1. “Big” History – The Rise and the Decline of the West Ferdnand Braudel – the French Annales School – seeing history within a larger spatial and temporal context. Historians need to explore the past at multiple scales, including the “longue duree,” or very large timescale. To fully understand the past, you had to see it at multiple scales

4. Difficulties in Understanding Distance and Time Scales Imagine flying in a modern passenger jet at roughly 550 mph. To cross the continental U.S. takes about 5 hours. To reach the moon would take 18 days. To reach the sun would take 20 years; to reach Jupiter would take about 82 years, and 750 years to reach Pluto. These are distances our minds can no longer grasp.

6. Time and Our Universe Universe about 13. 7 Billion Years Old 200 million years later – first stars 4.6 bya – creation of sun, solar system, and earth 3.5 bya – first life forms on earth 475 million years ago – first organisms on land 20 million years ago – first apes 200,000-300,000 years ago Homo sapiens evolves somewhere in Africa

7. Timeline Continued 30,000-40,000 years ago – Humans in Ice Age Siberia 13,000 years ago – clear evidence of humans in Americas 11,500 years ago – earliest evidence of agriculture 6,000 years ago – pastoralism 5,000 years ago – first cities and states in N.W. Africa and S. Mesopotamia

8. How did Everything Begin? -- Cosmology Traditional Creation Accounts -- Gilgamesh and Genesis – the act of a Creator. But how was the Creator created? The “Big Bang” – The Universe is Continually Expanding, Began some 13.7 Billion Years Ago, started dense, hot and smaller than an atom, and for a time expanded faster than the speed of light. Expansion then slowed, it began to cool and emerged as a primordial goo of energy, space and elementary particles. Hydrogen and Helium form 400,000 years later.

11. Quiz Due Monday, January 11 Civilizations Come and Civilizations Go. Drawing on Chapters 1 and 2 from Coffin and Stacey and the film “Mesopotamia: Return to Eden,” which ancient civilizations, in your opinion, were most significant to the emergence of the modern West as you currently understand it, and why?