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Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

- David Christian
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Author:
David Christian
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Learning
Energy
Revolution
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Our goal is to see Big History become a normal part of high school curricula. I'd love to see it being taught in lots of languages. A global course.

Big History studies the history of everything, offering a way of making sense of our world and our role within it.

I have this fantasy that in future negotiations over climate change - instead of going into that room and saying, 'I'm defending Chinese interests,' or 'I'm defending Australian interests' - there will also be an identity inside of each of the negotiators thinking, 'I'm also defending human interests.'

Unfortunately, historians have become so absorbed in detailed research that they have tended to neglect the job of building larger-scale maps of the past.

Every kid goes to school full of questions about meaning. You know, 'What's my place in the universe? What does it mean to be a human being? What are human beings?' Existing courses cannot help you answer those questions. They can't even help you ask them.

When very large stars die, they create temperatures so high that protons begin to fuse in all sorts of exotic combinations, to form all the elements of the periodic table. If, like me, you're wearing a gold ring, it was forged in a supernova explosion.

I think what I was after was a unifying story that could bring everything together, that could give me a sense of the whole of history.

Modern scientific knowledge appeared piecemeal. Historians wrote about human history; physicists tackled the material world; and biologists studied the world of living organisms. But there were few links between these disciplines, as researchers focused on getting the details right.

If historians don't tell stories at the scales of creation myths, someone else will.

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Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.