What I Learned This Semester about Big History

“What I Learned this Semester about Big History”

It is very interesting how you can get a long and sometimes controversial answer to a simple question, such as “where does coffee come from?” As we saw in the Bain film and read Big History article, one small thing or event is connected to people, places, and big events on the earth. In the Big History article explains how history is looked at “ from the Big Bang to the modernity.” In modern days we have coffee as part of our morning routine and maybe don’t even that many years ago, coffee was being smuggled to be grown in other parts of the world as mentioned in the Bain film. Back in the day people would work all day till sun down to grow coffee and as time went by and people worked in factories now they take a coffee brake. After seeing the film “The Journey of Man,” I was astonished to hear that all the people from all over the world come from Africa. And even more interesting that in was scientifically proven by the study of blood, and how language played a big role in human behavior. For example, how Dr. Wells made the journey from Africa and to the other places of the world to show how we connected to Africa. As Dr. Wells stops and interact with people from different parts of world and see how they survive in extreme weather and revolutionized in their survival skills as time goes by. The film “Catastrophe” got me a little concern of how uncertain is our future here on Earth. The series of extreme events mention in the film are very credible because Keyes consulted over 40 scientists, scholars, astronomers, and experts on cosmic collisions, volcanoes, epidemics and ancient wars from Mexico to Byzantium and from Africa to Indonesia. The extreme event that happened about 2000 years ago laid the foundation of how we live today. For example, in 535 and 536 AD, darkness lasted for 18 months. The sun would only come up for about four hours a day. People would be cold and food was hard to obtained. And other events such as cold ripped on the land for 2 years, clouds of dust enveloped the earth, drought, plague and death. These extreme events wiped out whole cities and some even civilization. Overall it is amazing how one thing is connected to different people from all over the world and from there to another thing. How is also mentioned in the film “The Columbian Exchanged,” for example the horses, potatoes, and sugar canes, and how sugar canes got connected to slavery.