in a nuclear explosion, in which the breakdown of each atom triggers the breakdown of other nearby atoms. Fertile Cresc ...

fusion: Stars are powered for most of their lives by the fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium atoms, as a result of which vast a ...

Glossary Gondwanaland: The large southern supercontinent formed almost 200 million years ago by the breakup of Pangaea; included ...