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Course: Big History Project > Unit 1
Lesson 1: Welcome to Big History | 1.0- ACTIVITY: Easter Island Mystery
- READ: What Happened on Easter Island?
- ACTIVITY: Unit 1 Vocab Tracking
- WATCH: Unit 1 Overview - What Is Big History?
- WATCH: What Is Big History?
- WATCH: The Big Bang
- WATCH: A Big History of Everything – H2
- Quiz: Welcome to the Big History
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WATCH: What Is Big History?
Big History explores the universe's 13.7-billion-year timeline, blending expert knowledge to tell a coherent story. It examines increasing complexity through eight threshold moments, culminating in today's world. Hear David Christian’s explanation of Big History's 13.8-billion-year timeline and multidisciplinary approach. Created by Big History Project.
Want to join the conversation?
- So... does anyone know if you can download the 13.7 B year timeline of history (as shown, fairly clearly, at5:05)?
Seems like it'd make an amazingly [de]motivational poster/desktop background :)(17 votes)- Hey, the image is gone, could you please reupload the link. Thank you very much!
EDIT: Nevermind, it can be found in the lection "Infographic: Timline"(4 votes)
- What do you think the next "threshold moment" will be...do you think we will live long enough to see another?(12 votes)
- The next threshold moment may be the creation of artificial intelligence.(11 votes)
- How many theories are there of 'How the Universe Started'?(8 votes)
- many. if you ask three hundred (300) people, there is a chance that you might get three hundred (300) different answers(5 votes)
- If you wanted to know the answer to humans you had to go back and back ect, so in theory you have to go back before The big bang to get a sense of it, or was there a before?(6 votes)
- Is the Sun only battery of the Earth?(5 votes)
- no ...i think one could use geothermal /gems /water flow rate /etc(3 votes)
- Where can i get that complete timeline in the intro?(3 votes)
- Nah got it. in Infographic Timeline(5 votes)
- David said more than once that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, but the caption under the video and earlier videos give the date as 13.8 billion years. Which is it? 100,000,000 years seems like a significance difference.(3 votes)
- It is indeed. I believe the short answer is that the ways to measure these things get better as the technology gets faster and more advanced. I'm pretty sure the data currently says 13.8 billion. I found a NASA Science news article on it, if you are curious.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/21mar_cmb/(3 votes)
- why are we here(3 votes)
- No reason other than because we and our ancestors survived the evolutionary process, and because life arose on this planet that had the suitable conditions for that to happen (in abiogenesis). However, as for why the universe is here—in other words, why there is something rather than nothing—that's a question that we will, as far as we can tell now, never truly know the answer to!(2 votes)
- will the futrue better or wrost then now(0 votes)
- It depends on your perspective. Some believe worse because of the non-renewable energy we use at alarming rates and the onset of global warming. Others better because of technology(like in this article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2012/01/26/abundance-why-the-future-will-be-much-better-than-you-think/) But still you need to consider for yourself where in the world you live, a developed country or a less developed country. With the large gap between the rich and the poor not getting any smaller and the social discrepancies between people within the bubble and those outside the future seems much brighter for the people in the bubble because of technology and security. For those on the outside exploitation and capitalism ruin their chances of a better future unless certain measures are taken such as through non-profits or organizations like the UN to improve this huge difference. So the future can be depending on what the present can provide for that future.(6 votes)
- I'm sure Stone Henge, Easter Island, and other things that fit in the puzzle.(2 votes)
Video transcript
DAVID CHRISTIAN: Earth is the
place that we humans call home. It's a very beautiful place
with staggering variety: gorgeous landscapes
from mountains to rivers to oceans;
a staggering variety of different species
from redwoods to swallows to beavers to spiders;
and, of course, seven billion other humans
like you and me-- perhaps the weirdest species
of all. And then look above us. Look at the sun. It's the battery of life
here on Earth. But our sun, it's just one of
perhaps a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. And the Milky Way
is perhaps just one of a hundred billion,
maybe 200 billion galaxies in the Universe. So, how did things get to be
the way they are? How was the Universe created? Why does it work
the way it does? Why are stars so big?
Why are you and I so small? Why do we find ourselves
in this particular part of the Universe, on this
tiny planet buzzing with life? Why are humans so powerful? What does it mean to be "human"? These are wonderful questions
and they've been asked by people in all societies. And they have also been asked
by a lot of people with great expertise:
geologists ask them; biologists ask them;
astronomers, physicists, historians, anthropologists. What we want to do
in this course is to take the expert answers
and try to blend them into a single, coherent story
that will explain how everything came to be
the way it is, how we fit in,
and where, perhaps, everything is going. Take a look
at this timeline. It shows my own journey
through time. And what I've done
is I've placed on it events that seem
important in my own life. We can think of them
if you like as thresholds, crucial turning points
in my life. For example,
at the age of three months I traveled to Nigeria. I went to Canada,
where I met my wife. I went to university.
I trained as a Russian historian and I got my first job
in Australia. All those things
were important. But now, I carry three passports because I've traveled so much. And the trouble is,
I'm not really sure, in a sense, what country
I belong to or, in a sense, who I am. I was never really content,
therefore, to understand just the history
of one country, or even to teach
the history of one country Take Russia, in my case. What I wanted to know about
was the history of humanity as a whole. Now, if you think about it,
that question forced me back. If you want to know
about humanity, you have to ask about how humans
evolved from primates. You could push that back,
ask how primates evolved. Back and back and back
until, eventually, you're talking about
the origins of life on Earth. And once you're doing that,
why not ask about the origins of the Earth
and the whole Universe? Now, these questions
are huge but they seemed
really important to me because asking them
gave me a sense of understanding what I am and what it is that I'm part of. Eventually, I realized
that all human societies have asked these same questions, I think for the same reason
as I asked them, but their answers
were incredibly diverse. Some say that the Universe
has always existed. Some say it was created
very recently. Some say it was made
by the gods, some say it arose
out of a sort of cosmic mush. And then what the stories do
is they go on to tell about the origins of the stars,
of the sun and moon, of the mountains and seas,
and rivers, of plants and animals, and,
of course, of you and me. Big history is a modern version
of all these stories. It uses the best information
that we have available in our society,
but of course it's not perfect. New information keeps appearing,
and as a result, we have to keep adjusting
the story and improving it. And there are many areas
to which we don't have perfect answers--
we're really not sure. So, the story keeps changing
in small ways and that, frankly,
is one of the things that makes it so exciting. Now, you see
my personal timeline. You can think of it
as a sort of personal origin story
and you can all write timelines of your own. To some of you, I guess
it may seem pretty long, but if you want to look
for a long timeline, think about the history
of the Universe. That timeline
is 13.7 billion years. Now, let's just take
time out to get your mind
around that figure. If you were to count numbers,
each number a second, and you counted up to a million,
how long would it take you? Well, the answer is
it would take you about eleven and a half days. If you were to count
to a billion, it would take you
a thousand times as long, which is about 32 years. And if you were to count
to 13.7 billion, it would take you over
400 years. Now, that's a huge story,
but that's the story we're going to tell
in this course. It's a fantastic story. It's got lots of twists
and turns, lots of unanswered questions, lots of fascinating ideas
and stories in it. One of the things
we're going to really focus on is the idea
of increasing complexity. Over 13.7 billion years,
what we see is that gradually there appear in the Universe at "threshold" moments
as we'll call them, new things, more complex things
with entirely new qualities. And we'll focus on eight
of these threshold moments, and they culminate
in today's world. The last threshold is
the creation of today's world, and that is one of the most
complex things we know. So, by the end of this course,
you'll have surveyed the whole history
of the Universe and you'll know
how you fit into it. So, let's get started.