Human Civilization

The final novel of the Forerunner Saga trilogy by science fiction legend Greg Bear—set in the Halo universe and based on the New York Times bestselling video game series! One hundred thousand years ago. Chaos rules the final days of the Forerunner empire. The Flood—a horrifying...

Reveals the profound influence of the Denisovans and their hybrid descendants upon the flowering of human civilization around the world Traces the migrations of the sophisticated Denisovans and their interbreeding with Neanderthals and early human populations more than 40,000 years ago ...

Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian Stefanos Geroulanos demonstrates how claims about the earliest humans not only shaped Western intellectual culture, but gave rise to our modern world.

Discover the remarkable history of the Maya Civilization...For more than one thousand years, the Maya people dominated areas of Central America and modern-day Mexico and made important advances in architecture, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. Then, after the Spanish occupation in the 16th century, Maya culture and thinking were deliberately suppressed. Only in the 20th century did scientists appreciate just how advanced these people had been and how important they were in the history of Mesoamerica.

By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it is a tale covering more than 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of the Mongols in the 13th century AD.

Are significant numbers of humanity the product of an ancient and advanced alien civilization? Have we, across the millennia, been periodically modified and refined as a species? In short, has our genetic make-up been manipulated by otherworldly beings that view human civilization as one big lab experiment? These are controversial and thought-provoking questions. They are also questions that demand answers, answers that may very well be found by examining those people whose blood type is Rh negative.

A giant of archaeology, Colin Renfrew has immeasurably improved our understanding of human history. In this passionately argued work, he offers a concise summary of prehistory - human existence that predates the development of written records - while challenging the very definition of prehistory itself.

Throughout history, even as daily life has exhibited calm and tolerance, war has never been far away, and even within societies, violence can be a threat. The Goodness Paradox gives a new and powerful argument for how and why this uncanny combination of peacefulness and violence crystallized after our ancestors acquired language in Africa a quarter of a million years ago.

Explores how our ancestors used shamanic rituals at sacred sites to create portals for communication with nonhuman intelligences Shares supporting evidence from the spiritual and shamanic beliefs of more than 100 Native American tribes Shows how the earliest forms of shamanism began...

How four tools enabled humanity to control its destiny What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Listeners of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution - a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones - caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time.

Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.

*A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice* From celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen, a “vivid” and “astonishingly comprehensive account [that] casts world history in a brilliant new light” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and shows how bold explorations and daring trade...

Today, almost every nation on Earth is teetering on the brink of a societal meltdown as it finds itself in the midst of a sociopolitical upheaval, the like of which has not hitherto been witnessed in our lifetime. Yet, hardly anyone realizes that, like a winter that returns every year, such a concerted turmoil across the globe is also periodic due to what I have dubbed the "oqual cycle".

For fans of Thomas Piketty, David Graeber, and Jared Diamond: A bold, provocative, wide-ranging argument about the human idea of progress that offers a new vision of our future This program is read by the author. Progress is power. Narratives of progress, the stories we tell about whether a...

In Connectography, visionary strategist Parag Khanna travels from Ukraine to Iran, Mongolia to North Korea, Pakistan to Nigeria, and across the Arctic Circle to explain the unprecedented changes affecting every part of the planet. He shows how militaries are deployed to protect supply chains as much as borders, and how nations are less at war over territory than engaged in tugs-of-war over pipelines, railways, shipping lanes, and Internet cables. The new arms race is to connect to the most markets.

At a time when our world is fractured by polarized views and where abuse of power plagues our interpersonal landscape, Humanifestations provides a grounded and compassionate blueprint for individual and collective transformation. In his fiercely honest style, Brown speaks to the challenges of living our truth in this world and supports our efforts to heal and ReBrave. Humanifestations is a revolution of truthspeak that will ignite your power and awaken your magnificence.

This book is a shortened version of The Oqual Cycle without data and charts so as to provide a seamless listening experience for the non-technical audience. Briefly, every nation today is teetering on the brink of a societal meltdown as it finds itself in the midst of a sociopolitical upheaval, the like of which has not hitherto been witnessed in our lifetime. Yet, hardly anyone realizes that like a winter that returns every year, such a concerted turmoil across the globe is also periodic due to what I have dubbed the "oqual cycle".

A global history of free speech, from the ancient world to today Hailed as the “first freedom,” free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the...

A bold new synthesis of paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and anthropology that overturns misconceptions about race, war and peace, and human nature itself, answering an age-old question: What made humans so exceptional among all the species on Earth? Creativity. It is the secret of what...

The creator of the hit podcast Tides of History offers a new look at humanity’s deep past, showing us how our world was built not by inevitability, but by trial and error on a global scale. There’s a familiar story about us humans: we went from hunting and gathering to farming, wandering...