Maps of Time

Citation

Christian, D. (2004). Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. University of California Press. California World History Library. Foreword by William H. McNeill.

Chapter Summary

The book has an introduction and fifteen chapters, and the publisher describes it as an introduction to "Big History": an account that begins with the Big Bang and runs, without a break, to the present and to possible futures. The natural sciences and the human past are told in one narrative, drawing on cosmology, geology, archaeology, and population and environmental studies.

Introduction: A Modern Creation Myth?

The title frames what follows as a modern counterpart to the origin stories found in many traditions, here built from scientific knowledge. The publisher presents the book as a new way of looking at history from the beginning of time to the present day.

Chapters 1–3: The First 300,000 Years; Origins of the Galaxies and Stars; Origins and History of the Earth

The opening chapters deal with the cosmos before life. Chapter 1 is titled "The First 300,000 Years: Origins of the Universe, Time, and Space", and Chapter 2, "Origins of the Galaxies and Stars: The Beginnings of Complexity", adds the theme of complexity to the title itself. Chapter 3, "Origins and History of the Earth", brings the account to the planet. The publisher says the book moves through the stars and galaxies, the sun and the solar system, and the evolution of the planet before human habitation.

Chapters 4–5: The Origins of Life and the Theory of Evolution; The Evolution of Life and the Biosphere

Two chapters on life: its origins together with the theory of evolution, then the long history of living things and the biosphere. The publisher notes that the book looks at how the natural world interacts with the more recent arrivals in flora and fauna, human beings among them.

Chapters 6–7: The Evolution of Humans; The Beginnings of Human History

The scale shifts to the human species. Chapter 6 treats human evolution, and Chapter 7 the start of human history; the publisher describes the survey of human society as beginning in the Paleolithic era.

Chapters 8–9: Intensification and the Origins of Agriculture; From Power over Nature to Power over People: Cities, States, and Civilizations

Chapter 8 covers the transition to agriculture, described in its title as intensification. Chapter 9 follows the emergence of cities, states and civilizations; its subtitle suggests a shift from control of the natural world to control of other people.

Chapters 10–11: Long Trends in the Era of Agrarian Civilizations; Approaching Modernity

Chapter 10 looks at long-run patterns across agrarian civilizations, and Chapter 11 at the approach to the modern world.

Chapters 12–13: Globalization, Commercialization, and Innovation; Birth of the Modern World

These chapters cover the processes of globalization, commercialization and innovation, and then the birth of the modern world itself. The publisher's description includes the "birth of the modern, industrial period" in this stretch of the story.

Chapters 14–15: The Great Acceleration of the Twentieth Century; Futures

The last two chapters treat the twentieth century as an era of acceleration and then look ahead. The publisher refers to "intimations of possible futures" and to global warming among the prospects discussed.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Chapters 1–5: Origins and Complexity

• Big History: the publisher's name for an emerging field that tells the history of the universe, the Earth, life and humans as one story.
• Beginnings of complexity: the theme named in the title of Chapter 2, which links the formation of galaxies and stars to the rest of the book.
• Evolution and the biosphere: the subjects of Chapters 4 and 5, which place human beings within the history of living things.

Chapters 6–11: Humans and Agrarian Civilizations

• Human evolution: Chapter 6's account of how the species emerged.
• Agricultural intensification: the title of Chapter 8, which treats the origins of agriculture as a process of intensification.
• Cities, states and civilizations: Chapter 9's account of the move from power over nature to power over people.
• Agrarian civilizations: the era whose long trends are the subject of Chapter 10.

Chapters 12–15: The Modern World and Futures

• Globalization, commercialization and innovation: the three processes grouped in the title of Chapter 12.
• The Great Acceleration: the title's term for the twentieth century in Chapter 14.
• Futures: the title of the final chapter, which treats the prospects the publisher associates with global warming.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A single narrative across disciplines. The publisher describes the book as drawing on cosmology, geology, archaeology, and population and environmental studies. Reviewers quoted by the publisher stress that synthesis: Books & Culture called it "a work of breathtaking synthesis", and The Age said it "forges bold and ingenious connections between the physical and social sciences".
• Readable prose. The reviews quoted by the publisher repeatedly single out the writing: New Scientist judged that it first stimulates and then retains the reader's interest, the Journal of Interdisciplinary History praised its clarity of style and modesty, and Future Survey called it ambitious and clearly written.
• A deliberate argument about the frame of history. The Times, in a review quoted by the publisher, described it as a "brilliantly executed act of provocation", and the Journal of World History remarked that no brief review could do justice to the work. The book is useful for seeing what changes when the usual starting point of written records is replaced with the origin of the universe.
• Clear chapter structure. The fifteen chapters follow a continuous order, from the universe to the Earth, life, humans, agriculture, cities and states, the modern world and the future, so a reader can find the part of the story that matters to a course.

Limitations

• Length and breadth. The book runs to roughly 640 to 670 pages, depending on the printing, and only some of that space belongs to the human past. Chapters 1–5 deal with the universe, the Earth and life; the human story begins with Chapter 6, and four chapters (11–14) cover the approach to modernity and the modern world. A course that wants a conventional, region-by-region world history textbook will need another book alongside it.
• A framework more than a survey. The chapter titles follow processes and eras (agriculture, agrarian civilizations, globalization, acceleration) rather than regions or societies. Readers who need sustained coverage of particular parts of the world will have to get it from other reading.
• Scientific material as well as history. The publisher stresses the sciences at the start of the narrative, so readers trained only in history will meet cosmology, geology and evolutionary theory. The book offers a single author's synthesis of these fields, so questions in any one of them lead to specialist literature.
• Edition and date. The book was first published in 2004. The publisher now lists a second edition, a paperback of October 2011, and Google Books describes the 2011 volume as a revised reprint. A book first written in 2004 may not reflect the most recent decades, so the final chapters on the twentieth century and on futures are best supplemented with current sources.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the world and global history course list, Maps of Time is the unusual book: it does not start from written records but from the origin of the universe, and it is best read as a framing text rather than a standard survey. The conventional world history textbooks in the list, such as Strayer and Nelson's Ways of the World, Bentley, Ziegler and Streets Salter's Traditions & Encounters, Tignor and colleagues' Worlds Together, Worlds Apart and Bulliet and colleagues' The Earth and Its Peoples, are surveys of human societies across regions, and they are the better choice for regional and chronological detail. Christian's book can be read before or beside one of them to supply a long time frame and an environmental context.

Sebastian Conrad's What Is Global History? is a short introduction to global history as an approach, and a reader who finishes Christian and wants to know how historians describe that approach can turn to it next. Jürgen Osterhammel's The Transformation of the World shows how a global history can be organised by themes within a single century, a much narrower scale than Christian's.

How to Use This Book

The book is written for undergraduates and general readers; the publisher states no prerequisite. It suits a first world history course that wants a wide frame, a course on big history or environmental history, and a reader who wants to see how the history of humans fits into the history of the Earth.

A practical plan:

• Start with the introduction and the first chapter to see how the author frames the project as a modern creation story.
• Core for a history course: Chapters 6 to 15, which move from human evolution to agriculture, cities and states, agrarian civilizations, the modern world and the future.
• Optional for a history course: Chapters 1–5, which can be read more quickly by students who have the science background, or read slowly by those who do not.
• Alongside it, keep a standard world history textbook open for names, dates and regions, and compare what each book treats as a turning point.

Because the publisher presents the book as the start of a field, it works best when read with questions in mind: where the scale changes, what kind of evidence is used at each stage, and which human experiences become hard to see at such a large scale.