The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp through Civilization's Best Bits
431
The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp through Civilization's Best Bits
431eBook
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Overview
The Mental Floss History of the World is an amazingly entertaining joyride through sixty millennia of human civilization. As audacious as it is edifying, here is a hilarious and irreverent—yet always historically accurate—overview of the ascent (or descent) of humankind, courtesy of the same rebel geniuses who brought you Mental Floss Presents Condensed Knowledge and Mental Floss Presents Forbidden Knowledge. The Mental Floss History of the World is proof positive that just because something’s true doesn’t mean it’s boring.
“Filled with amusing tidbits and accurate and compelling information.” —Publishers Weekly
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780061980619 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 09/22/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 431 |
| Sales rank: | 22,614 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Erik Sass is a journalist based in Los Angeles with branch offices around the country. When not writing for mental_floss, he reports on the media and advertising business for MediaPost.com.
An award-winning political journalist and history writer for more than three decades, Steve Wiegand has worked as a reporter and columnist for the San Diego Evening Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Sacramento Bee, where he currently covers state government and politics.
During his career, he has interviewed four presidents and six California governors—and has the dubious distinction of once being airsick and throwing up on the shoes of the state attorney general's wife.
It may have been his greatest personal contribution to world history.
Wiegand is a graduate of Santa Clara University, where he majored in American literature and U.S. history. He also holds a Master of Science degree in Mass Communications from California State University, San Jose.
In addition to The mental_floss History of the World, Wiegand is the author of U.S. History for Dummies, Sacramento Tapestry, and Papers of Permanence, a contributing author to mental_floss presents: Forbidden Knowledge, and a frequent contributor to mental_floss magazine.
He lives in Northern California.
Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur met as first year students at Duke University. Ignoring the lures of law school and investment banking, the pair co-founded mental_floss and have been grinning ever since. Maggie Koerth-Baker is a freelance journalist and a former assistant editor at mental_floss magazine, where she consistently astounded Will and Mangesh with her amazingness.
Read an Excerpt
The Mental Floss History of the World
An Irreverent Romp through Civilization's Best Bits
Chapter One
Africa and After
(60,000 BCE-1500 BCE)
In a nutshell
If there's one thing you can say about human beings, it's that we're always hungry. When modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) left Africa to conquer the globe more than sixty thousand years ago, they settled near sources of food, and those areas that produced more food became more populated. Some groups found forests with game to hunt, while others wandered grasslands, tending herds of cows. In Stone Age Mexico, coastal peoples subsisted on shellfish for thousands of years, leaving a huge heap of clam shells 240 feet long, 90 feet wide, and 21 feet tall.
Another thing about us: we don't like to share. Tribes constantly battled for territory, and some were pushed into less friendly environments—but nomads made the best use of limited resources. Arabs conquered the vast Arabian Peninsula by taming the camel, a hardy desert animal that carried them between lush oases. Central Asians took to horse- and sheepherding, ranging across thousands of miles in search of rare good pastures. Inuit learned to build homes out of ice.
But in terms of calories per acre, grain cultivation feeds many more people than fishing, hunting, or raising domestic animals. Grain cultivation began around 9000 BCE and soon spread around the world, and places that grew grain experienced a population explosion (oh yeah, apparently we also like to have sex . . . a lot). Soon, there was so much food that somepeople could stop working in the fields and specialize in crafts. Expert potters, weavers, and masons were soon followed by tailors, leather tanners, miners, and other trades. Yes, that includes "the world's oldest profession."
Around 8000 BCE, the world's first civilizations—defined as people living in cities—began appearing. The craftspeople lived together in encampments for safety against rival groups and for convenience of trade. Cities also became centers of government—in most cases, likely a hereditary monarchy descended from old tribal authority. Little is known about the world's first governments, but they were probably dominated by a single family or clan passing authority from generation to generation, with a dominant man becoming ruler each time. In prehistory, governments along matriarchal (woman-centered) or communal (leaderless) lines may have existed, but by the beginning of recorded history, these had been snuffed out. Each of the world's first civilizations was ruled by one man, a king. Men have hogged the remote ever since.
The king's job was simple: to protect his followers. In general, the people believed that the king's authority came from the immortal gods, so kings were closely associated with religion from the get-go. In some places the king was also the high priest, in charge of sacrificial offerings and ceremonies intended to bring good harvests. In other places, the king worked closely with the high priest or employed soothsayers to help divine the future.
While rival kings could cause trouble, the biggest enemy facing early civilizations was nature itself, which operated at the will of invisible gods. Droughts, floods, and other natural disasters could destroy crops, bringing starvation and misery. Translation: If everyone had enough to eat, the gods were happy with the leader; if there wasn't enough to eat, well . . . It's no surprise that across the "civilized" world, each ruler's first act was to store grain against hard times.
To make this food-insurance system work, kings ordered their subjects to turn over some grain during good times, which could be distributed again in an emergency. Grain was stored in huge stone or mud-brick silos, called granaries. Priests were in charge of keeping track of which grain had come from which landowner.
To help remember the grainy details, priests invented writing. Recording quantities, names, and dates on clay tablets in turn led to accounting and banking. Soon regular people began quantifying goods such as livestock, tools, and luxury items. As writing spread to society at large, merchants, bankers, and scribes joined the other craftsmen who lived in cities. Writing led to the first commercial contracts (e.g., "for these four pigs, you bring me two cows in three days"—we're not saying it was glamorous).
However, not every culture chose to settle down and farm. The differences between cities and nomadic groups created a lot of friction. For one thing the cities' accumulation of wealth, in the form of surplus grain and other goods, naturally attracted attention from people living a more marginal existence outside the cities. Nomads often enjoyed a tactical advantage over city folk, and men from the wilds, skilled in horse-mounted warfare, have long terrified the simple farmer on the outskirts of town. The nomadic threat still exists today—but by 1500 BCE, the power of settled societies based on farming was already uncontestable. The history of civilization is their story.
What Happened When
2,500,000 BCE
Homo habilis, earliest protohuman ancestor, uses stone tools in Africa.
2,000,000 BCE
Various protohuman ancestors spread out across the planet.
1,500,000 BCE
Hominids master fire.
300,000 BCE
Neanderthals live in Europe.
150,000 BCE
The Sahara is a lush grassland.
130,000 BCE
Modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, appear in Africa.
60,000 BCE
Homo sapiens sapiens spread out over the planet.
10,000 BCE
Polar ice caps begin to melt, raising sea levels four hundred feet.
9000 BCE
The Natufian culture domesticates wheat, inventing agriculture.
7500 BCE
The world's first cities emerge at Catal Huyuk and Jericho.
5,300 BCE
The Sahara has become a desert.
5000 BCE
Catal Huyuk and Jericho are mysteriously abandoned.
4500 BCE
The first Sumerian cities, Eridu and Ur, are founded.
4000 BCE
The first cities are founded in Egypt.
3100 BCE
Egypt is united by the pharaohs and becomes the world's first state.
3000 BCE
China's first civilization begins (Longshan culture).
2600 BCE
Harappan civilization flourishes in the Indus River Valley.
2530 BCE
Egyptians complete the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
2200 BCE
Babylon is founded by the Amorites.
1900 BCE
China's first royal family, the Xia dynasty, rules.
1750 BCE
Abraham leaves Ur for Canaan.
1700 BCE
Harappan civilization disappears.
1600 BCE
Indo-Europeans establish Hittite and Mitanni kingdoms in Mesopotamia.
An Irreverent Romp through Civilization's Best Bits. Copyright © by Erik Sass. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
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