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The Big History of Civilizations
The history of human civilization is an astonishing story of migration, innovation, and social development. Now, the exciting new field of "big history" allows us to explore human civilizations in ways unavailable to historians of previous generations. Big history scholars take a multidisciplinary approach to study great spans of time, unlocking important themes, trends, and developments across time and space.
Unlike a traditional survey of history - with its focus on dates and events, kings and battles - The Big History of Civilizations is your chance to apply this cutting-edge historical approach to the epic story of humanity around the world. Taught by acclaimed Professor Craig G. Benjamin of Grand Valley State University, these 36 sweeping lectures trace the story of human civilizations from our emergence as a species, through the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and into the future.
It only takes a few minutes of one lecture for you to discover that Big History is an amazing approach to history. Its grand vision will give you powerful new insights into human civilization, and it offers a profound analysis of some of our biggest What makes us human? Where did we come from? And where are we going? There may be no easy answers, but Professor Benjamin takes you on a powerful journey to the limits of our understanding.
What differentiates big history from any other field is the way it combines divergent fields, from archaeology and anthropology to ecology and philosophy, and ties them together, allowing you to see patterns of our past, present - and even future. From the just-right "Goldilocks factors" that allow civilizations to emerge to different ways civilizations have emerged across time and around the word, this riveting approach to history offers a multidisciplinary toolkit to tell the story about what makes us human.
Unlike a traditional survey of history - with its focus on dates and events, kings and battles - The Big History of Civilizations is your chance to apply this cutting-edge historical approach to the epic story of humanity around the world. Taught by acclaimed Professor Craig G. Benjamin of Grand Valley State University, these 36 sweeping lectures trace the story of human civilizations from our emergence as a species, through the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and into the future.
It only takes a few minutes of one lecture for you to discover that Big History is an amazing approach to history. Its grand vision will give you powerful new insights into human civilization, and it offers a profound analysis of some of our biggest What makes us human? Where did we come from? And where are we going? There may be no easy answers, but Professor Benjamin takes you on a powerful journey to the limits of our understanding.
What differentiates big history from any other field is the way it combines divergent fields, from archaeology and anthropology to ecology and philosophy, and ties them together, allowing you to see patterns of our past, present - and even future. From the just-right "Goldilocks factors" that allow civilizations to emerge to different ways civilizations have emerged across time and around the word, this riveting approach to history offers a multidisciplinary toolkit to tell the story about what makes us human.
18 pages, Audible Audio
First published December 9, 2016
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136 people want to read
About the author
Craig G. Benjamin
13 books18 followersCraig G. Benjamin is Professor of History at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. He is the author of several books and numerous chapters and articles on ancient history.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
September 21, 2020
There’s no easy way to explain all of humanity’s history easily while considering diverse civilizations across space and time and striving for some coherence. This course does as good as anyone but with one quirk that bothered me.
The professor ultimately falls into an Arnold J. Toynbee trap by thinking that the arc of human history progressively tends towards perfection until moral decay and self-absorption within a civilization inevitably leads to destruction and irrelevance from catastrophic externalities (e.g. earthquakes, floods, climate change, …) or catastrophic internalities (decadence through richness, idleness, or arrogance, moral corruption, and so on) and they both at times erroneously believe that civilizations exist within a vacuum as independent entities separate from the rest of the world except for accidental juxtapositions that pop up through trade, commerce, war and mutual antagonisms, and this professor as well as Toynbee forgets that no civilization arises out of a vacuum complete and separate from the world. (It is said that Toynbee wrote more words on one subject in English than anyone else ever has. I don’t recommend reading him in the unabridged (I’ve tried), but the authorized abridged version is worthwhile in as much as it will show the full extent of his craziness).
Nobody reads or follows Arnold J. Toynbee today for a reason. He is an anachronism and is chiefly feted by the likes of Conservapedia (the ‘conservative alternative’ to Wikipedia, or in other words, conservatives can’t handle the truth and must create their own world system outside of reality in order to justify their bizarreness. Toynbee, the conservative, was feted by the Nazi’s for a reason), or is embraced by neo-Nazis today because they understand the connection between conservatism and fascism. The author does point out that Asimov’s Foundation Series is modeled on Toynbee, but one could just as easily say it was based on Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Asimov did say that he modeled it on Gibbon, btw).
Even before this professor summarized his lectures by invoking Arnold J. Toynbee, I was bothered by the lecturer’s obvious influence he owed to Toynbee’s ‘A Study of History’. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think this professor does a fairly good job overall explaining an incredibly deep and complex history of the world through its civilizations, but I just think that Toynbee’s cyclic lives of civilization approach is the wrong one (for example, what year did the Roman Empire end? One could answer that with a thousand different dates and be right with all of them). Note, that the professor also quoted from Arnold Toynbee from 1888 popularizing the phrase ‘the industrial revolution’. That threw me because the timeline was wrong from the Toynbee I knew. It turned out, that quote is from another Arnold Toynbee and he is not the same person who wrote A study of History. The lecturer never tells the listener that they are different people.
One small note, I found it weird that the Lecturer took at face value Marco Polo’s claims as real. All one has to do is read The Travels of Marco Polo to realize that they are mostly fictional and are definitely not first-hand observations as Polo claimed.
All history is fun. Big history nicely presented is fun even if the author at times channels Arnold J. Toynbee more than I would.
The professor ultimately falls into an Arnold J. Toynbee trap by thinking that the arc of human history progressively tends towards perfection until moral decay and self-absorption within a civilization inevitably leads to destruction and irrelevance from catastrophic externalities (e.g. earthquakes, floods, climate change, …) or catastrophic internalities (decadence through richness, idleness, or arrogance, moral corruption, and so on) and they both at times erroneously believe that civilizations exist within a vacuum as independent entities separate from the rest of the world except for accidental juxtapositions that pop up through trade, commerce, war and mutual antagonisms, and this professor as well as Toynbee forgets that no civilization arises out of a vacuum complete and separate from the world. (It is said that Toynbee wrote more words on one subject in English than anyone else ever has. I don’t recommend reading him in the unabridged (I’ve tried), but the authorized abridged version is worthwhile in as much as it will show the full extent of his craziness).
Nobody reads or follows Arnold J. Toynbee today for a reason. He is an anachronism and is chiefly feted by the likes of Conservapedia (the ‘conservative alternative’ to Wikipedia, or in other words, conservatives can’t handle the truth and must create their own world system outside of reality in order to justify their bizarreness. Toynbee, the conservative, was feted by the Nazi’s for a reason), or is embraced by neo-Nazis today because they understand the connection between conservatism and fascism. The author does point out that Asimov’s Foundation Series is modeled on Toynbee, but one could just as easily say it was based on Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Asimov did say that he modeled it on Gibbon, btw).
Even before this professor summarized his lectures by invoking Arnold J. Toynbee, I was bothered by the lecturer’s obvious influence he owed to Toynbee’s ‘A Study of History’. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think this professor does a fairly good job overall explaining an incredibly deep and complex history of the world through its civilizations, but I just think that Toynbee’s cyclic lives of civilization approach is the wrong one (for example, what year did the Roman Empire end? One could answer that with a thousand different dates and be right with all of them). Note, that the professor also quoted from Arnold Toynbee from 1888 popularizing the phrase ‘the industrial revolution’. That threw me because the timeline was wrong from the Toynbee I knew. It turned out, that quote is from another Arnold Toynbee and he is not the same person who wrote A study of History. The lecturer never tells the listener that they are different people.
One small note, I found it weird that the Lecturer took at face value Marco Polo’s claims as real. All one has to do is read The Travels of Marco Polo to realize that they are mostly fictional and are definitely not first-hand observations as Polo claimed.
All history is fun. Big history nicely presented is fun even if the author at times channels Arnold J. Toynbee more than I would.
October 3, 2017
An enjoyable enough lecture series, but I've listened to better. After an engaging start, it fell into this trap of just summarizing the history of regions, but only at a very cursory level and paying way too much attention to the Ancient Greeks, without adding any really new or interesting insights, at least relative to my own prior studies. This felt really disappointing since the first lecture or two had suggested that the series would integrate history with big picture perspectives on geology and natural processes and how those shaped human society, but instead there is a cursory retelling of a section of history that is always given more attention than in really deserves. There is also the weirdness of using the term Afro-Eurasia. It is not a bad term on its own, and better reflects the geographic reality of the lands and the potential for interconnection, but for much of the middle part of the series the lecturer effectively ignores the Afro part and only discusses Eurasian history, and the use of this slightly uncommon term merely serves to highlight this lack. And it also gives rise to the weirdness of "western Afro-Eurasia". By rights that should be Europe and/or western Africa, but it really refers to the area that is usually called the Middle East in modern times, or as Western Asia for a more neutral historical context. When you consider all of Afro-Eurasia, it is probably closer to the geographic center and the term feels weird, like an attempt to be more inclusive that didn't fully consider the implications of its terminology.
However, the lectures improve towards the later third or so, when the focus moves to other regions. We finally get some African history, and also histories of the Americas, Australia, and the Pacific. Not as much attention as I would like since I find the history of these regions more interesting than that of Europe (and to a lesser extent Asia) which is already well-trod and overly represented in default casual historical understanding in our culture. Though back on Eurasia, I do appreciate that the lecturer argues that the Mongols were strongly responsible for the eventual global dominance of Europe, an insight I had gained from other works but have not previously seen argued. The argument made here focuses on the positive impact, that the period of Mongol rule helped to transfer ideas and technology to Europe, but I think the negative impact is also important, namely that the Mongols crushed the societies that might otherwise have advanced to world powers before Europe, China and the Islamic states.
However, the lectures improve towards the later third or so, when the focus moves to other regions. We finally get some African history, and also histories of the Americas, Australia, and the Pacific. Not as much attention as I would like since I find the history of these regions more interesting than that of Europe (and to a lesser extent Asia) which is already well-trod and overly represented in default casual historical understanding in our culture. Though back on Eurasia, I do appreciate that the lecturer argues that the Mongols were strongly responsible for the eventual global dominance of Europe, an insight I had gained from other works but have not previously seen argued. The argument made here focuses on the positive impact, that the period of Mongol rule helped to transfer ideas and technology to Europe, but I think the negative impact is also important, namely that the Mongols crushed the societies that might otherwise have advanced to world powers before Europe, China and the Islamic states.
September 22, 2022
One of the worst Great Courses I've listened through. The premise of "big history" is fine enough, and follows in the footsteps of people like Jared Diamond (who is also referred to in the course); analysing history through a wide lens that also includes macro trends in climate and ecological realities such as what plants and animals are available where. Unfortunately 90% of this course isn't about that, but rather a speedrun of poorly articulated world history. If you're even remotely familiar with some eras like the ancient greeks or romans, you'll start to notice he's issuing incredibly misleading if not outright false summaries of centuries just to get through it. He also returns to Malthus and malthusian cycles over and over, instead of widening the perspective with other big history trends and interpretations.
Don't waste your time. Read Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel instead, and then a better world history overview.
Don't waste your time. Read Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel instead, and then a better world history overview.
November 10, 2020
This is a good course for World History but I'm not sure whether Benjamin does justice to the "Big History" part. The course is structured such that the knowledge of major historical events is a pre-requisite. So I expected Benjamin to focus on Big History analyses but sadly, he spent most of the time on the narration of world history, interspersed with comments on Big History themes like those damn Goldilocks conditions. (It got me so riled up that I downgraded the rating from 4 to 3 while writing this).
I feel this was a lost opportunity and a comprehensive comparative approach along systems analysis standpoints would have made more sense. For eg. Benjamin identified several key historical events as emblematic of the Malthusian trap. However, he focused only on food shortage rather than abstracting the problem to one of limited resources.
I feel this was a lost opportunity and a comprehensive comparative approach along systems analysis standpoints would have made more sense. For eg. Benjamin identified several key historical events as emblematic of the Malthusian trap. However, he focused only on food shortage rather than abstracting the problem to one of limited resources.
December 23, 2022
Excellent, easily the best (and many have been fantastic) of the great courses I have listened to. Highly recommend
December 4, 2017
Super fascinating walk through human history based on the Big History concept of "thresholds" - specific moments in history that allowed for entirely new ways of thinking/being/living (see David Christian's Big History TED talk for a much better definition). While Big History focuses on everything since the Big Bang, this series of lectures focuses on the Big History threshold of "collective learning" - AKA the emergence of humans.
Thus, instead of learning just a timeline of civilizations, empires, wars, and leaders, these lectures discuss such events but through the lens of thresholds of civilization - events and inventions that totally reorganized the human way of life, including cities, agriculture, commerce, industrialization, etc. Definitely will need to listen to this one again as it is quite comprehensive and detail rich, but it does give a good overview of the "big picture" of how civilization has evolved and the key thresholds that have driven that evolution.
While the history was fascinating - if you're interested in history - I think my favorite parts of this lecture series were the last few chapters discussing predictions for future history - what new thresholds will emerge? Or will the current issues faced by modern day civilizations send us down a "backwards" spiral, or "unraveling" into a new dark age? I really appreciated the interdisciplinary approach of this part, integrating bits of environmental and social sciences, with reference to relevant predictions from some of our most creative science fiction thinkers. Delicious food for thought!
Thus, instead of learning just a timeline of civilizations, empires, wars, and leaders, these lectures discuss such events but through the lens of thresholds of civilization - events and inventions that totally reorganized the human way of life, including cities, agriculture, commerce, industrialization, etc. Definitely will need to listen to this one again as it is quite comprehensive and detail rich, but it does give a good overview of the "big picture" of how civilization has evolved and the key thresholds that have driven that evolution.
While the history was fascinating - if you're interested in history - I think my favorite parts of this lecture series were the last few chapters discussing predictions for future history - what new thresholds will emerge? Or will the current issues faced by modern day civilizations send us down a "backwards" spiral, or "unraveling" into a new dark age? I really appreciated the interdisciplinary approach of this part, integrating bits of environmental and social sciences, with reference to relevant predictions from some of our most creative science fiction thinkers. Delicious food for thought!
March 22, 2017
The course could have been better titled as history of big civilizations!
Big History is one of those fad words - massively impressive and poorly defined. As such, Big History is to provide a continuous narrative from the big bang to now, by chaining the walk through cosmological, biological and then cognitive or human evolution. This course unapologetically skips the first two, which is hinted in the title. However, its journey through the third path too is more classical history than "big history".
To be fair, Prof Benjamin avoids discussions of almost any individuals and/or political rivalries/battles that tend to dominate classical history books. He uses environmental and archaeological sciences in particular to develop some of the constructs. Most importantly, he even offers forecasts for the aeons ahead towards the end - something classical historians would never do.
Yet, for most part, the lecture series is nothing but the most basic and quick summary of the world's largest civilizations and their biggest traits. There is certainly some utility for listeners that have never come across some of these eras that have shaped our history. The pace is likely to prove too quick where one is completely uninitiated and too superficial where one has almost any prior knowledge.
There must be some far better ways of studying Anthropocene evolution to understand how we got to where we have got to without chronologically tick marking every supposedly large development.
Big History is one of those fad words - massively impressive and poorly defined. As such, Big History is to provide a continuous narrative from the big bang to now, by chaining the walk through cosmological, biological and then cognitive or human evolution. This course unapologetically skips the first two, which is hinted in the title. However, its journey through the third path too is more classical history than "big history".
To be fair, Prof Benjamin avoids discussions of almost any individuals and/or political rivalries/battles that tend to dominate classical history books. He uses environmental and archaeological sciences in particular to develop some of the constructs. Most importantly, he even offers forecasts for the aeons ahead towards the end - something classical historians would never do.
Yet, for most part, the lecture series is nothing but the most basic and quick summary of the world's largest civilizations and their biggest traits. There is certainly some utility for listeners that have never come across some of these eras that have shaped our history. The pace is likely to prove too quick where one is completely uninitiated and too superficial where one has almost any prior knowledge.
There must be some far better ways of studying Anthropocene evolution to understand how we got to where we have got to without chronologically tick marking every supposedly large development.
August 19, 2019
This was generally a good course. I learned some interesting facts about the rise of civilizations around the world. I think the professor got a few things wrong (human paleontology keeps changing so it's understandable these facts will become obsolete over time). I enjoyed the big history overview. This professor was great at keeping all parts of the world in perspective, instead of focusing on only certain regions. The modern history sections were brief and to the point (since most of us listening know these facts already). He got a bit political in the last two lectures, but that's understandable (it's his course). Overall a good course for anyone looking for a general course on the rise of human civilization.
February 20, 2021
This is quite ambitious but I do like the approach of trying to cover everything at once. I think the ancient history is the most interesting and probably works best with the sweeping narrative as it's easier to make large scale observations over pre-historical events. It gets a bit more frenetic as it gets closer to modern history but it's a welcome change to spend less time on recent history (I find most world histories tend to slow down as more information/evidence is available the closer to the present we get).
The stages of civilization are well defined throughout and general trends are highlighted. A good overview.
The stages of civilization are well defined throughout and general trends are highlighted. A good overview.
February 1, 2023
The Big History of Civilizations by Craig Benjamin is a perfectly okay survey of world history. It is a little preachy at times, and there are the occasional "not quite right" moments for some of the individual historical events, but this is a fine, truncated introduction to global history. I've read, listened to, and watched quite a lot of these things before, so I didn't notice anything new here. Might be useful for others, particularly those just starting out in history, or who haven't had a big picture overview yet.
It would probably be perfect for a year 1 undergrad lecture class.
It would probably be perfect for a year 1 undergrad lecture class.
March 4, 2018
Decent course, but it bites off a bit more than it can chew with the material it chose to cover.
When covering such a large amount of ground, this course has a tendency to lose the reader by barraging names, dates and facts, and not enough time contextualizing individual civilizations to the macro picture.
Superfluous last lecture with wild speculation about future civilizations.
When covering such a large amount of ground, this course has a tendency to lose the reader by barraging names, dates and facts, and not enough time contextualizing individual civilizations to the macro picture.
Superfluous last lecture with wild speculation about future civilizations.
March 18, 2018
An interesting take on viewing history. Not sure I understand exactly what Big History is - but I found that this book flowed pretty well, there was a lot of information inside and I enjoyed listening to all my favourite parts of history - one after the other.
September 11, 2017
This is one of those books that transforms your perspective forever. I am so glad I read it!!!
July 30, 2018
I wasn't sure what I was going to think about this -- big history is often too broad for me. But it was great! I learned a ton.
May 12, 2019
A big overview of civilization worldwide. it is very comprehensive and presents the big picture of our past as a global community.
October 7, 2020
An interesting broad brushstroke overview of mankind and our development as a civilized people from the cradle of Africa to the frontiers of space.
December 9, 2020
I thought this was an excellent and interesting overview of civilization and I particularly liked how the author used the analysis project into the future.
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September 7, 2021Unfinished, not rated. Good topic, fine delivery, just ran out of time.
March 6, 2022
A very interesting global approach to looking at how we developed as a civilization on this planet. I like the way Craig Benjamin ties it all together.
February 8, 2023
Very good overview of the grand big picture of human history. Learn some large scale civilizations that I had never even heard of. Good for layman such as myself.
June 10, 2019
Craig Benjamin's "big history" is an interdisciplinary overview of the history of human societies (as opposed to traditional histories which focus on influential individuals and events). If you're familiar with the evolutionary history of humans and world history, you probably won't find any new information here, but the framing of the historical facts provides a generative perspective. Benjamin focuses more on gender relations, cultural evolution, environmental sustainability, cultural/economic exchange, social complexity, and geography than on specific people or events.
The two most surprising takeaways for me were (1) how much cultural exchange of ideas occurred even before globalization and (2) how frequently climate change and geography shaped the course of human history (which then inspired me to read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, which Benjamin cites on numerous occasions. Diamond rounds out Benjamin's intimated argument that societal development has largely been a collective enterprise, which has continually adapted to extreme climates and drastic climate change.)
The two most surprising takeaways for me were (1) how much cultural exchange of ideas occurred even before globalization and (2) how frequently climate change and geography shaped the course of human history (which then inspired me to read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, which Benjamin cites on numerous occasions. Diamond rounds out Benjamin's intimated argument that societal development has largely been a collective enterprise, which has continually adapted to extreme climates and drastic climate change.)
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