Books To Get You Thinking
The history of human civilization is a subject that holds endless fascination, inspiring a continuous search for answers to some of the most mystifying questions of existence - what are the origins of our earth and of life? How did the human species come into being and what were the physical forces and evolutionary events that have shaped the emergence of the world as we know it? Scholars and scientists have studied and researched such questions in depth and over the years we have gotten a clearer picture of how we reached where we are today. Knowing and understanding our past and where we came from helps us gain an appreciation for both our place in the universe and what the future might hold for us. This month we highlight some outstanding books on this subject offered by the Mercer County Library System:
Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David Christian
The author, David Christian, a professor at Australia’s Macquarie University, presents a cohesive history of humans - a fascinating narrative about the start of life on this planet and the evolution of the human species and their transition that has led to present day civilization. Weaving together insights and experiences from different disciplines, including astrophysics, archeology, behavioral economics and evolutionary biology, the author identifies eight different transition events - thresholds that have resulted in fundamental changes with increasing complexity at each stage. Goldilocks Conditions, defined by the author as the right mix of events happening at the exact right time, were the key triggers to each of these transition events. Thresholds 1, 2 and 3 cover the earliest creation of the universe, with the birth of stars and galaxies following the Big Bang over thirteen billion years ago. Simple chemical molecules orbiting young stars provided the ideal building blocks for planets, moons and asteroids in Threshold 4. About four billion years ago in Threshold 5, the beginnings of life began to take shape with the creation of the single cell and it was only a few hundred thousand years ago that, through the process of evolution, the human species came into being. Humankind’s ability to harness intelligence, accumulate knowledge, and pass it down to later generations has become the most powerful force of change on the planet today. The growth of the agrarian economy ushered in more complex societies with new trade routes interconnecting various parts of the globe. In the current threshold, identified as the Anthropocene epoch or the era of the humans, the development of energy sources from fossil fuels have resulted in unprecedented growth in technology and innovation, but were also accompanied by large income disparities with a few countries gaining advantage over others and the buildup of weapons of war. At the same time, fossil fuels that were stored in the earth from millions of years are now rapidly declining while rising levels of CO2 emissions are leading to environmental change and the extinction of many existing species. Today our destiny is closely linked with human actions over the next few decades and whether we can successfully collaborate to drive innovations and implement policies that positively impact the biosphere surrounding us.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Harari, an Israeli historian and professor, presents a sweeping history of the human species, extending from the days when early men were hunters and foragers to the twenty-first century. In this fascinating book, Harari seeks an answer to the big question of how humans gained command over other species on our planet. He identifies three transformative breakthroughs in the long march of time that redefined the dynamics of how humans lived and interacted. The first breakthrough came about 70,000 years ago with the Cognitive Revolution, a process where evolution over thousands of year caused the dramatic increase in the size of the human brain. Along with this came the capabilities to develop language and abstract concepts such as governance, nations, companies, property and religion. This in turn facilitated more complex tasks performed by larger groups of people tied together by common values and interests. The next dramatic transformation occurred ten thousand years ago, when over the course of the Agricultural Revolution man learned how to plant and grow grain and other crops as well as domesticate some animals. Now, in place of constantly moving in search of food, large settlements began to grow around fertile areas. Harari believes these changes also led to several negative consequences including the growth of social hierarchies where most of the hard labor began to be assigned to one group of people. A system of stories and myths espoused from birth led different groups of people to think in certain ways and behave in accordance with certain beliefs and instincts, giving rise to distinct cultures, legal arrangements and political structures. The third transformative change, the Scientific Revolution, happened five hundred years ago with our deep realization of how just much still remained in the realm of the unknown – the discovery of ignorance. Within a relatively short space of time, resources and time spent in education and scientific research have resulted in giant strides in diverse areas of medicine, engineering and technology with breakthroughs in genetic engineering and artificial intelligence raising important questions of what the future might hold for the human race. Harari expostulates that the ecological imbalances caused by human actions and reckless consumption may very well be “destroying the foundations of human prosperity.“
Guns Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
An expansive and seminal work, this book explores the evolution of civilization dating back to over ten thousand years ago. Jared Diamond, McArthur Fellow and Professor at UCLA, takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding human history – why did societies progress at such widely different rates in their social, economic and technological development? What determined the pattern of conquests and migration? The 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning book seeks an answer to these questions through decades of research in history, anthropology, archaeology, geology, linguistics and biology. Jared Diamond finds a direct link between the separate trajectories followed by communities living on different continents, with the geographical, environmental and physical characteristics of the land that they occupied. One of the most fertile belts in the world was located in Eurasia, particularly conducive to agricultural farming and the domestication of a variety of animals. This in turn led to larger settlements of people in Europe and parts of Asia and the development of food production and storage, specialization, division of labor, the use of metals, tools and weapons, as well as organized societies with a developed language, defined forms of governance, and religion. Proximity to large numbers of domesticated animals also resulted in the spread of transmissible disease, as well as gradual buildup of immunity against these germs. Communities in other parts of the world that were not so rich in natural resources and had no exposure to these domesticated animals lacked immunity to diseases prevalent in Europe at that time. They were easily overpowered by people from the more developed parts of Eurasia when they came ashore in quest of new land and riches. Jared Diamond provides several compelling case studies of conquests and migration that have shaped human history, one of the earliest instances of which was the routing of the vast Inca tribe by just a small group of Spaniards in the 1500s - the Inca were completely decimated, succumbing to the guns and the germs brought to their shores by the Spanish conquistadors and their horses and setting the stage for a new chapter in the history of civilization.
The author, David Christian, a professor at Australia’s Macquarie University, presents a cohesive history of humans - a fascinating narrative about the start of life on this planet and the evolution of the human species and their transition that has led to present day civilization. Weaving together insights and experiences from different disciplines, including astrophysics, archeology, behavioral economics and evolutionary biology, the author identifies eight different transition events - thresholds that have resulted in fundamental changes with increasing complexity at each stage. Goldilocks Conditions, defined by the author as the right mix of events happening at the exact right time, were the key triggers to each of these transition events. Thresholds 1, 2 and 3 cover the earliest creation of the universe, with the birth of stars and galaxies following the Big Bang over thirteen billion years ago. Simple chemical molecules orbiting young stars provided the ideal building blocks for planets, moons and asteroids in Threshold 4. About four billion years ago in Threshold 5, the beginnings of life began to take shape with the creation of the single cell and it was only a few hundred thousand years ago that, through the process of evolution, the human species came into being. Humankind’s ability to harness intelligence, accumulate knowledge, and pass it down to later generations has become the most powerful force of change on the planet today. The growth of the agrarian economy ushered in more complex societies with new trade routes interconnecting various parts of the globe. In the current threshold, identified as the Anthropocene epoch or the era of the humans, the development of energy sources from fossil fuels have resulted in unprecedented growth in technology and innovation, but were also accompanied by large income disparities with a few countries gaining advantage over others and the buildup of weapons of war. At the same time, fossil fuels that were stored in the earth from millions of years are now rapidly declining while rising levels of CO2 emissions are leading to environmental change and the extinction of many existing species. Today our destiny is closely linked with human actions over the next few decades and whether we can successfully collaborate to drive innovations and implement policies that positively impact the biosphere surrounding us.
Yuval Harari, an Israeli historian and professor, presents a sweeping history of the human species, extending from the days when early men were hunters and foragers to the twenty-first century. In this fascinating book, Harari seeks an answer to the big question of how humans gained command over other species on our planet. He identifies three transformative breakthroughs in the long march of time that redefined the dynamics of how humans lived and interacted. The first breakthrough came about 70,000 years ago with the Cognitive Revolution, a process where evolution over thousands of year caused the dramatic increase in the size of the human brain. Along with this came the capabilities to develop language and abstract concepts such as governance, nations, companies, property and religion. This in turn facilitated more complex tasks performed by larger groups of people tied together by common values and interests. The next dramatic transformation occurred ten thousand years ago, when over the course of the Agricultural Revolution man learned how to plant and grow grain and other crops as well as domesticate some animals. Now, in place of constantly moving in search of food, large settlements began to grow around fertile areas. Harari believes these changes also led to several negative consequences including the growth of social hierarchies where most of the hard labor began to be assigned to one group of people. A system of stories and myths espoused from birth led different groups of people to think in certain ways and behave in accordance with certain beliefs and instincts, giving rise to distinct cultures, legal arrangements and political structures. The third transformative change, the Scientific Revolution, happened five hundred years ago with our deep realization of how just much still remained in the realm of the unknown – the discovery of ignorance. Within a relatively short space of time, resources and time spent in education and scientific research have resulted in giant strides in diverse areas of medicine, engineering and technology with breakthroughs in genetic engineering and artificial intelligence raising important questions of what the future might hold for the human race. Harari expostulates that the ecological imbalances caused by human actions and reckless consumption may very well be “destroying the foundations of human prosperity.“
Guns Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
An expansive and seminal work, this book explores the evolution of civilization dating back to over ten thousand years ago. Jared Diamond, McArthur Fellow and Professor at UCLA, takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding human history – why did societies progress at such widely different rates in their social, economic and technological development? What determined the pattern of conquests and migration? The 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning book seeks an answer to these questions through decades of research in history, anthropology, archaeology, geology, linguistics and biology. Jared Diamond finds a direct link between the separate trajectories followed by communities living on different continents, with the geographical, environmental and physical characteristics of the land that they occupied. One of the most fertile belts in the world was located in Eurasia, particularly conducive to agricultural farming and the domestication of a variety of animals. This in turn led to larger settlements of people in Europe and parts of Asia and the development of food production and storage, specialization, division of labor, the use of metals, tools and weapons, as well as organized societies with a developed language, defined forms of governance, and religion. Proximity to large numbers of domesticated animals also resulted in the spread of transmissible disease, as well as gradual buildup of immunity against these germs. Communities in other parts of the world that were not so rich in natural resources and had no exposure to these domesticated animals lacked immunity to diseases prevalent in Europe at that time. They were easily overpowered by people from the more developed parts of Eurasia when they came ashore in quest of new land and riches. Jared Diamond provides several compelling case studies of conquests and migration that have shaped human history, one of the earliest instances of which was the routing of the vast Inca tribe by just a small group of Spaniards in the 1500s - the Inca were completely decimated, succumbing to the guns and the germs brought to their shores by the Spanish conquistadors and their horses and setting the stage for a new chapter in the history of civilization.
- Nita Mathur
Comments
Post a Comment