What is Big History?

Start

What can big history teach us?

Where did everything come from and where are we heading? These are the questions at the heart of many origin stories. Big history rewinds the clock to the beginning of time to answer the same questions and examine the Universe as a whole, drawing on evidence and ideas from many academic disciplines.

The Big Bang

Threshold 1

How has our view changed?

Big history begins with the Big Bang, today's best explanation for how the Universe came to be. This view has been shaped by ever-sharper theories built through new technologies and observations over thousands of years.

Stars Light Up

Threshold 2

How did stars form?

The Universe was a dark and cold place 200 million years after the Big Bang. Then things changed: stars emerged. These “hot spots” of light and energy transformed the Universe and set the stage for even more radical changes.

New Chemical
Elements

Threshold 3

How did the elements form?

Early scientists and philosophers speculated that the heavens and Earth were made from a basic group of elements. Their view was simple, but they were more right than they knew. Invisible to them was an ongoing, intense process of chemical production that resulted in almost everything around us.

Earth & the
Solar System

Threshold 4

How did Earth take Shape?

After the Sun formed, the remaining matter in the Solar System continued to orbit the new star. Some of these swirling leftovers formed the planets. Earth, a rocky planet, had just the right conditions for amazing new developments to unfold over its dynamic 4.6 billion-year history.

Life on Earth

Threshold 5

How did life emerge?

What makes life so special? How did life emerge? And what explains the diversity of life on Earth? Life has four qualities: It can metabolize, self-regulate, reproduce, and adapt. We also know that life is fragile in the face of gradual and sudden changes to the environment. Just ask the dinosaurs.

Collective learning

Threshold 6

What makes us different?

Humans are unusual. We walk upright and build cities. We travel between continents in hours and can communicate across the globe in seconds. We can build bombs and invent medicines. Why can we do all these things that other creatures can't do? The answer is in our ability to learn collectively.

Agriculture

Threshold 7

Why is Agriculture important?

If everyone had to survive as foragers, there wouldn't be enough food to feed the Earth's 7 billion people. Farming sustains us and it's easy to assume that it has always existed, but it hasn't. Humans invented agriculture, paving the way for complex civilizations and altering our relationship with Earth.

The Modern
Revolution

Threshold 8

Why did change accelerate?

With the rise of global exchange and commerce, particularly in the 200 years since the start of the Industrial Revolution, collective learning has accelerated. Standards of living have steadily risen and, for better and worse, humans have gained control over much of the biosphere.

What's next?

Future

What's the next threshold?

Big history isn't finished. How does knowing so much about the past change the way you think about the future? What do you think life will be like in 10 years? In 50 years? How might human innovation ensure that we continue to thrive?