Well, today is the first day I have EVER blogged, and the beginning of
what looks to be an interesting class on world history. I will be covering my thoughts
of what I am reading in the required text, Ways of the World by Robert W. Strayer.
The first reading assignment started with the Prologue of the required text. As I was reading it I was reminded of the lecture we had on Wednesday night. Starting with the cosmic history seems somehow out of place for a history class, but as I read on and it connected the time line from creation of the world to human progression I got the reason for it. The text discusses this idea of the "big history" or the "history of everything" as being a new way of explaining things which only started a few decades ago.
Much like the lecture in class the book uses a "cosmic calendar" to help people wrap their heads around the secession of the earths time line. As one student in class mentioned it appears to be a way to dumb down the earths time line. I will have to agree with that analogy because as I was sitting and reading the cosmic calendar snapshot in the book I was slightly irritated by it for that reason and thought it unnecessary.
While reading Part One, Beginnings in History, I was really taken aback by the Paleolithic time line. In the section The Globalization of Humankind Robert Strayer states "Lasting until roughly 11,000 years ago, the Paleolithic era represents over 95 percent of the time that human beings have inhabited the earth." What an amazing fact. It really makes you realize what a small faction of time we are actually living in.
