Big History is the holistic study of history from the Big Bang to present. It traces patterns and connections between events across disciplines like geology, astronomy, biology and anthropology. An example given is how studying the origins and spread of coffee involves geography, botany, and the Dutch East India Company's role in propagating it across five continents. Big History aims to understand why things are the way they are by considering all relevant factors over long time periods.

1. Shai Borwick-Cooper
A look at the origins of man and how we got from there
to here

2.  Big History is the holistic study of the history of the universe,
starting from the big bang and tracing the cause and effect of
how we came to be where we are today.
 Big History is interested in finding patterns and themes in
timelines.
 Big history is an amalgamation of many sciences and social
sciences including geology, astronomy, biology,
anthropology and of course the usual methods of studying
history such as archeology, and paleontology.
 An example would be tracing the origins of coffee from the
Middle East and Turkey to the Dutch East India company
smuggling the beans out and planting them in places where
they should grow and because of that coffee now grows on
five continents.
 Big history would go further and study why coffee can be
grown in the places that it does involving geologists and
physics.

3.  We are what we know, is a very important
theme from this video.
 Years ago we thought that the world was flat
and that the son orbited the earth. Today we
know that this is not true.
 Every group is certain that it’s version of the
truth is the only true version and is prepared to
defend it to the death.
 Progress is inevitable; we used to craft
everything that we needed then machines
were invented until we are in the place we are
today.
 Mankind is innately curious and is always
trying to find new and better ways of doing
things
 The modern way of thinking started with the
Greeks, who started looking for answers in
opposites and developed problem solving
techniques.

4.  When we find an answer that suits us we keep it
and when we want to make last we turn it into a
ceremony and institutionalize it so that it won’t
change even when we do.
 The biggest theme from this video and in fact all of
the videos for this first theme is that the only
constant is change.

5.  Spencer Wells, a geneticist and an anthropologist interested in finding out
where our ancestors originated. He traced the Y chromosome , the
chromosome passed to all males.
 The Y chromosome is passed intact to sons, but sometimes there is a
mutation called a marker, which then points to the male ancestry of a certain
man at a certain point.
 After drawing blood from men all over the world Wells came to the
conclusion that the oldest people are the San Bushmen in South Africa and
Namibia.
 He goes to meet the San Bushmen and finds people that have faces that are
composite models of all the people on earth.
 About 50,000 years ago language was developed and this lead to new
innovations in hunting.
 Around this time the ancestors of the San left Africa.
 He follows the journey from Africa along the coast of Europe arriving in
Australia.

6.  Spencer follows a second migration that went through the Middle East to
Asia and from there to Europe.
 A few people migrated from Europe through Alaska and into America where
they multiplied and populated the continent.
A map showing the directions
that man started there journey

7. San Bushmen Australian Aborigine Siberian Chukchi
Indian Turkish Kasakh Navajo Indian

8.  David Keyes is a writer and historian who is intrigued by a catastrophe
that changed history.
 Tree rings start research into a catastrophe that happened in the mid 6th
century and lasted for a decade.
 This catastrophe laid the foundations for the way that we live today
 In the year 535 or 536 the tree rings show very little growth indicating bad
growing conditions.
 The first suspect is either a meteorite or comet hitting the earth at that
time but this is ruled out because no crater has been found that indicates
that this happened.
 Ice cores show that there was a lot of volcanic activity at this time and
that the volcano Krakatoa erupted and played a big role in the beginning
of the dark ages.
 Environmental changes wrought by this explosion were the cause of
plague and fall of the Roman Empire as well as the rise of Islam.

9.  Professor Jared Diamond spent 30 years researching why there is a difference in
the wealth between the European and Aboriginal peoples of the world.
 In the last centuries since the countries of Europe discovered the new world, they
were under the impression that they were somehow genetically superior to
others.
 This is not true, Diamond discovered that the people of New Guiney are just as
smart as the people of Europe, so why then are the Europeans so much more
technically advanced.
 Diamond’s theory is that because the resources that the people in Europe
enjoyed were much more plentiful and because the geography of Europe is East
- West orientated meaning that crops and animals will thrive when migrating
along the same line of latitude and that ideas can be spread much faster and
easier than on continents that are North South orientated and that have natural
barriers such as high mountains and wide rivers.
 Farming is a much more productive way of creating enough food needed so that
some people can specialize, creating things that can allow a civilization to
develop

10.  Because the people of Europe and Asia were able to specialize
they were able to develop things like iron tools and swords.
 Domestic animals also gave the people of Europe and Asia an
advantage because domesticating animals gave them a better
food supply and their skins could be used for clothes .
 Domestic animals also brought diseases such as small pox and
influenza which caused epidemics for the people of Europe, but
it also made them immune to these germs
 When the Spanish discovered America they brought with them
their guns, and steel and also their germs.
 A case of small pox on one of the ships caused an epidemic and
wherever they went the local populations had been decimated
and were no match for the Spaniards.
 Diamond concludes that geography plays a very big part in
whether a country has much “cargo” of not. This is the answer
he has for a Yali a man he met on the beach in New Guinea who
asked “Why you white men have so much cargo and we New
Guineans have so little”

11.  In the year 1492 Columbus made landfall in the unknown continent known today
as South America. Other explorers came after him to explore North America
 He brought horses, cattle, and European plants to this new world.
 Horses had not been seen in the Americas in 10,000 years but after Columbus
brought them, those that escaped their masters flourished and changed the
world of the local people.
 Crops were also brought from the New World to the Old. One of these was the
potato. This root grew well in places where it was difficult to grow crops and
became the food of the poor. It enabled people to survive and flourish.
 Potatoes also allowed the populations of Germany, Russia, Ireland and many
others to grow and eventually caused a migration to the New World and this
created the modern pluralistic United States.
 Sugar Cane is another crop brought to the New World and this caused African
slaves to be brought too.
 Much of the trade and modern globalization was brought about by Columbus’s
voyages of discovery and the goods that were transplanted from one place to
another.