Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History: An Introduction To Big History. Forew. by William H. McNeill (California World History Library, 2, Band 2) - Softcover

Christian, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520271440 ISBN 13: 9780520271449

Verlag: University of California Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

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.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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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"You've all seen the poster of the milky way galaxy with an arrow to a point about halfway out from the center and the caption, ‘You are here.’ This book is like that only more so. It locates the human experience in the entirety of space-time."—Alfred Crosby, author of Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900

Aus dem Klappentext

"You've all seen the poster of the milky way galaxy with an arrow to a point about halfway out from the center and the caption, You are here. This book is like that only more so. It locates the human experience in the entirety of space-time."Alfred Crosby, author of Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900

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Maps of Time

An Introduction to Big History

By David Christian

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2011 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-520-27144-9

Contents

List of Illustrations, ix, 
List of Tables, xiii, 
Foreword, xv, 
Acknowledgments, xix, 
Preface to the 2011 Edition, xxiii, 
Introduction: A Modern Creation Myth?, 1, 
PART I. THE INANIMATE UNIVERSE, 
1. The First 300,000 Years: Origins of the Universe, Time, and Space, 17, 
2. Origins of the Galaxies and Stars: The Beginnings of Complexity, 39, 
3. Origins and History of the Earth, 57, 
PART II. LIFE ON EARTH, 
4. The Origins of Life and the Theory of Evolution, 79, 
5. The Evolution of Life and the Biosphere, 107, 
PART III. EARLY HUMAN HISTORY: MANY WORLDS, 
6. The Evolution of Humans, 139, 
7. The Beginnings of Human History, 171, 
PART IV. THE HOLOCENE: FEW WORLDS, 
8. Intensification and the Origins of Agriculture, 207, 
9. From Power over Nature to Power over People: Cities, States, and "Civilizations", 245, 
10. Long Trends in the Era of Agrarian "Civilizations", 283, 
PART V. THE MODERN ERA: ONE WORLD, 
11. Approaching Modernity, 335, 
12. Globalization, Commercialization, and Innovation, 364, 
13. Birth of the Modern World, 406, 
14. The Great Acceleration of the Twentieth Century, 440, 
PART VI. PERSPECTIVES ON THE FUTURE, 
15. Futures, 467, 
Appendix 1. Dating Techniques, Chronologies, and Timelines, 493, 
Appendix 2. Chaos and Order, 505, 
Notes, 513, 
Bibliography, 563, 
Index, 595, 

CHAPTER 1

THE FIRST 300,000 YEARS ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE. TIME. AND SPACE

Viola: What country, friends, is this?

Captain: This is Illyria, lady.

THE PROBLEM OF BEGINNINGS

How did everything begin? This is the first question faced by any creation myth and, despite the achievements of modern cosmology, answering it remains tricky.

At the very beginning, all explanations face the same problem: how can something come out of nothing? The problem is general, for beginnings are inexplicable. At the smallest scales, subatomic particles sometimes emerge instantaneously from nothingness. One moment there is nothing; the next moment there is something. There is no in-between state. Quantum physics can analyze these odd jumps into and out of existence with great precision, but it cannot explain them in ways that make sense at the human level. These paradoxes are captured beautifully in a modern Australian Aboriginal saying: "Nothing is nothing."

Awareness of the difficulty of explaining origins is as old as myth. The following passage poses these questions with great sophistication and a surprisingly modern skepticism. It comes from one of the ancient Indian hymns known as the Rig-Veda, and was probably composed ca. 1200 BCE. It describes a pre-creation realm that was not really present, but was not entirely absent either.

There was neither non-existence nor existence then; there was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. What stirred? Where? In whose protection? Was there water, bottomlessly deep?

There was neither death nor immortality then. There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day. That one breathed, windless, by its own impulse. Other than that there was nothing beyond....

Was there below? Was there above? There were seed-placers; there were powers. There was impulse beneath; there was giving-forth above.

Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen?

Whence this creation has arisen—perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not—the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows—or perhaps he does not know.

Here we have a hint that there was, first, a sort of potent nothingness—waiting, like clay in a potter's yard, to be formed into something. This is very much how modern nuclear physics views the idea of a vacuum: it is empty but can nevertheless have shape and structure, and (as has been proved in experiments with particle accelerators) "things" and "energies" can pop out of the emptiness.

Perhaps there was a potter (or potters) waiting to shape the vacuum. And perhaps the potter and the clay were somehow identical. According to the Popol Vuh, or "Council Book," a sixteenth-century Mayan manuscript, "Whatever might be is simply not there: only murmurs, ripples, in the dark, in the night. Only the Maker, Modeler alone, Sovereign Plumed Serpent, the Bearers, Begetters are in the water, a glittering light. They are there, they are enclosed in quetzal feathers, in blue-green." But where did the Maker come from? Each beginning seems to presuppose an earlier beginning. In monotheistic religions, such as Christianity or Islam, the problem arises as soon as you ask, How was God created? Instead of meeting a single starting point, we encounter an infinity of them, each of which poses the same problem.

There are no entirely satisfactory solutions to this dilemma. What we have to find is not a solution but some way of dealing with the mystery, some way of "pointing at the moon," in the Zen metaphor. And we have to do so using words. Yet the words we reach for, from God to gravity, are inadequate to the task. So we have to use language poetically or symbolically; and such language, whether used by a scientist, a poet, or a shaman, can easily be misunderstood. A French anthropologist, Marcel Griaule, once questioned a Dogon wise man, Ogotemmeli, about a mythic detail according to which many animals were crowded together onto a single, small step (like the animals in Noah's ark). Ogotemmeli replied, with some irritation: "All of this has to be said in words, but everything on the step is a symbol.... Any number of symbols could find room on a one-cubit step." The word translated here as "symbol" could also be translated as "word of this lower world." At the very beginning of things, language itself threatens to break down.

One of the trickiest problems concerns time, Was there a "time" when there was no time? Is time a product of our imagination? In some systems of thought, time does not really exist, Places become the source of everything significant, and the paradoxes of creation take different forms, But for communities that see time as central, there is no way of avoiding the paradox of origins, The following is an Islamic summary of a Zoroastrian attempt to deal with these riddles. In it, the creator is an unchanging entity called Time, who creates a universe of change. It is dominated by two opposite principles, those of the gods Ohrmazd and Ahriman.

Except Time all other things are created. Time is the creator; and Time has no limit, neither top nor bottom. It has always been and shall be for evermore. No sensible person will say whence Time has come. In spite of all the grandeur that surrounded it, there was no one to call it creator; for it had not brought forth creation. Then it created fire and water; and when it had brought them together, Ohrmazd came into existence, and simultaneously Time became Creator and Lord with regard to the creation it had brought forth. Ohrmazd was bright, pure, sweet-smelling, and beneficent, and had power over all good things. Then, he looked down, he saw Ahriman ninety-six thousand parasangs away, black, foul, stinking,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520271440
• ISBN 13: 9780520271449
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 672
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar