Chapters 1 and 2
Strayer begins this book on World History by first talking about "Big History"; that is, how the universe and everything within it formed. The Big Bang, which historians believe is the event that created our universe, happened about 13.7 billion years ago. Galaxies began to form around 12 billion years ago, but the galaxy that our planet is in, the Milky Way Galaxy formed around 10 billion years ago. The solar system in which Earth resides was formed 4.7 years ago and our home planet, Earth, formed 4.5 years ago. Another interesting fact that Strayer points out about the universe is that 90% of its total mass is invisible to humans. It is made up of what we call dark matter. It is mind-blowing to take a step back and think about the immensity and age of the universe and therefore how minuscule human's own history really is in the grand scheme of all that has been created. This might make a person feel that their own life is utterly pointless, but instead I feel that we should use this information to remind us that our personal problems within our daily lives are merely blips on the radar, for we are a part of something so much greater.
Beginning the conversation about human history by first examining Big History brings up a question for Professor Andrews and for all history teachers that are adopting this way of teaching: what happens when there is a devoutly religious person in the class? Is it better to avoid explaining one's personal philosophy about the beginnings of the universe and instead explain simply that most historians are using this approach, and then quickly move on? Have students ever gotten into a debate with their instructor about this topic? Has a religious person ever decided not to take a World History class that included Big History for this reason?
With all the talk lately about the "Paleo" diet and lifestyle in which people eat and exercise in a way that they believe is closer to the way the first humans did in an effort to be healthier and/or loose weight, I was interested to learn more about Paleolithic man. Turns out, eating bacon all day everyday does not make a person more like our Paleolithic ancestors.
In fact, Paleolithic people's diet only contained about 30% animal protein and the remaining 70% consisted of food which they had gathered from plants. One point to note about the reading is that, while most are accustomed to using the term "hunter-gatherer" when talking about Paleolithic man, Strayer instead says "gatherer-hunter". To me this is Strayer's attempt to help the reader understand that these first humans were more often gathering as opposed to hunting, as well as an attempt to point out the importance of women in Paleolithic societies. Historians believe that the Paleolithic culture was egalitarian, meaning that women, the gatherers, were not subservient to men during this time. Men and women had different roles within their communities, but both men and women were valued and respected equally.
95% of human history was spent in the Paleolithic era in which people lived in small gatherer-hunter communities and seasonally migrated, following the most plentiful sources of food. After an Ice Age that ended around 16,000 and 10,000 years ago, the climate of the Earth began to warm making it possible for many plants to flourish and this provided people with more readily available sources and food that they did not have to travel so far to gather. Now that people could provide food for their small communities without have to migrate, they began to form the first human societies. This gave birth to the Neolithic Era.
The luxury of not having to be constantly on the move allowed Neolithic peoples to form small settled communities on every continent except Antarctica. The people developed an agricultural system so that they were able to grow enough food for their every increasing populations. This may have also been the beginning of the consumerism they we see in the world today. Now that people were more settled, they were able to accumulate more things. Neolithic people had multi-layered clothing and began to become aware of adorning one's body with jewelry. They also had to develop forms of protection like weapons to protect these objects that they now found so valuable.
These early societies eventually grew to much larger civilizations, the most notable of which were the Egyptians and the Sumerians of Mesopotamia. The interesting idea that Strayer points out in our book is that these two civilizations had very different outlooks on the world based on the environments they lived in. The Egyptians lived on and around the Nile, a river that had a very predictable pattern of overflowing and then eventually lowering back down. This predictability gave the Egyptians a more auspicious view of life and of their future. They were able to plan their agriculture, and their lives, around the cycles of the Nile, and they had a pleasant view about what waited for them in the afterlife. The Sumerians on the other hand lived near river whose ebbs and flows were much more unpredictable. These rivers could flood without warning and destroy the crops of the Sumerians. This caused the people to have a more unfavorable view of life and of the afterlife. It is amazing to think that something as simple as the environment in which a group of people live in could have such an enormous impact on not just their day to day lives, but also on their entire view of the world and what they believed happened to them when they died.
The Egyptians have always been one of my favorite civilizations to learn about because of all of the seemingly miraculous things they were able to do given what little resources they had. It is also amazing to me that one of the very first civilizations in human history has been able to capture the attention of so many people up to present day. It has been interesting to learn more about the Egyptians in a way that puts their history in context with the history of humankind.
