[MUSIC] The greatest creation in human history was what enabled humans to plunge into and to share their super abundant consciousness. [MUSIC] This new invention was language. [MUSIC] More simply, the symbol. [MUSIC] The symbols of language in art and mathematics opened up new depths of consciousness. Each human began to carry an entire universe within. This new form of consciousness, called symbolic consciousness, would soon change everything. [SOUND] A crucial step in the process of becoming human was learning to externalize consciousness. To represent in the physical world what we had experienced within. This is the archaeological museum on the island of Samos. Come and have a look. By creating marks on bone or on wet clay, humans invented a way to fix their knowledge into an enduring form outside of themselves. [MUSIC] The coding processes of life were bursting beyond the DNA molecule. So with human culture, experience itself can be remembered and passed down, for thousands of years. Not just successful mutation. Any valuable understanding. Even if experienced by a single human being, can become part of the enduring legacy. [MUSIC] Works of the mind and spirit flowed into Samos from every direction of the ancient world. From Athens and Mesopotamia, as well as Spain, Egypt, Persia. You know, in the early universe, concentrations of matter led to the emergence of galaxies. And something similar was going on here. In Samos, and other cities, we find a concentration of symbolic constructions. What does this mean really? It means that rare insights and deep feelings from around the planet. And from different eras of time, are all folded together here. Out of this powerful alchemical mix, human consciousness complexified into new forms. [MUSIC] Just think of it. For billions of years, rocks were just rocks. And then, in a geological instant, all over the planet. They began to appear with these scratches on them. Even more amazing, these little marks were organizing entire civilizations. With the appearance of the human, a coding process of life burst beyond the DNA molecule. And began carving its information into stone. [MUSIC] Symbols not only enabled humans to accumulate knowledge through millennia. They also offered a final and explosive possibility for human emergence. Symbols enabled humans to concentrate their consciousness upon consciousness. This was a development with magnificent and yet unexpected consequences. Like a magnifying glass focusing a sunlight upon a leaf. Symbols set fire to human possibility that is slumbered for a 100,000 years. [MUSIC] Look at this colossal form. It's almost 15 feet high. Now, imagine dozens of such statues. As the Greeks moved and lived among them their self-conceptions would be changed. They would begin to imagine that they were god like, capable of anything. Such systems we call in science self-amplifying loops. Consciousness, giving birth to symbols,which then magnify consciousness. In this way, humans were out simply evolving. They are consciously participating in giving birth to themselves and what was coming forth was a planet altering species. For this activity was taking place not simply here on the In the ancient island of Samos. But actually, throughout the planet, in every civilization. Super charge with confidence coming from the reverberations of such symbols. Human presence burst forth and altered the very face of the planet. Pyramids rose up from the African desert. [MUSIC] Ancient rivers were diverted. Land as large as the eye could see was watered by irrigation systems. [MUSIC] Even the forests scattered across the oceans in the form of sailing vessels. [MUSIC] For the first time in Earth's history, seeds were not subject to the vagaries of climate. But received their watery nourishment with the precision and inevitability of logical thought. Soon, even the inner order of the seeds was captured by the science of genetics. [MUSIC] What does it mean when even the seeds begin to live, not just in the earth, but in an earth shaped by human consciousness? [MUSIC] With their equations and their measurements, the early scientists discovered truths none of the classical scholars had known. In astronomy, chemistry, physiology. Humans began to understand the world with their numbers and patterns. [MUSIC] The defining characteristic of this new, modern form of consciousness was the decision to employ our science and technology to control nature for our own use. [MUSIC] The widespread conviction of the industrial world was, that nature was inferior to us. Such a world view in which only humans have sentient feelings. Allowed all of nature, to become nothing more than a resource, we could exploit in any way we wished. [MUSIC] Even Rene Descartes, the most significant philosopher of the modern age believed that when animals made crying sounds, they were not suffering. They were simply malfunctioning machines. [MUSIC] Humans were gaining control of Earth's processes and to what purpose? To create a better world. To eliminate hunger. To provide for our children. To have fun and to fulfil this dream and put forth all of our energies, all of our technologies and with stupendous results. In the blink of an eye, we exploded to 7 billion humans. [MUSIC] The irony of it all. Housing and feeding this many humans has already gutted our oceans and forests. We've ended up achieving something like the opposite of what we dreamt of. It's not just that we're using up all the energies of earth, it's much deeper than that. We're changing life's dynamics. And in an irreversible way. [MUSIC] We're just beginning to realize that over the last few decades we have profoundly altered the evolutionary dynamics of earth. The air, the climate, the rivers, the oceans, even the DNA. We live on a different planet now. A planet where not biology, but symbolic consciousness is the determining factor for evolution. This great reversal has taken place. In the far distant past, life drew from symbolic consciousness. But now symbolic consciousness has seized control of life. With our languages and our machines, we have become as powerful as the planet itself. Because of us, ice caps are melting [MUSIC] Because of us, coral reefs the size of mountains are bleaching white. [MUSIC] >> But nothing shows this disaster more clearly than life itself. Because of us, thousands of species are going extinct each year. [MUSIC] Nothing this devastating has taken place on earth since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. We are faced with a collective challenge no previous generation even contemplated. [MUSIC] Cynthia, welcome to the program. One of the questions that I'd love to ask you is how you and other historians have begun to periodize this immense sweep of time? You and David Christian I think really are the leaders of this field now, in big history. And you're calling it something like thresholds, right? >> Yes, that is the word we are using in the new textbook that we're writing. One of the real pioneers in figuring out the periodization is Fred Spear, who teaches big history in Amsterdam. And he wrote a wonderful book called The Structure of Big History that, pretty much, the rest of us are using, the way he laid it out there. So, we decided to use thresholds as the word for the turning points in big history. When you tell the whole story, it's just helpful to have chapters. So, looking at the whole story, of course, the first one is the Big Bang. The next one is the formation of stars and galaxies. The next one is the death of stars, the explosions that created all the elements. >> The supernovas. >> The supernovas, exactly. So that's three. And then the fourth is the formation of our star and our solar system and our planet. And then the emergence of life we call the fifth threshold. >> The first living cell and life? >> That's right, the first living cell. Now, we could have another threshold at the emergence of multicellular organisms, but we don't. We wait until the emergence of Homo sapiens to mark the next big threshold. And then once we get to Homo sapiens, then, of course, the rest of history goes pretty fast. The next threshold is the emergence of agriculture which very quickly develops into civilization in its technical sense of cities and big states. And then the last one is the burning of fossil fuel with the onset of the industrial revolution. >> So all that happens very quickly in relation to this big, big history. >> Exactly, so the pace is accelerating very fast and now everybody seems clear that we feel we're at another turning point. That the way we're living now is not sustainable so it's not going to last much longer. >> So is this one of the reasons why you're keen to tell the story? And when people see these large thresholds, and so on, and see our present moment there's a kind of a wake up call? >> Exactly, it seems clear that there's just no way we can solve our present crisis without understanding where we've come from and how evolution works. >> So, there's a real sense for you that telling the story has a sense of giving us a sense of our possible future, perhaps. Or how we may create a future in alignment with this large, large story. >> Exactly, and I'm glad you used the word alignment. For me, the story makes me feel aligned with reality. The story helps me understand how everything came to be the way it is, who I am, where I came from, how I got here, where we are in the story now and what the possibilities are for the future. So in that sense, it seems to me like a creation story for our time and that's the phrase that I've used. And David Christian has, he calls it the scientific creation story. It answers the same questions that creation stories always answer for their cultures. >> Exactly as you say, where we've come from, why we're here in a way, or that's the big question, and how we might navigate into the future. >> Exactly >> Fascinating, yeah, and maybe give us just a sense of certain parts of the human story. >> You know, 95% of human history was hunting and gathering, at least. Probably 99%, and that's something we've left out of our textbooks for so long. I guess we're not going to do it anymore. But that's the first place that we have to remember that almost all of our history, how we're biologically evolved, what we're made to do, is hunt and gather. So, the rest of human history is a very, very short piece of it. And the big turning point, of course, is agriculture, when we domesticate ourselves and settle down in one place. >> And when do you date that approximately? >> About 10,000 BP is the easiest way to round it off. >> Before the present >> Before the present. And the present is defined as 1950. I guess just so the date won't keep moving. [LAUGH] But, so, that's more like about 8000 BCE. And that coincided with a warming climate, which certainly was part of the necessary conditions for it. But then, all the fascinating question is, why would people settle down and start farming? And we've always described it in terms of progress. Well, of course, anybody would farm once they had the idea. [LAUGH] But now, historians are beginning to see that life was much easier under hunting and gathering for most people and that farming involves a lot more work. That people wouldn't really necessarily choose unless they had to. So now we're beginning to analyze the reasons why they had to do that. Stable food supply. >> Rising population, so there are not as many places to move to, a declining wild animal population, and a warming climate that made it possible. >> And they came to thee river valleys, right, for these early civilizations as they emerged. >> Right, although the first agriculture, apparently, was practiced in higher, cooler altitudes. But then as the climate dried, and heated up and dried, people were driven into the river valleys. >> So we've got Mesopotamia and the Nile, and the Indus Valley, the Chinese Yellow River. >> And then later, of course, in the Americas, there are not river valleys in the Central America and in the Andes. >> So these are the rise of these major civilizations, and again you'd date them from when? >> About 3500 BCE. And, of course, the really fascinating thing is that they arose independently as far as we can tell in at least five or six areas around the world. More or less simultaneously, although the Americans were a little later. >> And they required sophistication of organization and so on? >> Exactly, well then you get into what really defines a civilization. And certainly they're much denser populations. They're specialized occupations. They're much more complex organizations. They have tribute that's collected by force if necessary, that's one of their chief features. And they have much more energy flowing through the system than earlier. >> Material energy and trade and >> Right, but not only material energy, actually natural, I mean, energy, which includes food stuffs and trade and all of these, so that many of the big historians are seeing the defining pattern to big history as increasing complexity. And then complexity they're defining as the amount of energy that flows through mass or matter. And, plus, the number of combinations there are. So they're actually trying to measure this increasing complexity. >> Which is true for the whole universe system. >> Exactly. >> You're saying, we're seeing it especially as civilization emerges, too. >> So it's part of a bigger pattern. And then civilization, of course, produce these large city states that just kept getting larger and larger as they fought for resources. And so we call them empires and then there's this whole era of agrarian empires that are battling for resources, and increasing their trade and their complexity. >> Including the Roman Empire and the Chinese Empire that was in contact across the Silk Road, right? >> Exactly, so the Eurasian Zone got the most complex, because they had the most interaction, and all this flow of ideas and trade that was still separate from the American Zone. >> Right. >> And then, of course, there was the Pacific Zone, too. So that there were earlier, there were even hunting and gathering people, of course, still living their traditional lives, while this complex kind of civilization increased and increased until the two worlds finally came together. >> With the Colombian Explorations, as they call it. >> Exactly, the Colombian Exchange, I guess is what we call it now. Columbus landed over here and set off this whole exchange of food stuffs, tomatoes, corn. >> Potato's. >> Potato's, mustn't forget potato's, tobacco, and these food stuffs, not only went to Europe but went to China. So that they supported increases in populations in both places There was a big exchange of people, of course, not all of them voluntary. There was, of course, the slave trade from Africa. >> And the influence for native peoples of this exchange. >> Okay, and the other exchange was of diseases. And this, of course, is the big point that the people in the Americas didn't have domesticated animals. There just weren't the big animals on this continent that were domesticatible. So they weren't immune to the diseases that Afro-Eurasians had built up by their contact with animals. So when Eurasians came with animals the diseases wiped out a lot of the population in the Americas, and that was a very unfortunate result of the exchange. But this exchange greatly increased the wealth of Europe. They were situated on the Atlantic and they were able to make use of the new land to grow crops. They used slaves, of course, to produce wealth. And they used this wealth to invest in technological innovations, like the steam engine, which set off the industrial revolution and set off the burning of coal as energy, because England had burned all it's trees. They were just running out of trees which is why they had to result to coal. But this pushed us over a new threshold because it added so much new energy to the story. All this stored solar energy we're burning, that was stored 300,000 years ago, we are burning to create the civilization that we have today. >> So stored energy is now exploded into the atmosphere, the air, the seas and transforming our climate, our ecosystems radically. >> Exactly and that's our new understanding that really has only come in the last 10 or 15 years. Although scientists were beginning to see it already at least by 1970. But it's taken this long for the rest of us to assimilate this into our thinking and realize that we just very rapidly changing our whole ecosystem. >> So we're at this very critical threshold, aren't we? >> It looks like we are at another threshold. >> And can you tell us, will this story help us get across the threshold? >> Well, who knows? [LAUGH] We don't know. That's part of the excitement of being at this threshold. We're in a time of very rapid change. The planet is always changing. We kind of forget that, because unless we know the big story, then we know that this is the case. But this is a period of very rapid change, and we don't know how we'll get through it. Looking at the story we can say that humans have experienced these thresholds before and figured out ways to come through. And the ways that we figured out seemed to be our collective learning. Our ability to think symbolically and communicate. And invent new technologies. And pass them on to our children. So it's hopeful that we'll be able to do that again this time. >> That we might be able to think for as I'd say future generations for our children. So thinking into the future is what distinguishes us, so there's this possibility of >> So we better do it this time way into the future. [LAUGH] >> Indeed. [MUSIC]
