TTC Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity - David Christian

Written by David Christian
Read by David Christian
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Prof. David Christian, Macquarie University
Course No. 8050, 48 lectures, TT 24:27

How is it possible for the disciplines of cosmology, geology, anthropology, biology, and history to fit together?

These 48 lectures answer that question by weaving a single story from accounts of the past developed by a variety of scholarly disciplines.

The result is a story stretching from the origins of the universe to the present day and beyond, in which human history is seen as part of the history of our Earth and biosphere, and the Earth’s history, in turn, is seen as part of the history of the universe.

Like traditional creation stories told by the world’s great religions and mythologies, this lecture series provides a map of our place in space and time.

But it does so using the insights and knowledge of modern science, as synthesized by a renowned historian.

While you may have heard parts of this story before in courses on geology, history, anthropology, biology, cosmology, and other scholarly disciplines, Professor Christian provides more than just a recap of those disciplines.

“Because of the scale on which we look at the past, you should not expect to find in it many of the familiar details, names, and personalities that you’ll find in other types of historical teaching and writing,” he explains.

“For example, the French Revolution and the Renaissance will barely get a mention. They’ll zoom past in a blur. You’ll barely see them. Instead, what we’re going to see are some less familiar aspects of the past. We’ll be looking, above all, for the very large patterns, the shape of the past.”

Prepare yourself for a journey through time and across space, from the first moments of existence to the distant reaches of the far future.

01 What is Big History?
02 Moving across Multiple Scales
03 Simplicity and Complexity
04 Evidence and the Nature of Science
05 Threshold 1 — Origins of Big Bang Cosmology
06 How did Everything Begin?
07 Threshold 2 — The First Stars and Galaxies
08 Threshold 3 — Making Chemical Elements
09 Threshold 4 — The Earth and the Solar System
10 The Early Earth — A Short History
11 Plate Tectonics and the Earth’s Geography
12 Threshold 5 — Life
13 Darwin and Natural Selection
14 The Evidence for Natural Selection
15 The Origins of Life
16 Life on Earth — Single-celled Organisms
17 Life on Earth — Multi-celled Organisms
18 Hominines
19 Evidence on Hominine Evolution
20 Threshold 6 — What Makes Humans Different?
21 Homo sapiens — The First Humans
22 Paleolithic Lifeways
23 Change in the Paleolithic Era
24 Threshold 7 — Agriculture
25 The Origins of Agriculture
26 The First Agrarian Societies
27 Power and its Origins
28 Early Power Structures
29 From Villages to Cities
30 Sumer — The First Agrarian Civilization
31 Agrarian Civilizations in Other Regions
32 The World That Agrarian Civilizations Made
33 Long Trends — Expansion and State Power
34 Long Trends — Rates of Innovation
35 Long Trends — Disease and Malthusian Cycles
36 Comparing the World Zones
37 The Americas in the Later Agrarian Era
38 Threshold 8 — The Modern Revolution
39 The Medieval Malthusian Cycle, 500–1350
40 The Early Modern Cycle, 1350–1700
41 Breakthrough — The Industrial Revolution
42 Spread of the Industrial Revolution to 1900
43 The 20th Century
44 The World That the Modern Revolution Made
45 Human History and the Biosphere
46 The Next 100 Years
47 The Next Millennium and the Remote Future
48 Big History — Humans in the Cosmos

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