Concept

Human history

Overview

Human history, or world history, is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present. Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers. They migrated out of Africa during the Last Ice Age, spreading to every continent except Antarctica by its end, 12,000 years ago. Soon afterwards, the Neolithic Revolution in West Asia included the first systematic husbandry of plants and animals, and saw many humans transition from nomadic lives to sedentary existences as farmers in permanent settlements. The growing complexity of human societies necessitated systems of accounting and writing.

Early civilizations then emerged in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Peru, the Indus Valley, and China, marking the beginning of the ancient period in the 4th millennium BCE. These civilizations enabled the establishment of regional empires and provided fertile ground for transformative philosophical and religious ideas. Hinduism originated during the late Bronze Age and was followed by the many seminal belief systems of the Axial Age: Buddhism, Confucianism, Greek philosophy, Jainism, Judaism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism. Christianity began later as an offshoot of Judaism. The subsequent post-classical period, from about 500 to 1500 CE, included the rise of Islam and the flourishing of China under the Tang and Song dynasties while civilization expanded to new parts of the world and trade between societies increased. Major empires rose and fell, such as the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic caliphates, and the Mongol Empire. This period's invention of gunpowder and the printing press greatly affected later history.

During the early modern period, from approximately 1500 to 1800 CE, European powers explored and colonized regions worldwide, intensifying cultural and economic exchange. This era's intellectual, cultural, and technological changes in Europe included the Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment. By the 18th century, the accumulation of knowledge and technology had reached a critical mass that brought about the Industrial Revolution, underpinning the Great Divergence and began the modern period starting around 1800 CE. The rapid growth in productive power further increased international trade and colonization, linking the different civilizations in the process of globalization and cementing European dominance throughout the 19th century. Over the last 250 years, which included two devastating world wars, there has been a great acceleration in many spheres, including human population, agriculture, industry, commerce, scientific knowledge, technology, communications, military capabilities, and environmental degradation.

The study of human history relies on insights from academic disciplines such as history, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, and genetics. To provide an accessible overview, researchers divide human history by a variety of periodizations.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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The productivity of labor is the total productive meaning of the most complex combination of social conditions, and is not in the least measured or pre-determined by the legal form of labor. The whole of human history is the history of the organization and education of collective man for labor, with the object of attaining a higher level of productivity. Man, as I have already permitted myself to point out, is lazy…
Leon Trotsky, Dictatorship vs. Democracy
States what Human history is; names Human history.
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No longer is admiration bestowed upon the heroes of the mythical past, upon a Hercules and a Theseus, as it was in ancient times. The change came about slowly, and yet at the great turning-point of human history, marked by the Hellenistic age, it spread throughout the entire cultural world. Radiating far beyond the Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries, which these hopes of a yonder-world raised to new life, the same idea…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Human history is; names Human history.
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A hatred, a hostility inexorable, unappeasable, which blasts the scoundrel, and all scoundrels ultimately, into black annihilation and disappearance from the sum of things. The path of it as the path of a flaming sword: he that has eyes may see it, walking inexorable, divinely beautiful and divinely terrible, through the chaotic gulf of Human History, and everywhere burning, as with unquenchable fire, the false and…
Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets
States what Human history is; names Human history twice.
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Philosophers who discussed Human history

Related ideas

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Art history

Place in the tradition

Part of Ancient history.

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