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

our species is endowed with a unique and extraordinarily powerful adaptive mechanism: “collective learning.” That’s a term I’ll ...

Lecture 20: Threshold 6—What Makes Humans Different? complex information with great precision. Unlike a vervet, a human could ex ...

Christian, Maps of Time, chaps. 6, 7; pp. 171–76. Lewin, Human Evolution. Deacon, The Symbolic Species. Pinker, The Language Ins ...

LECTURE v Homo sapiens—The First Humans .................................................. Homo sapiens—The First Humans Lecture ...

The second type of evidence is anything that might show an acceleration in innovation or adaptation, or increasing variety in th ...

Lecture 21: Homo sapiens —The First Humans Currently, there are two competing explanations for the origins of Homo sapiens. The ...

Perhaps we appeared even more recently? Archaeological evidence seems to show an acceleration in technological change in Europe ...

LECTURE Homo sapiens —The First Humans Christian, Maps of Time, chap. 7. ———, This Fleeting World, chap. 1. Fagan, People of the ...

Paleolithic Lifeways .......................................................................... Lecture 22 When historians say: ...

Lecture 22: Paleolithic Lifeways our species has existed, and the Agrarian era occupies most of the remaining 4%. However, Paleo ...

have been like. These were “do it yourself” societies. Justice, for example, was a family affair. It is a mistake to think our a ...

Lecture 22: Paleolithic Lifeways there were no conÀ icts between individuals, or divisions by age, lineage, and gender). On the ...

Change in the Paleolithic Era ......................................................... LECTURE Today, we’re at the end of an in ...

Lecture 23: Change in the Paleolithic Era a series of ice ages. In the last million years, ice ages have normally lasted about 1 ...

From 40,000 to 30,000 years ago, humans entered the tundra-like environments of ice age Ukraine, Russia, and Siberia. Plant life ...

Lecture 23: Change in the Paleolithic Era “¿ restick farming” to describe how Australian aboriginal communities used ¿ re to man ...

Christian, Maps of Time, chap. 7. Fagan, People of the Earth, chaps. 4–6. Ristvet, In the Beginning, chap. 1. Christian, This Fl ...

Lecture 24: Threshold 7—Agriculture Threshold 7—Agriculture ................................................................ LEC ...

Agriculture evolved independently in at least six separate parts of the world, scattered throughout the three oldest world zones ...

Lecture 24: Threshold 7—Agriculture pollinators such as bees and birds. Symbiotic relationships can become so close that the spe ...