Discipline

History

Lessons across the journey that lean on history, in the order they appear in the story.

1. 1.5
   How we know

   The three pillars of evidence for the Big Bang, and how each one could have proved it wrong.

   Draft
2. 7.1
   Why farm?

   Climate, population and the Holocene: why farming began where and when it did.

   Draft
3. 7.2
   Domestication

   How wheat, rice, cattle and dogs were remade by people, and people by them.

   Planned
4. 7.3
   Villages to cities

   Surplus, hierarchy, writing and the first states.

   Draft
5. 7.4
   The Indus Valley civilisation

   Cities, water engineering and a script still unread.

   Planned
6. 7.5
   The price of farming

   Disease, inequality and shorter lives: what agriculture cost.

   Planned
7. 7.6
   Empires and exchange

   Agrarian empires, the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean world.

   Planned
8. 8.1
   The Columbian Exchange

   1492 and the joining of the world's biological and human systems.

   Planned
9. 8.2
   The Scientific Revolution

   A new way of knowing: evidence, instruments and doubt.

   Planned
10. 8.3
    Fossil fuels and the Industrial Revolution

    Coal, steam and the release of stored sunlight.

    Planned
11. 8.4
    The Great Acceleration

    Population, energy and information since 1950.

    Planned
12. 8.5
    The Anthropocene

    Humans as a geological force.

    Planned
13. 9.3
    Machines that learn

    Artificial intelligence, and whether it counts as a new kind of collective learning.

    Planned