Human Civilization

Charles Eisenstein explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self. He argues that our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of science, religion, money, technology, economics, medicine, and education as we know them. It has fired our near-pathological pursuit of technological Utopias even as we push ourselves and our planet to the brink of collapse.

The rise to global predominance of Western civilization is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five hundred years. All over the world, an astonishing proportion of people now work for Western-style companies, study at Western-style universities, vote for Western-style governments, take Western medicines, wear Western clothes, and even work Western hours. Yet six hundred years ago the petty kingdoms of Western Europe seemed unlikely to achieve much more than perpetual internecine warfare. It was Ming China or Ottoman Turkey that had the look of world civilizations.

If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It's a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest.

The story of human civilization can be read most deeply in the materials we have found or created, used or abused. They have dictated how we build, eat, communicate, wage war, create art, travel, and worship. Some, such as stone, iron, and bronze, lend their names to the ages. Others, such as gold, silver, and diamond, contributed to the rise and fall of great empires.

Freydis is the leader of a band of Viking warriors who get as far as Panama. Nobody knows what became of them. Five hundred years later, Christopher Columbus is sailing for the Americas, dreaming of gold and conquest. Even after he is captured by the Tainos, his faith in his superiority and his mission is unshaken. Thirty-nine years after that, Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, arrives in Europe.

"Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization" by John G. Jackson is a seminal work that challenges traditional Eurocentric perspectives on the origins of civilization. Originally published in 1939, Jackson's book seeks to highlight the significant contributions of African civilizations, particularly Ethiopia, to the development of human culture and civilization.

Historians and economists commonly cite natural disasters and foreign invasions to explain cultural collapses. The problem is, human families have been suffering and overcoming disasters for thousands of years. Humans cover most of the earth; they have learned to live on polar ice and in arid deserts. They have adapted to tropical islands and rain forests. Humans live literally everywhere. And wherever humans wander, they create cultures and civilizations. Civilizations fall apart when human economies and cultures collapse. The question is--what forces, over long, long time periods, divide ...

In A Human History of Emotion, Richard Firth-Godbehere takes listeners on a fascinating and wide ranging tour of the central and often under-appreciated role emotions have played in human societies around the world and throughout history — from Ancient Greece to Gambia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, the United States, and beyond.

Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories - to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable.

Con una revolución comenzó el universo, con otra abrimos los ojos de la consciencia y comenzó nuestra historia. Aprendimos a pensar, a producir, a luchar por el poder, a venerar dioses, a surcar los mares, a descifrar el firmamento, a transformar el mundo, a viajar por el espacio.

In this newly revised and expanded edition, updated throughout with recent developments, geologist Robert Schoch builds upon his revolutionary theory that the origins of the Sphinx date back much further than 2500 BCE and examines scientific evidence of the catastrophe that destroyed early high culture nearly 12,000 years ago. Weaving together a new view of the origins and antiquity of civilization and the dynamics of the planet we live on, Schoch maintains we must heed the megalithic warning of the past and collectively prepare for future events.

Are you interested in the history of one of the most isolated kingdoms on Earth? Then this audiobook is for you! When most people hear the phrase “ancient Hawaii”, it brings up a certain air of mystery and intrigue. Some might think of tattooed tribesmen sailing across the vast emptiness of the Pacific Ocean under the moonlight, dancing around campfires to connect with their gods, or living on the sides of volcanos. But is this an accurate depiction? Or is there more to the early people of Hawaii?

Are we alone? The answer, according to Mark Gober’s An End to Upside Down Contact, is a resounding NO. Humans exist among a variety of advanced species, sometimes identified as aliens, spirits, beings of light, and beyond. In fact, our civilization seems to be regularly influenced by such nonhuman intelligences, even if we’re not always aware of it. This isn’t just some “fringe” phenomenon, either. We seem to exist within a multispecies, multidimensional battle between Good and Evil, and our future as a civilization is at stake.

Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian Stefanos Geroulanos demonstrates how claims about the earliest humans not only shaped Western intellectual culture, but gave rise to our modern world.

A giant of archaeology, Colin Renfrew has immeasurably improved our understanding of human history. In this passionately argued work, he offers a concise summary of prehistory - human existence that predates the development of written records - while challenging the very definition of prehistory itself.

We are a wonder of evolution. Powerful yet dextrous, instinctive yet thoughtful, we are expert communicators and innovators. Our exceptional abilities have created the civilisation we know today. But we're also deeply flawed. Our bodies break, choke and fail, whether we're kings or peasants. Diseases thwart our boldest plans. Our psychological biases have been at the root of terrible decisions in both war and peacetime. This extraordinary contradiction is the essence of what it means to be human - the sum total of our frailties and our faculties.

In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency”, V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left 100 years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past.

Embark on an epic journey through the annals of time with The Entire Human Civilization History - Ancient to Modern. This meticulously crafted narrative weaves together the rich tapestry of human existence, from the turbulent days of the French Revolution to the awe-inspiring moment when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

Human history mirrors the history of climate change. Human origins, for example, can be traced to five million years ago when the climate of East Africa became progressively hotter and drier. This caused the lush tropical jungles to disappear and be replaced by arid plains and savannahs. Our pre-human ancestors learned to exploit those new ecosystems by gathering the seed-bearing grasses, nuts, and tubers that thrived in these semi-arid conditions. Also, by foraging in the heat of the day, proto-humans could minimize unwelcome contact with nocturnal predators.

In his stunning new book, Marriage and Civilization,author William Tucker looks at the evidence from biology, evolution, anthropology, history, and culture to come to a remarkable conclusion: it was the monogamous pairing of male and female - unusual among mammals - that led to human evolution.