This document discusses several topics related to human history and civilization: 1) It first discusses human origins in Africa and how the first tribes migrated from Africa to other parts of the world. 2) It then discusses Jared Diamond's theory from his book "Guns, Germs and Steel" about how access to domesticated animals and nutrient-rich crops allowed some early civilizations to develop more rapidly than others. 3) It summarizes the major impacts of the Columbian Exchange between Europeans and Native Americans in the 1500s, including the introduction of new diseases, animals, crops, and subsequent damage to Native American societies. 4) Finally, it briefly lists some major historical empires like the

1. Jonah Price
BIG HISTORY

2. JOURNEY OF MAN
• To answer these questions we must first
look to where we start, where the human
journey begins. We look to Africa to find
the our very first ancestors. Africa is
believed to be the birth place of humans,
because the common genetics lead there,
but the question is how did people get
from there to here? You learn what the
first tribe of people had to go though to
arrive in other parts of the world.

3. GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL
• How did modern civilization begin?
• Although a growing population is one
reason for increased development
civilization, raw materials are a
necessity to create a modern
civilization. Some civilizations are cut
off from muscular animals such as
Ox and Water Buffalo, but even if
they do have access to another
muscular animal that animal must be
compliant with humans, also the
civilization must have a well
nourishing plant food source. Without
these two key factors a human
society can not develop at as rapid
as other societies.

4. THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE
• In the 1500 America’s native people
were untouched by the European worlds
culture, society, economy, diseases and
also their animals. For all the natives
new there life was the way it would
always be. Although their ways were
simple, they were by no means basic.
Their skill of agriculture, hunting, and
creation of civil life amazed the
Europeans. The Columbian Exchange
was one of many thing that contributed
to the economic stability of the natives,

5. PEOPLES AND EMPIRES
• Major Empires: the Byzantine Empire, the
Catholic Church as Empire, the Spanish
Empire, British Empire, Napoleon's Empire,
and the European Colonial systems into the
20th Century.
• Pagden Begins with the first empire in
European history, and goes on to examine the
land-based empires of Rome and the
Hapsburgs that gave way to the empires of
England and the Netherlands. The author
makes much of the fact that these last two
commercial empires were founded to be
"empires of liberty," but derived much of their
wealth and power from the exploitation of slave
labor