Universal History: Sizing Up Humanity in Big History

This essay presents a review article of David Christian's Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Christian's book seeks to discover order since the Big Bang, the formation of the solar system and this planet Earth, the formation of life and its evolution through natural selection to humankind, and human social organization in family and tribe over one hundred thousand years ago, to the Neolithic revolution in agriculture over ten thousand years ago, to the formation of states about five thousand years ago, to the presentÑand onward to the future. This review essay also evaluates Christian's argument, mostly positively, in comparing and contrasting it to those of the few other fellow travelers through Big History.