Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History

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University of California Press, 2011 - 642 síður
An introduction to a new way of looking at history, from a perspective that stretches from the beginning of time to the present day, Maps of Time is world history on an unprecedented scale. Beginning with the Big Bang, David Christian views the interaction of the natural world with the more recent arrivals in flora and fauna, including human beings.

Cosmology, geology, archeology, and population and environmental studies—all figure in David Christian's account, which is an ambitious overview of the emerging field of "Big History." Maps of Time opens with the origins of the universe, the stars and the galaxies, the sun and the solar system, including the earth, and conducts readers through the evolution of the planet before human habitation. It surveys the development of human society from the Paleolithic era through the transition to agriculture, the emergence of cities and states, and the birth of the modern, industrial period right up to intimations of possible futures. Sweeping in scope, finely focused in its minute detail, this riveting account of the known world, from the inception of space-time to the prospects of global warming, lays the groundwork for world history—and Big History—true as never before to its name.
 

Efni

FIGURES
1
A Modern Creation Myth?
2
LLUSTRATIONS
16
Origins of the Universe
17
TABLES
27
The Beginnings
39
Origins and History of the Earth
57
The Origins of Life and the Theory of Evolution
79
1O Long Trends in the Era of Agrarian Civilizations
283
O 1 Models of different types of exchange networks
292
Chronology of early agrarian civilizations
294
Teotihuacán
301
Areas of AfroEurasia within agrarian civilizations
305
and the environment
311
O 5 Areas ruled by particular states and empires
317
Approaching Modernity
335

The Evolution of Life and the Biosphere
107
The Evolution of Humans
139
The evolution of stone tools over 2 5 million years
161
The Beginnings of Human History
171
Intensification and the Origins of Agriculture
207
Cities States and Civilizations
245
Globalization Commercialization and Innovation
364
Birth of the Modern World
439
Futures
467
and Timelines
493
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Um höfundinn (2011)

David Christian is Professor in the Department of History at San Diego State University. He is the author of Living Water: Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation (1990), Imperial and Soviet Russia: Power, Privilege and the Challenge of Modernity (1997), and A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia: Volume 1: Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire (1998).

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