Moving across multiple scales
Simplicity and complexity
Evidence and the nature of science
Threshold 1: origins of Big Bang cosmology
How did everything begin?
Threshold 2: the first stars and galaxies
Threshold 3: making chemical elements
Threshold 4: the earth and solar system
The early earth: a short history
Plate tectonics and the earth's geography
Darwin and natural selection
The evidence for natural selection
Life on earth: single-celled organisms
Life on earth: multi-celled organisms
Evidence on hominine evolution
Threshold 6: what makes humans different?
Homo sapiens: the first humans
Change in the Paleolithic era
The origins of agriculture
The first agrarian societies
Sumer: the first agrarian civilization
Agrarian civilizations in other regions
The world that agrarian civilizations made
Expansion and state power
Long trends: rates of innovation
Long trends: disease and Malthusian cycles
Comparing the world zones
The Americas in the later Agrarian Era
Threshold 8: the modern revolution
The Medieval Malthusian cycle, 500-1350
The Early Modern cycle, 1350-1700
Breakthrough: the Industrial Revolution
Spread of the Industrial Revolution to 1900
The world that the modern revolution made
Human history and the biosphere
The next millennium and the remote future
Big history: humans in the cosmos.
