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

Imagine you are traveling through time. Consider the following episodes:

* At 13.7 billion years ago, the Universe suddenly appears, growing from the size of an atom to the size of a galaxy in a fraction of a second.
* At 10 billion years ago, hydrogen atoms and helium atoms fuse at the center of a supernova to create the building blocks of the physical world.
* At 4.6 billion years ago, a cloud of matter collapses to produce a star?our Sun. Earth and the other planets in our solar system form out of the remaining bits of matter swirling around the new star.
* At 67 million years ago, an asteroid collides with the Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs, and leaves territory open for the rise of a minor order of organisms, the early mammals.
* At 100,000?60,000 years ago, a species of hominines?bipedal ape-like creatures? begins to move out of its home territory in Africa and into the Asian continent.
* Today, the descendants of those first hominines?homo sapiens?live in nearly every ecological niche. We fly through the air in planes, communicate instantaneously over immense distances, and develop theories about the creation of the Universe.
Each of these scenarios is just one episode in an ever-evolving story: the history of everything. It's a story you'll hear?in its monumental entirety?in Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity.

Taught by historian David Christian, Big History offers a unique opportunity to view human history in the context of the many histories that surround it. Over the course of 48 thought-provoking lectures, he'll serve as your guide as you traverse the sweeping expanse of cosmic history?13.7 billion years of it?starting with the big bang and traveling through time and space to the present moment.

A Grand Synthesis of Knowledge

Have you ever wondered: How do various scholarly discourses?cosmology, geology, anthropology, biology, history?fit together?

Big History answers that question by weaving a single story from a variety of scholarly disciplines. Like traditional creation stories told by the world's great religions and mythologies, Big History 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.
David Christian, D.Phil.
Professor of History
San Diego State University
David Christian is Professor of History at San Diego State University, where he teaches courses on big history, world environmental history, Russian history, and the history of Inner Eurasia. From 1975 to 2000, he taught Russian history, European history, and world history at Macquarie University in Sydney.
课题如下：
Lecture One............ What Is Big History?
Lecture Two............ Moving across Multiple Scales
Lecture Three.......... Simplicity and Complexity
Lecture Four........... Evidence and the Nature of Science
Lecture Five........... Threshold 1?Origins of Big Bang Cosmology
Lecture Six............ How Did Everything Begin?
Lecture Seven.......... Threshold 2?The First Stars and Galaxies
Lecture Eight.......... Threshold 3?Making Chemical Elements
Lecture Nine........... Threshold 4?The Earth and the Solar System
Lecture Ten............ The Early Earth?A Short History
Lecture Eleven......... Plate Tectonics and the Earth?s Geography
Lecture Twelve......... Threshold 5?Life
Lecture Thirteen....... Darwin and Natural Selection
Lecture Fourteen....... The Evidence for Natural Selection
Lecture Fifteen........ The Origins of Life
Lecture Sixteen........ Life on Earth?Single-celled Organisms
Lecture Seventeen...... Life on Earth?Multi-celled Organisms
Lecture Eighteen....... Hominines
Lecture Nineteen....... Evidence on Hominine Evolution
Lecture Twenty......... Threshold 6?What Makes Humans Different?
Lecture Twenty-One..... Homo sapiens?The First Humans
Lecture Twenty-Two..... Paleolithic Lifeways
Lecture Twenty-Three... Change in the Paleolithic Era
Lecture Twenty-Four.... Threshold 7?Agriculture
Lecture Twenty-Five.... The Origins of Agriculture
Lecture Twenty-Six..... The First Agrarian Societies
Lecture Twenty-Seven... Power and Its Origins
Lecture Twenty-Eight... Early Power Structures
Lecture Twenty-Nine.... From Villages to Cities
Lecture Thirty......... Sumer?The First Agrarian Civilization
Lecture Thirty-One..... Agrarian Civilizations in Other Regions
Lecture Thirty-Two..... The World That Agrarian Civilizations Made
Lecture Thirty-Three... Long Trends?Expansion and State Power
Lecture Thirty-Four.... Long Trends?Rates of Innovation
Lecture Thirty-Five.... Long Trends?Disease and Malthusian Cycles
Lecture Thirty-Six..... Comparing the World Zones
Lecture Thirty-Seven... The Americas in the Later Agrarian Era
Lecture Thirty-Eight Threshold 8—The Modern Revolution
Lecture Thirty-Nine The Medieval Malthusian Cycle, 500–1350
Lecture Forty The Early Modern Cycle, 1350–1700
Lecture Forty-One Breakthrough—The Industrial Revolution.
Lecture Forty-Two Spread of the Industrial Revolution to 1900.
Lecture Forty-Three The 20th Century
Lecture Forty-Four The World That the Modern Revolution Made
Lecture Forty-Five Human History and the Biosphere
Lecture Forty-Six The Next 100 Years
Lecture Forty-Seven The Next Millennium and the Remote Future
Lecture Forty-Eight Big History—Humans in the Cosmos