Big History

An Introduction

 

In a world with nuclear weapons and ecological problems that cross all national borders, we desperately need to see humanity as a whole. Accounts of the past that focus primarily on the divisions between nations, religions, and cultures are beginning to look parochial and anachronistic—even dangerous. So, it is not true that history becomes vacuous at large scales. Familiar objects may vanish, but new and important objects and problems come into view.

David Christian
Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History

A Global Perspective

World history seeks a global perspective on the past, one that acknowledges and integrates the historical experiences of all of the world's people. Only by examining humanity's shared past is it possible to view today's world in meaningful historical context. Like all historians, world historians create narratives of the past from records of individual and collective experiences, and they interpret the past in response to questions shaped by the world they live in.

Integration and Difference

World historians look for global patterns that emerge from the world's vast collection of historical narratives. In studying patterns historians employ a thematic approach, looking for significant connections across both time and geographical space. Two broad themes can be applied to view the people and events of world history: integration (how the processes of world history have drawn peoples of the world together) and difference (how the patterns of world history also reveal the diversity of the human experience).

The very forces that accelerated the integration of the peoples of the world have also sharpened awareness of difference among them. The construction of world history reflects the same global processes that have both integrated the experiences of people all over the world and highlighted differences among them. World history seeks to bridge the tensions between these two dynamic processes.

In some curriculums and textbooks the first major topic of World History is the agricultural revolution in the Fertile Crescent 12,000 years ago. In others the first focus is the founding of river valley civilization in Mesopotamia 6,000 years ago. In modern world history courses the first topic might be the Renaissance in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The primary geographical context for studying human history is the globe. The earth is a "place" whose inhabitants have a shared history. Events and developments may take place within the confines of continents, regions, civilizations, or nation-states, but those "spaces" remain parts of the globe in all its roundness.

We can push this point even farther. The earth itself is framed by even larger contexts—the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, and the universe. As we explore how human beings evolved, acquired mental abilities that no other animal species possessed, and came to populate almost all parts of the world, we must remember that when our species emerged the earth had already existed for about four billion years. Complex processes of physical and biological change had long been underway when our first bipedal ancestors appeared on the scene. We recognizes that the story of our species should be situated in the largest possible context by devoting Big Era One and Big Era Two of the nine Big Eras to the 98 percent or so of our history that occurred before any men and women took up agriculture, an event that happened a mere 12,000 or so years ago.

Learning to “Think the World”

One of the wonders of our Electronic Age is that for the first time in history people everywhere in the world can experience the same event almost simultaneously. A spectacular example of this is the world-wide celebrations that greeted New Years . The planet revolved through the time zones, midnight struck again and again, and the festivities broke out in rapid, rolling sequence around the world. Among the first to celebrate were the people of the Kiribati and Marshall Islands, which lie in the South Pacific just west of the International Date Line. From there, the New Year swept on to Sydney, Beijing, New Delhi, Jerusalem, Lagos, London, Caracas, Seattle, and, at the last, Honolulu. Those who had the stamina to watch TV long enough could see the entire relay of parties, prayers, and fireworks displays, for twenty-four straight hours. This spectacle was a compelling reminder of the unity of humankind as inhabitants of a single tiny “marble” suspended in the universe. Also remarkable is that millions of people could consciously witness the world-wide commemoration and reflect upon it in real time.

Electronic marvels invented in the twentieth century enabled men and women to “think the world” in a way that no one could have done in 1000 CE or even in 1900. We live now in what two scholars have called a “condition of globality.” Careers, family life, community relations, and even mental health all depend to some degree on our understanding the astonishing complexities that intertwine all human beings. The ability to “think the world”—its economy, science, technology, science, politics, and culture—must be a primary aim of all education today. This challenges us to rethink humanity’s history in a more holistic, interconnected way.

Most young people in the United States spend their typical days—when not sitting in front of a computer screen—congregating with family members, fellow students, friends, or work associates. But those bonds are only our most intimate. We are also connected, often unconsciously, to numerous other networks of human relationship that affect the course of daily life. Some of these “communities” may be fleeting (passengers sharing an airplane flying at 30,000 feet), and some may be very large (all members the Roman Catholic Church). No individual anywhere in the world is truly isolated from such complex global relationships, not hunters in the Amazon rainforest, not peasant girls in high Himalayan valleys.

In fact most people are continuously affected by events and trends initiated in distant parts of the globe. Supermarkets in Wisconsin raise the price of coffee because of weather conditions in Brazil. The office fax machine breaks down, causing minor panic over a deal closure in Germany. A teacher faces a classroom where the pupils speak eighteen native languages. A family of refugees from the Sudan moves in next door. Our continuous encounters with the wide world are an aspect of the dizzying pace of change, the single most conspicuous feature of contemporary life. Whether in the United States, Italy, Burma, or Swaziland, society is perpetually transforming itself because of the growing complexity of world communication and the never-ending birth of new ideas, techniques, and products.

Our culture, that is, our language, institutions, laws, moral codes, and regular social routines, buffers us to some extent against the gales of change. Shared culture enables people to have some expectation of how others will think and behave. It helps us predict with at least some accuracy the pattern of affairs from one day to the next. In so far as we have a place in a familiar system of cultural values and organizations, we can usually cope quite well with new things or disruptive change. When a social group—a family, religious denomination, business community, or nation—confronts something new or foreign, its members try to fit the strange thing into the existing cultural system with a minimum of fuss. Or the group may reject it altogether as useless or distasteful. So far, for example, American children have stoutly resisted Marmite, the yeast paste that British children love to spread on bread. And a lot of people in the world do not like peanut butter. On the whole, social groups do well at using their cultural yardsticks to sift through the new and strange, accepting one item, rejecting another, so that life does not appear to change all that much from one month to the next.

Yet the forces of change, ricocheting around the world, are much more encompassing than we generally realize or wish to believe. Global change is not simply a matter of one event there (war in the Middle East) affecting some condition of life here (a rise in the price of gas). Nor is it just that products or ideas spread quickly from one place to another. The most striking feature of global interaction is that a significant development occurring in one place is likely to set off a complex chain reaction, disrupting and rearranging numerous relationships over an extensive area, maybe even around the world. A surge of change in one network of relationships, international trade for example, easily sets off changes in other sets such as diplomatic negotiations or the migration of workers from one country to another.

When did the world get like this? For how long have peoples of the world been interconnected? Since the Industrial Revolution? Since World War II? Since the invention of the Internet? A better question might be: How far back in time would we have to go to find a world divided into a collection of separate, self-contained societies, each moving through time along its own track, and unresponsive to wider regional developments? The answer is that we could cast back two hundred, five thousand, twenty thousand years and still not find such a world of completely atomized societies. Indeed even the early history of humankind hundreds of thousands of years ago is a story of long-distance migrations of hunting and foraging bands across Africa and Eurasia, a process that involved interaction between one group and another and therefore at least small disruptions and surprises wherever such contact occurred.

In a sweeping way, then, the history of humankind from remote times is a tale of how groups of women and men connected with one another and how those interconnections affected and complicated the lives people lived in different parts of the earth. Because of the intricate lacework that ties the peoples of the worldtogether today, this long story is one that needs telling.

Ancient history

Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of human history until the Early Middle Ages. The goal of the modern day critical ancient historian is objectivity. The term classical antiquity is often used to refer to ancient history since the beginning of recorded Greek history in about 776 BC. This coincides roughly with the traditional date of the founding of Rome in 753 BC, the beginning of the history of ancient Rome.

Although the ending date of ancient history is disputed, currently most Western scholars use the fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476 as the end of ancient European history. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 – 5,500 years, with Sumerian cuneiform being the oldest form of writing discovered so far. Thus, this is the beginning of history by the definition used by all historians.

The study of ancient history

The fundamental difficulty of studying ancient history is the fact that only a fraction of it has been documented, and only a fraction of those recorded histories have survived into the present day. Literacy was not widespread in almost any culture until long after the end of ancient history, so there were few people capable of writing histories. Even those written histories which were produced were not widely distributed; the ancients, not having the luxury of a printing press had to make copies of books by hand. The Roman Empire was one of the ancient world most literate cultures, but many works by its most widely read historians are lost. For example, Livy, a Roman historian who lived in the 1st century BC, wrote a history of Rome called Ab Urbe Condite ("From the Founding of the City") in 142 volumes. Only 35 still survive. Historians have two major avenues which they take to better understand the ancient world: archaeology and the study of primary sources.

Archaeology

Archaeology is the study of material remains in an effort to interpret and reconstruct past human behavior. In the study of ancient history, archaeologists excavate the ruins of ancient cities looking for clues as to how the people of the time period lived. Some important discoveries by archaeologists studying ancient history include:

The Egyptian pyramids - giant tombs built by the ancient Egyptians beginning around 2600 BC as the final resting places of their royalty.

The study of the ancient cities of Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Lothal in South Asia.

The city of Pompeii - an ancient Roman city preserved by the eruption of a volcano in AD 79. Its state of preservation is so great that it is an invaluable window into Roman culture.

The Terracotta Army - the mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor in ancient China.

Primary sources

Perhaps most of what is known of the ancient world comes from the accounts of antiquity's own historians. Although it is important to take into account the bias of each ancient author, their firsthand (or primary) accounts, are the basis for our understanding of the ancient past. Some of the more notable ancient writers include: Valmiki, Vatsyayana, Vyasa, Kalidasa, Chanakya, Sun Tzu, Herodotus, Josephus, Livy, Polybius, Suetonius, Tacitus, Thucydides and Sima Qian.

Classical Antiquity

753 BC--Founding of Rome (traditional date)

745BC-- Tiglath-Pilesar III becomes the new king of Assyria. With times he conquers neighbouring countries and turn Assyria into an empire

728 BC—Rise of the Iranian Median Empire

722 BC—Spring and Autumn Period begins in China; Zhou Dynasty's power is diminishing; the era of the Hundred Schools of Thought

700 BC the construction of Marib Dam in Arabia Felix

653 BC—Rise of first Persian state of Iran

612 BC—Attributed date of the destruction of Nineveh and subsequent fall of Assyria.

600 BC—Sixteen Maha Janapadas ("Great Realms" or "Great Kingdoms") emerge. A number of these Maha Janapadas are semi-democratic republics.

c 600 BC—Pandyan kingdom in South India

563 BC—Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), founder of Buddhism is born as a prince of the Shakya tribe, which ruled parts of Magadha, one of the Maha Janapadas

551 BC—Confucius, founder of Confucianism, is born

549 BC—Mahavira, founder of Jainism is born

546 BC—Foundation of the Persian Empire and unification of Iran by Cyrus the Great

546 BC—Cyrus the Great overthrows the Lydian kingdom

544 BC—Rise of Magadha as the dominant power under Bimbisara.

539 BC—The Fall of the Babylonian Empire and liberation of the Jews by Cyrus the Great

525 BC—Cambyses II of Persia conquers Egypt

c. 512 BC—Darius I (Darius the Great) of Persia, subjugates eastern Thrace, Macedonia submits voluntarily, and annexes Libya, Persian Empire at largest extent

509 BC—Expulsion of the last King of Rome, founding of Roman Republic (traditional date)

500 BC—Panini standardizes the grammar and morphology of Sanskrit in the text Ashtadhyayi. Panini's standardized Sanskrit is known as Classical Sanskrit

500 BC—Pingala uses zero and binary numeral system

490 BC—Greek city-states defeat Persian invasion at Battle of Marathon

475 BC—Warring States Period begins in China as the Zhou king became a mere figurehead; China is annexed by regional warlords

424 BC—Nanda dynasty comes to power.

404 BC—End of Peloponnesian War between the Greek city-states

331 BC—Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Gaugamela

326 BC—Alexander the Great defeats Indian king Porus (Purushottama) in the Battle of the Hydaspes River.

321 BC—Chandragupta Maurya overthrows the Nanda Dynasty of Magadha

323 BC—Death of Alexander the Great

305 BC—Chandragupta Maurya seizes the satrapies of Paropanisadai (Kabul), Aria (Herat), Arachosia (Qanadahar) and Gedrosia (Baluchistan)from Seleucus I Nicator, the Macedonian satrap of Babylonia, in return for 500 elephants.

273 BC—Ashoka the Great becomes the emperor of the Mauryan Empire

257 BC—Thục Dynasty takes over Việt Nam (then Kingdom of Âu Lạc)

250 BC—Rise of Parthia (Ashkâniân), the second native dynasty of ancient Iran

232 BC—Death of Emperor Ashoka the Great; Decline of the Mauryan Empire

230 BC—Emergence of Satavahanas in South India

221 BC—Qin Shi Huang unifies China, end of Warring States Period; marking the beginning of Imperial rule in China which lasts until 1912. Construction of the Great Wall by the Qin Dynasty begins.

207 BC—Kingdom of Nan Yueh extends from North Việt Nam to Canton

202 BC—Han Dynasty established in China, after the death of Qin Shi Huang; China in this period officially becomes a Confucian state and opens trading connections with the West, i.e. the Silk Road

202 BC—Scipio Africanus defeats Hannibal at Battle of Zama

c 200 BC—Chera dynasty in South India

185 BC—Sunga Empire founded.

149 BC-146—Third and final Punic War; destruction of Carthage by Rome

146 BC—Roman conquest of Greece, see Roman Greece

111 BC— First Chinese domination of Việt Nam in the form of the Nanyue Kingdom.

c 100 BC—Chola dynasty rises in prominence.

49 BC—Roman Civil War between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great

44 BC—Julius Caesar murdered by Marcus Brutus and others; End of Roman Republic; beginning of Roman Empire

6 BC—Earliest theorized date for birth of Jesus of Nazareth

4 BC—Widely accepted date (Ussher) for birth of Jesus Christ

9—Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the Imperial Roman Army's bloodiest defeat

14—Death of Emperor Augustus (Octavian), ascension of his adopted son Tiberius to the throne

29—Crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

68—Year of the four emperors in Rome

70—Destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of Titus.

117—Roman Empire at largest extent under Emperor Trajan

192—Kingdom of Champa in Central Việt Nam

200s—The Hindu Srivijaya Empire established in the Malay Archipelago.

220—Three Kingdoms period begins in China after the fall of Han Dynasty.

226—Fall of the Parthian Empire and Rise of the Sassanian Empire

238—Defeat of Gordian III (238–244), Philip the Arab (244–249), and Valerian (253–260), by Shapur I of Persia, (Valerian was captured by the Persians).

280—Emperor Wu established Jin Dynasty providing a temporary unity of China after the devastating Three Kingdoms period.

285—Emperor Diocletian splits the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western Empires

313—Edict of Milan declared that the Roman Empire would be neutral toward religious worship

335—Samudragupta becomes the emperor of the Gupta empire

378—Battle of Adrianople, Roman army is defeated by the Germanic tribes

395—Roman Emperor Theodosius I outlaws all pagan religions in favour of Christianity

410—Alaric I sacks Rome for the first time since 390 BC

c. 455—Skandagupta repels an Indo-Hephthalite attack on India.

476—Romulus Augustus, last Western Roman Emperor is forced to abdicate by Odoacer, a half Hunnish and half Scirian chieftain of the Germanic Heruli; Odoacer returns the imperial regalia to Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno in Constantinople in return for the title of dux of Italy; most frequently cited date for the end of ancient history.

End of ancient history in Europe

The date used as the end of the ancient era is entirely arbitrary. The transition period from Classical Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages is known as Late Antiquity. Some key dates marking that transition are:

293—reforms of Roman Emperor Diocletian

395—the division of Roman Empire into the Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire

476—the fall of Western Roman Empire

529—closure of Platon Academy in Athens by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I

 

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See Also:	Big ERA II | Time in History | Eurasia || Scientific Revolution
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