A writing project on hold for the time being - it is about big history.
Here are some thoughts.
Big history fascinates people more than ever. For over a decade I have been tracking a growing number of books, news items, TV and movie documentaries that take a broad view of human history. They stand back from our contemporary condition and ask questions like - How have we come to be where we are today? What are the forces that drive human history? What is our human nature?
After 9/11 and in an era of global cultural interconnection questions such as these seem all the more pressing. Are we in a new historical epoch? We need to understand the changes that touch us so intimately.
The likes of Jared Diamond, Robert Wright, Daniel Dennett and Spencer Wells have tackled these questions with great insight. But big history depends upon archaeology because archaeological remains are all that is left of most of the human past. And archaeologists have been silent in this analysis and debate about the big picture - so far. They need to be heard because the archaeological picture of history has changed radically over the last forty years. Quite simply, all the old components of the long term history of humanity have been challenged and found wanting. The big archaeological picture of human history is nothing like what it was. This will radically change the answers we give to those questions of how we got to be where we are now.
My project is to bring this new picture together.
A key question in the new big history is - What has brought us to where we are today? A fascination of big history is the question of origins. So the focus of my work is the questions of origin that have been the heart of our understanding of human history for over two centuries
- What are the origins of biologically modern humans, our species homo sapiens?
- What are the origins of agriculture, the break with hunter-gatherer societies?
- What are the origins of civilization and city life?
- What are the origins of the modern industrial world?
I think that the archaeological answers to these questions will surprise many people.
