If historians don't tell stories at the scales of creation myths, someone else will. — David Christian Creation Copy Share Image
“Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas which, given enough time, changes into people.” — David Christian Copy Share Image
Living organisms are created by chemistry. We are huge packages of chemicals. — David Christian Biology Copy Share Image
Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution. — David Christian Energy Copy Share Image
“Quantum physics shows that it is in the nature of reality to be unpredictable.” — David Christian Nature Copy Share Image
All religions, all indigenous traditions, all origin stories provide a large map of where you are. — David Christian Indigenous Copy Share Image
“All knowledge arises from a relationship between a knower and an object of knowledge.” — David Christian Knowledge Copy Share Image
“Both animal and human slaves could be controlled best if kept economically and psychically dependent on their owners.” — David Christian Slavery Copy Share Image
Maps of Time attempts to assemble a coherent and accessible account of origins, a modern creation myth. — David Christian Copy Share Image
I had this feeling that, somehow, we ought to be teaching not just the history of particular nations or particular regions, but… — David Christian Copy Share Image
“defines domestication as “the human creation of a new form of plant or animal—one that is identifiably different from its wild ancestors… — David Christian Domestication Copy Share Image
“Robert de Balsac, ended a study on warfare with the remark that “most important of all, success in war depends on having… — David Christian Education Copy Share Image
“no complex, nonlinear system can be adequately described by dividing it up into subsystems or into various aspects, defined beforehand.” — David Christian Copy Share Image
“In the 1990s, global military expenditures declined by perhaps 40 percent, and stocks of weapons of all kinds fell.” — David Christian Investing Copy Share Image
“The explosive properties of gunpowder were first used in war by the Jin, the northern rivals of the Song, in 1221.” — David Christian Copy Share Image
“the universe may, in fact, be bigger than this, because the notion of inflation suggests that in the first second of its… — David Christian Life Copy Share Image
“Innovation ensured that each cycle normally reached a higher level than its predecessor, but innovation was normally too slow to prevent an… — David Christian Innovation Copy Share Image
“though they are on the whole less violent, personal relations in modern urban communities also lack the intimacy and continuity of those… — David Christian Community Copy Share Image
“Stars form durable structures because they are the result of a negotiated compromise between gravity, which crushes matter together, and the explosive… — David Christian Astronomy Copy Share Image
“It was possible to borrow British technology, and increasingly governments began to promote development. By the end of the nineteenth century, governments… — David Christian Change Copy Share Image
“Living organisms are constructed, for the most part, from compounds of carbon and hydrogen. Carbon is critical because of its astonishing flexibility.… — David Christian Biology Copy Share Image
In literature classes, you don't learn about genes; in physics classes you don't learn about human evolution. So you get a fragmented… — David Christian Copy Share Image
“contain into new, durable configurations, which can handle huge energy flows without disintegrating. This, we will see, is the characteristic pattern of… — David Christian Copy Share Image
“Machiavelli’s descriptions of the strategic and tactical rules of this world are valuable despite an element of caricature: A Prince, therefore, should… — David Christian Art Copy Share Image
“typical modern households live in urban environments where they earn incomes through some form of wage work and buy food produced by… — David Christian Family Copy Share Image
“Within a single information network, processes of collective learning may be more or less powerful in different regions; it is thus possible… — David Christian Copy Share Image
“the conquests of the Achaemenid and Hellenistic dynasties encouraged commercial and intellectual exchanges reaching from central Asia to India to the western… — David Christian Copy Share Image
“But even peasants within agrarian states were likely to take more interest in raising productivity when they had secure access to land… — David Christian Modern era Copy Share Image
I, and all the complex things around me, exist only because many things were assembled in a very precise way. The 'emergent'… — David Christian Arrangements Copy Share Image
“As A. J. McMichael writes: “Each species is an experiment of Nature. Only one such experiment, Homo sapiens, has evolved in a… — David Christian Evolution Copy Share Image
“For the first time there appeared on earth kings, dictators, high priests, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, governors, mayors, generals, admirals, police chiefs,… — David Christian Concentration camp Copy Share Image
“it takes photons of light just over 8 minutes to reach Earth, 150 million kilometers away.” — David Christian Photons Copy Share Image
What we normally define as history doesn't interest me. It's a constraint. — David Christian Constraint Copy Share Image
“most of human history (chronologically speaking) has taken place in communities quite innocent of state power.” — David Christian History Copy Share Image
“Unlike water, which prefers to lie flat as it accumulates, material wealth in complex societies likes to pile itself up into huge… — David Christian Material wealth Copy Share Image
“Even in Jericho, the oldest-known farming village, the walls, which were once believed to have been fortifications, are now thought to have… — David Christian Copy Share Image
“thus animals without symbolic language may lack the ability humans have to deliberately think about the past and imagine the future.” — David Christian Animal Copy Share Image
Unfortunately, historians have become so absorbed in detailed research that they have tended to neglect the job of building larger-scale maps of… — David Christian Copy Share Image
