Where do we come from? How did our ancestors settle this planet? How did the great historic civilizations of the world develop? How does a past so shadowy that it has to be painstakingly reconstructed from fragmentary, largely unwritten records nonetheless make us who and what we are? These 36 lectures bring you the answers that the latest scientific and archaeological research and theorizing suggest about human origins, how populations developed, and the ways in which civilizations spread throughout the globe. It's a narrative of the story of human origins and the many ties that still bind us deeply to the world before writing. And it's a world tour of prehistory with profound links to who we are and how we live today. Woven through this narrative is a set of pervasive themes: emerging human biological and cultural diversity (as well as our remarkable similarities across surprising expanses of time and space); the impact of human adaptations to climatic and environmental change; and the importance of seeing prehistory not merely as a chronicle of archaeological sites and artifacts, but of people behaving with the extraordinary intellectual, spiritual, and emotional dynamism that distinguish the human. Among the corners of our mysterious past you'll explore: human prehistory from Australopithecus africanus through Homo habilis and Homo erectus; the beginnings of agriculture and animal domestication; theories behind the appearance of urban civilization and overall attributes of preindustrial civilizations; the maritime trading revolutions in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia; and much more.
All Lectures: 1. Introducing Human Prehistory 2. In the Beginning 3. Our Earliest Ancestors 4. The First Human Diaspora 5. The First Europeans 6. The Neanderthals 7. The Origins of Homo sapiens sapiens 8. The Great Diaspora 9. The World of the Cro-Magnons 10. Artists and Mammoth Hunters 11. The First Americans 12. The Paleo-Indians and Afterward 13. After the Ice Age 14. The First Farmers 15. Why Farming? 16. The First European Farmers 17. Farming in Asia and Settling the Pacific 18. The Story of Maize 19. The Origins of States and Civilization 20. Sumerian Civilization 21. Ancient Egyptian Civilization to the Old Kingdom 22. Ancient Egypt - Middle and New Kingdoms 23. The Minoan Civilization of Crete 24. The Eastern Mediterranean World 25. The Harappan Civilization of South Asia 26. South and Southeast Asia 27. Africa - A World of Interconnectedness 28. The Origins of Chinese Civilization 29. China - Zhou to the Han 30. Southeast Asian Civilizations 31. Pueblos and Moundbuilders in North America 32. Ancient Maya Civilization 33. Highland Mesoamerican Civilization 34. The Origins of Andean Civilization 35. The Inka and Their Predecessors 36. Epilogue
