Table of Contents
vii
- Course Scope ..................................................................................... Professor Biography i
- LECTURE
- What Is Big History? ...........................................................................
- LECTURE
- Moving across Multiple Scales .........................................................
- LECTURE
- Simplicity and Complexity.................................................................
- LECTURE
- Evidence and the Nature of Science ................................................
- LECTURE
- Threshold 1—Origins of Big Bang Cosmology ................................
- LECTURE
- How Did Everything Begin? ..............................................................
- LECTURE
- Threshold 2—The First Stars and Galaxies ....................................
- LECTURE
- Threshold 3—Making Chemical Elements .......................................
- LECTURE
- Threshold 4—The Earth and the Solar System ................................
- LECTURE
- The Early Earth—A Short History .....................................................
- LECTURE iv
- Plate Tectonics and the Earth’s Geography .....................................
- LECTURE
- Threshold 5—Life .............................................................................
- LECTURE
- Darwin and Natural Selection ...........................................................
- LECTURE
- The Evidence for Natural Selection ..................................................
- LECTURE
- The Origins of Life ............................................................................
- LECTURE
- Life on Earth—Single-celled Organisms...........................................
- LECTURE
- Life on Earth—Multi-celled Organisms .............................................
- LECTURE
- Hominines.........................................................................................
- LECTURE
- Evidence on Hominine Evolution ......................................................
- LECTURE
- Threshold 6—What Makes Humans Different? ................................
- LECTURE
- Homo sapiens—The First Humans ..................................................
- LECTURE
- Paleolithic Lifeways ..........................................................................
- LECTURE
- Change in the Paleolithic Era .........................................................
- LECTURE v
- Threshold 7—Agriculture ................................................................
- LECTURE
- The Origins of Agriculture
- LECTURE
- The First Agrarian Societies
- LECTURE
- Power and Its Origins .....................................................................
- LECTURE
- Early Power Structures ...................................................................
- LECTURE
- From Villages to Cities ....................................................................
- LECTURE
- Sumer—The First Agrarian Civilization...........................................
- LECTURE
- Agrarian Civilizations in Other Regions ..........................................
- LECTURE
- The World That Agrarian Civilizations Made ..................................
- LECTURE
- Long Trends—Expansion and State Power....................................
- LECTURE
- Long Trends—Rates of Innovation .................................................
- LECTURE
- Long Trends—Disease and Malthusian Cycles ..............................
- LECTURE
- Comparing the World Zones ...........................................................
- LECTURE vi
- The Americas in the Later Agrarian Era..........................................
- LECTURE
- Threshold 8—The Modern Revolution............................................
- LECTURE
- The Medieval Malthusian Cycle, 500–1350....................................
- LECTURE
- The Early Modern Cycle, 1350–1700 .............................................
- LECTURE
- Breakthrough—The Industrial Revolution.......................................
- LECTURE
- Spread of the Industrial Revolution to 1900 ...................................
- LECTURE
- The 20th Century .............................................................................
- LECTURE
- The World That the Modern Revolution Made ................................
- LECTURE
- Human History and the Biosphere..................................................
- LECTURE
- The Next 100 Years ........................................................................
- LECTURE
- The Next Millennium and the Remote Future .................................
- LECTURE
- Big History—Humans in the Cosmos .............................................
- Timeline 1—The Scale of the Cosmos ........................................... SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
- Timeline 2—The Scale of the Earth ................................................
- Timeline 3—The Scale of Multi-cellular Organisms ........................
- Timeline 4—The Scale of Mammalian Evolution ............................
- Timeline 5—The Scale of Human Evolution ...................................
- Timeline 6—The Scale of Human History ......................................
- Timeline 7—The Scale of Agrarian Societies .................................
- Timeline 8—The Scale of Modernity ..............................................
- Summary Timeline ..........................................................................
- Glossary .........................................................................................
- Bibliography ....................................................................................
- Permissions Acknowledgments ......................................................