Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity

By: David Christian, The Great Courses

Narrated by: David Christian

Length: 24 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

How is it possible for the disciplines of cosmology, geology, anthropology, biology, and history to fit together? These 48 lectures answer that question by weaving a single story from accounts of the past developed by a variety of scholarly disciplines. The result is a story stretching from the origins of the universe to the present day and beyond, in which human history is seen as part of the history of our Earth and biosphere, and the Earth's history, in turn, is seen as part of the history of the universe.

Like traditional creation stories told by the world's great religions and mythologies, this lecture series provides a map of our place in space and time. But it does so using the insights and knowledge of modern science, as synthesized by a renowned historian. While you may have heard parts of this story before in courses on geology, history, anthropology, biology, cosmology, and other scholarly disciplines, Professor Christian provides more than just a recap of those disciplines. "Because of the scale on which we look at the past, you should not expect to find in it many of the familiar details, names, and personalities that you'll find in other types of historical teaching and writing," he explains. "For example, the French Revolution and the Renaissance will barely get a mention. They'll zoom past in a blur. You'll barely see them. Instead, what we're going to see are some less familiar aspects of the past. We'll be looking, above all, for the very large patterns, the shape of the past.

"Prepare yourself for a journey through time and across space, from the first moments of existence to the distant reaches of the far future."

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2008 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2008 The Great Courses

Good, but Outdated

Overall this was a good lecture series. It is primarily a history series, however, so if you're looking for an in-depth description of each subject here then you'll need to look elsewhere; this lecture series simply covers the timeline and a cursory justification made by scientific evidence from disparate fields. My biggest gripe is that the information is already outdated in a few places and in some specific cases are outright false. For instance, the entire subject on Neanderthals is now obsolete based on information from the last 10 years, so take information here with a bit of skepticism.

Terrific compilation of the origins of matter/life

Any additional comments?

This wonderful compilation of the scientific facts of the origins of matter, life and the rise of humanity is well organized, interesting and a good review or numerous fields. It is a must for the educated.

Worthy of the "Great" courses

If you could sum up Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity in three words, what would they be?

Enlightening Epic Journey

What did you like best about this story?

The course accomplishes a HUGE goal, that of giving the listener/student a sense of perspective of the history of the universe, biased on the most widely accepted theories from different - and often seen as unrelated - fields of human knowledge.
There were insights from Cosmology, Astronomy, Archaeology, Anthropology, Geology, Climatology, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, even Mathematics... all arranged just in the right mix of the combination between deepness and broadness over the subjects. They all get combined to form a spectre that puts you in such a perspective that you feel like you're outside of the universe watching the big picture, being able to fully control the Time, going back and forth, and Space, moving from region to region on scales ranging from subatomic particles to galaxy clusters.

Any additional comments?

I understand that much of the content of the course is the best of the scientific accomplishment of the time, on the referred subjects, but they should not be treated as absolute truths. The course that Professor David Christian teaches is dynamic, and follows the new scientific discoveries and best hypothesis. Avoid the urge to stick to these figures and let yourself be moved towards the main inner driver of this course, that is simply human Curiosity at it's best...

One more addition: as a Christian, Engineering graduation student and above all a very Curious human being, I do not necessarily believe that everything said here is true; especially, of course, the disregard of "early traditions" that are used to explain the creation... I mean, there are things in which we simply believe because we can't really test on a lab. We can bring to discussion the best theory, and I like it, but the fundamental point is that evidence is surely helpful, but not definitive to let us know about things that happened that long ago, regardless of it being 10.000 or 13.700.000.000 years ago. Just try to keep that in mind when listening to this awesome collection of knowledge, scientific theories, hypothesis; they are surely close to the very best, state of the art, that we as humans have developed, created and gained so far.

History of it All

Below is my 2017 review of BIG HISTORY. I listened it again this year...2021 4years later. I leaned more the second time around! This book is both a work of Science but also a work of art.... Truely a great book.


I enjoyed the content and continuity.. Truely the known evidence based story of Humanity from beginning to present, with reasonable predictions about the future.
Highly recommend.

Exciting and insightful

This is an amazing set of lectures from a terrific lecturer who moves effortlessly between such diverse topics as cosmology, chemistry, biology, anthropology and history. Seeing this unified narrative presented so coherently really changed my outlook on certain things.

I can't really mention any real downsides, there are only a few caveats I would mention:
- I now know one particular way of looking at history, in which everything eventually leads to increased complexity. I would love to see some counterarguments
- I found some of the parts about human history, especially about the medieval and modern age to be somehow too abstract and dry given that this is an era that is more familiar to many people - this was to some extent pre-announced, but I still would have enjoyed contextualising some of the well-known events of history within this framework
- The ending can seem a bit bleak

Excellent review of the big picture

The larger view, with enough detail to build on, the lecturer speaks well, and was easy to listen too.

Big history is awesome!

One of the very best courses ever. Wonderfully enlightening and super interesting in its ability to draw parallels across the different historical thresholds. Highly recommended

Outstanding insight into the universe and life.

Loved it. Have to say, it's the first time I really understood the mechanism of element formation, of evolution and society changes. Prof David Christian has a humble and evidence backed storytelling approach that gently explains pretty much everything. This ought to be a required learning in high school.

Great listen

Expertly delivered. Took us from the big bang to the present with a little prognosis of the near future. Fun listen

An entertaining look at a history of everything.

The early lectures look at our cosmological beginnings and appear very slow paced. From around lecture 35, the pace picks up considerably and I will need to revisit these as I am sure I missed something.

The only gripe I have with this series is the pronunciation of "cuneiform" at first it gave me a giggle, but after a while it became quite a distraction.

All things considered, YES, I would recommend everyone work through this course.