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

Learning whether it is possible to tell a story of everything, from the Big Bang up to the present day; introducing the background and unique aspects of the broad and multidisciplinary perspective on history.

Most history courses cover time spans of a few decades or a few centuries, but big history requires one to survey the past over scales that span billions of years, becoming familiar with the immense scales needed to cover the modern creation story.

Introducing the development of increasing complexity since the creation of the universe; examining the definition of complexity; learning how the universe builds more complex entities.

Learning whether to trust the claims of modern science about events in the distant past; evidence for proving scientific claims; how new dating techniques have allowed scientists to peer further back into the past than previously thought possible.

Encountering the first threshold of complexity; the creation of the universe at the moment of the Big Bang; exploring the scientific evidence that allows one to piece together the ever-evolving story of creation.

Surveying the history of different ideas about the creation of the universe; Ptolemaic theories of an Earth-centered cosmos; the modern notion of a constantly expanding universe.

Learning how the universe changes from a cloud of dust to a constellation of stellar bodies; how gravity is fundamental in crossing the second threshold of the course; the creation of stars and galaxies from huge clouds of hydrogen and helium atoms.

Stars create the preconditions for crossing the third threshold of complexity; the formation of chemical elements; as stars collapse and die, they fuse to create new atoms that are the building blocks of the complex chemicals that make up Earth.

With this lecture, shifting from the scale of the Universe to the solar system; examining the processes by which planets and solar systems are created and the evidence that helps one piece together this part of the story.

The tumultuous early history of the Earth is presented in this lecture; the development of the planet's internal layers; the generation of its magnetic field; the creation of the first seas; the appearance of its early atmosphere.

Examining the history of the Earth's surface; learning how the notion of the planet as fixed and unchanging is eventually overturned by a new vision of the Earth's crust as broken into plates that are constantly on the move.

The consideration of the next threshold of complexity, life; developing a definition of life itself; beginning to consider how life-forms adapt and change over time.

In "On the Origin of Species", Charles Darwin reveals a new story; an account of how all living species change and adapt; how Darwin arrives at his revolutionary theory; how he shares his ideas with contemporaries who make similar breakthroughs.

Examining the various kinds of evidence Darwin uses to establish his theory of natural selection: the fossil record, similarities among species, and the geographic distribution of species; reviewing modern evidence of natural selection.

How life is first created from non-life; modern biologists tell a complex story of the creation of life; it involves the development of organic matter from simpler molecules such as amino acids, nucleic acids, sugars and proteins.

This lecture covers the first four transitions, embracing the first 3 billion years of the Earth's history; the first four transitions are: prokaryotes, photosynthesis, eukaryotic and the appearance of sexual reproduction.

The fusion of single-celled organisms into multi-celled organisms c. 600 million years ago; it marks a watershed in the development of life forms on this planet; the evolution of multi-cellular organisms; evolutionary steps leading to Homo sapiens.

How modern humans evolve from ape-like ancestors; surveying the evolution of primates and great apes; tracing the adaptive development of hominines, a group of bipedal primates that appear in Africa 7 million years ago.

To construct the story of hominine evolution, scientists rely on three kinds of evidence; archaeological evidence; evidence based on the study of modern primates; evidence based on genetic comparisons between modern species of primates.

Human beings represent a new threshold of complexity in the story of life on Earth; in this lecture, examining two things that make one unique; use of symbolic language and collective learning.

Whether the archaeological record reveals when the first members of humanity's species appear; in this lecture, examining evidence from the Stone Age; considering several theories of the early history of the first humans.

Using remains left behind by ancestors and studies of modern societies that still use stone technologies; modern researchers construct a portrait of the Paleolithic way of life; learning what life is like for distant ancestors.

Change is gradual throughout the long Paleolithic era; some significant shifts alter lifeways for human beings; climate changes during two ice ages; the rise of various technological innovations; adaptive migration to nearly all parts of the globe.

The appearance of agriculture sets human history off in entirely new directions; increasing human control of food, energy and other resources; changes in the environment; the foundation for the development of more complex human societies.

Examining why, after 200,000 years of foraging, human communities in quite different parts of the world take up agriculture almost simultaneously; in this lecture, exploring the different factors leading to this innovation.

Early agrarian societies leave behind no written record; there is evidence of many important new developments during this period; the lifeways of these societies; whether agriculture means the early farmers live better than their forager ancestors.

Approximately 5,000 years ago, the human species sees the rise of a new form of social organization: the first tribute-taking states; beginning consideration of these states by asking how power is defined and what forms it takes.

Humankind moves from kinship clans and small agricultural villages to enormous centralized societies; the archaeological and anthropological evidence used to reconstruct the evolution of power structures; how these larger societies take shape.

This lecture introduces the 5,000 years of human history that are dominated by the huge and powerful societies, agrarian civilizations, with the development of writing, marking the first era of recorded history.

How the buildup of human and material resources during the early Agrarian era leads to the development of the first tribute-taking states and the first real cities; examining Sumer in southern Mesopotamia; learning how these new developments arise.

How typical is Sumer of agrarian civilizations in general; this lecture briefly surveys six different areas where agrarian civilizations appear early; northeastern Africa, northern India, China and the Americas.

Despite the limited contact among them, early agrarian civilizations the world over share many features, examining these features, speculating why agrarian societies seem to develop along similar lines despite regional differences.

Taking a long view of agrarian civilizations; marking two trends that occur during 4,000 years; the expansion of civilizations to cover larger regions and incorporate more people; the increasing power and reach of their rulers.

Agrarian civilizations expand because they develop new ways to extract resources and manage populations; this lecture examines how features such as population growth, commerce and tribute-taking states help encourage innovation.

Periods of innovation, population growth, increasing trade and urbanization, political expansion and cultural efflorescence; examining the factors that contribute to this cycle of boom and crash, referred to as the Malthusian cycle.

The previous two lectures describe factors that both stimulate and limit growth in the era of agrarian civilizations in Afro-Eurasia; questioning whether these same features and processes appear in American, Australasian and Pacific zones.

In this lecture, seeing that American agrarian civilizations experience many of the same developments as those in Afro-Eurasia; these developments appear much later and never spread as far as in other world regions.

In the last millennium, the pace of change accelerates sharply; humankind experiences several changes; rising innovation; larger and more complex societies; the integration of the four world zones; the growing human impact on the biosphere.

This lecture describes the medieval Malthusian cycle, which lasts from the decline of the Roman and Han Empires to the time of the Black Death; Afro-Eurasia is the largest of the four world zones; the early stages of the Modern Revolution.

During the Early Modern cycle, the four world zones become linked through global exchange networks; stimulating both commerce and capitalism; for other world zones, these changes are catastrophic, bringing disease and population collapse.

By 1700, many elements of modernity seem to be in place, yet global rates of innovation remain slow; describing the breakthrough to modernity after 1700; focusing on one country, Britain, where the transformation has been studied most intensively.

Within just two centuries, industrialization transforms the entire world; no earlier transformation in human history has been so rapid or so far-reaching; this lecture describes the impact of industrialization before 1900.

In this lecture, we examine the hallmark events of the 20th century: major worldwide wars, two waves of innovation, huge population growth and an enormous surge in energy use.

In this lecture, attempting to describe, as done for Paleolithic and agrarian societies, the lifeways of the Modern era; a portrait of a single, world-spanning community of more than 6 billion people supported by advancing technological innovation.

How increasing power over the natural world affects one's relationship to planet Earth; whether one is becoming a malignant presence within the biosphere, driving other species to extinction; impacting global climatic systems in unpredictable ways.

After surveying 13 billion years, whether one can resist peering into the future; taking a tantalizing glimpse into speculations about which historic trends may continue into the next century.

Speculations into future developments continue; an examination of several theories about what life will be like 1,000 years in the future; jumping even further ahead, with scientific theorization about the ultimate fate of the Universe.

In the final lecture of this course, pausing to ask some fundamental questions about meaning; what is the place of human beings in the Universe; is humankind, perhaps, the only creation of the Universe that has consciousness.