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

Most history series cover time spans of a few decades or a few centuries, but big history requires us to survey the past over scales that span billions of years. This episode explores ways to become more familiar with the immense scales needed to cover the modern creation story.

In this episode, we introduce one of the unifying themes of the series: the development of increasing complexity since the creation of the Universe. Here, we'll examine the definition of complexity and ask how our Universe builds more complex entities.

Why should we trust the claims of modern science about events in the distant past? This episode lays some ground rules about evidence for proving scientific claims and describes how new dating techniques have allowed scientists to peer further back into the past than previously thought possible.

We encounter the first threshold of complexity (the creation of the Universe at the moment of the big bang) and explore the scientific evidence that allows us to piece together this ever-evolving story of creation.

This episode surveys the history of different ideas about the creation of the Universe, from Ptolemaic theories of an Earth-centered cosmos to the modern notion of a constantly expanding Universe.