Columbian Exchange

The Ages of Globalization
by Jeffrey D. Sachs
Published 2 Jun 2020

More fundamentally, these two voyages reconnected the entire inhabited world for the first time in more than ten thousand years, ever since the rising ocean level at the end of the Pleistocene had submerged the Beringia land bridge between Asia and North America. 6.2 Columbus’s First Voyage, 1492–1493 6.3 Vasco da Gama’s First Voyage, 1497–1499 The Columbian Exchange As noted by the great environmental historian Alfred Crosby, Columbus’s voyages produced much more than a meeting of Europeans and Native Americans. They created a sudden conduit for the unprecedented two-way exchange of species between the Old World and the New—plants, animals, and disastrously, pathogens. This two-way exchange, which Crosby calls the Columbian exchange, was biologically unprecedented, with profound consequences that have lasted to the present day.3 The most obvious effect was the exchange of crops between the Old World and the New, along with the introduction of many domesticated animals into the Americas for the first time.

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Contents Preface 1 Seven Ages of Globalization The Seven Ages The Acceleration of Change Economic Scale and the Pace of Change Malthusian Pessimism The Gradual Transformation to Urban Life The Interplay of Geography, Technology, and Institutions The Favorable Geographies Geopolitics and Globalization Looking Back to See Forward 2 The Paleolithic Age (70,000–10,000 BCE) The First Age of Globalization Cultural Acceleration Human Society in the Upper Paleolithic Some Lessons from the Paleolithic Age 3 The Neolithic Age (10,000–3000 BCE) Diffusion of Agriculture Within Ecological Zones The Early Alluvial Civilizations of Eurasia The Lucky Latitudes Some Lessons from the Neolithic Age 4 The Equestrian Age (3000–1000 BCE) Animal Domestication Domestication of the Donkey and the Horse The Domestication of the Camel and Camelids The Metal Ages Comparing Old World and New World Developments The Yamnaya Breakthrough in Eurasia The Early Equestrian States Key Development Breakthroughs in the Fertile Crescent Some Lessons from the Equestrian Age 5 The Classical Age (1000 BCE–1500 CE) The Axial Age Thalassocracy and Tellurocracy The Emergence of the Classical Land-Based Empires The Han Empire The Developed World as of 100 CE Global Trade Within the Lucky Latitudes The Fall of Rome and the Rise of Islam The Remarkable Song Dynasty of China The Last Hurrahs of the Steppe Conquerors Some Lessons from the Classical Age 6 The Ocean Age (1500–1800) The Great Chinese Reversal The North Atlantic Quest for Ocean Navigation The Columbian Exchange The Gunpowder Age and the High Seas The New European Age of Inquiry The Birth of Global Capitalism Europe’s Scramble for Global Empire Insatiable Greed of the Empire Builders The Intertwining of State and Capital Indigenous Populations and African Slaves in the New World Feeding Europe’s Factories: Cotton Global Empire and Global War Adam Smith’s Summation of the Age of Global Empire Some Lessons from the Ocean Age 7 The Industrial Age (1800–2000) From the Organic Economy to the Energy-Rich Economy Why Did Industrialization Start in Britain?

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The Europeans brought horses, cattle, and other plants and animals to the Americas for farming, and also many new infectious diseases, including smallpox, measles, and malaria, while bringing back to Europe the cultivation of the potato, maize, tomatoes, and other crops and farm animals. This “Columbian Exchange” united the world in trade while dividing the world in new kinds of inequalities of wealth and power. The excess mortality of Native Americans caused by Old World diseases was devastating. The native populations were “naïve” to the Old World pathogens, and hence unprotected immunologically.

The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization
by Richard Baldwin
Published 14 Nov 2016

In addition to altering Asian–European trade routes, this so-called Age of Discovery is associated with Europeans’ colonization of North and South America—an event that would help reverse ten millennia of economic dominance by Eurasian civilizations. The Columbian Exchange: Food Crops for Epidemics The shift of the planet’s economic center of gravity to the North Atlantic was based in part on the so-called Columbian Exchange. Imported food crops from the Americas—especially potatoes and maize—were imperative in allowing Europe to gain critical levels of population density. In exchange, Europeans brought new diseases that depopulated the New World and almost erased the ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica and the Andes.

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Its shutting in 1450 was equally notable. It launched a period described by historian Anthony Hopkins as proto-globalization—a preparatory stage for the dramatic shift that was to come in Phase Three. Proto-globalization rested on three pillars: the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the Age of Discovery, and the Columbian Exchange. Renaissance and Enlightenment In the fourteenth century, Europe started transforming itself from the western periphery of Asian civilization into the world’s leading economic and military power. John Hobson, Ferdinand Braudel, and Ian Morris argue that much of the European revival was based on ideas, institutions, and technologies borrowed from the advanced civilizations in the Middle and Far East—much of which had been preserved, integrated, and extended by Islamic scholars during the Golden Age of Islam.

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By the 1700s, Europeans had mapped the world and were navigating the seas with ease. Colonialism continued to be developed—especially by the British, French, and Dutch. The independence movements in North and South America did nothing to disrupt trade and economic development in the Atlantic. FIGURE 13: Populations in Europe and the Americas, year 1 to 1820. The Columbian Exchange boosted European populations via the introduction of new food staples. It also decimated New World populations via the introduction of Old World diseases like smallpox, measles, and typhus. This set up a situation where the Old World had too many people and not enough land—an imbalance mirrored by the opposite imbalance in the New World.

The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis
by Ruth Defries
Published 8 Sep 2014

The New World that Columbus opened to other conquistadors and explorers—Hernando Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and Vasco Nuñez de Balboa—during the wind-powered Age of Discovery had little resemblance to the Old World. Reconstruction of Columbus’s diaries note his observation that “all the trees are as different from ours as day from night; and also the fruits and grasses and stones and everything.” This difference was not to last. Alfred Crosby, the historian who coined the term for the “Columbian Exchange,” the transcontinental transfer of species following Columbus’s voyages, wrote of the day that Columbus landed ashore on the Bahamas: “The two worlds, which were so very different, began on that day to become alike. That trend toward biological homogeneity is one of the most important aspects of the history of life on this planet since the retreat of the continental glaciers.”

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Some of the oldest and largest qanats still exist, such as one in the Iranian city of Gonabad that still provides irrigation and drinking water to nearly 40,000 people. Qanats can move water only so far, and other inventions, such as dams and wells, are also only local solutions. But trade—the other, more hidden and surreptitious way to move water—involves much greater distances. The sun-powered sails that made the Columbian Exchange and guano part of the story of humanity’s domination of the planet also made possible the virtual trade in water. Moving water virtually, in products grown or raised with large amounts of water, spread the vital resource farther than was ever possible with Mesopotamia’s irrigation canals or the ingenious qanats.

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[L]asting fertility of the soil”: Quoted in Clark and Foster 2009, 315. 92New sources for fertilizer: Brown 1963. 93Yams, banana, pearl millet, and sorghum: The National Research Council (1996) described traditional African staple grains in detail. 94Trade routes of his era in 1735: Hadley wrote that “the action of the Sun is the original Cause of these Winds, I think all are agreed,” and further deduced that “without the assistance of the diurnal Motion of the Earth, Navigation, especially Easterly and Westerly, would be very tedious, and to make the whole circuit of the Earth perhaps impracticable” (Hadley 1735–1736, 62). 94“. . . [S]tones and everything”: Columbus et al. 1991, 93. 94“. . . [R]etreat of the continental glaciers”: Crosby 1972 [2003], 3. Mann (2011) also provided a detailed and readable account of the Columbian Exchange. 95Plants back to Spain: Barrera-Osorio 2006. 95Scholars do not agree on this point: Nunn and Qian (2010) discussed the controversies about whether syphilis came from the New World. 95“. . . New England in America”: Thorpe 1909, 1829. 95“. . . Kind of Interests therein”: Thorpe 1909, 1828–1829. 96“. . .

A Short History of Progress
by Ronald Wright
Published 2 Jan 2004

Egypt’s Old Kingdom is thought to have had between 1.2 and 2 million people; the Middle Kingdom between 2 and 3 million. There was probably a peak of 6 or 7 million at the start of the Ptolemaic period, but this fell somewhat by Roman times. As recently as 1882, the total was still only 6.7 million, showing no overall gain in the more than 2,000 years since the pharaohs (Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 [Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1972], p. 190). By 1964, it had risen to 28.9 million; Crosby attributes much of this rise to the introduction of maize. Since 1964, the population has doubled again, but Egyptians now are eating mainly imported wheat and feeding their maize to livestock (see Timothy Mitchell, “The Object of Development: America’s Egypt,” in Jonathan Crush, ed., The Power of Development [London: Routledge, 1995]). 72. 150 per square kilometre. 73.

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Modern civil wars in Peru and Guatemala during the 1980s, in Chiapas during the 1990s, and the 1990 Oka crisis in Canada were all fuelled by unfinished business between whites and Amerindians. However, leaders of the Shining Path uprising in Peru were exploiters of Peruvian nativism, not its champions. 16. Fray Motolinía, quoted in Crosby, Columbian Exchange, p. 52. 17. Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (New York: Norton, 1976), p. 30. This is especially true of North America and parts of the lowland tropics, where a century or more went by between the collapse of the old population and the arrival of the new.

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The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1977. Conrad, Geoffrey W., and Arthur A. Demarest. Religion and Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Agent. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1936. Originally published in 1907. Crosby, Alfred. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1972. ———. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe 900–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Culbert, T. Patrick, and Don S. Rice, eds. Precolumbian Population History in the Maya Lowlands.

The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
by Andrew J. Bacevich
Published 7 Jan 2020

According to Professor Sumner, anticipating Friedman, “The whole industry and commerce of the world” functioned as a “great system” that was in constant flux even as it simultaneously adhered to certain ironclad rules.6 In fact, the circulation of goods, capital, technology, ideas, and people around the world had been ongoing for centuries, although the depth, breadth, and impact of interaction varied according to circumstance. The Columbian Exchange initiated in 1492, involving, among other things, plants, animals, bacteria, and deadly diseases, offers one notable illustration.7 Europe’s subsequent incorporation of the “New World” into a system of rival empires during the sixteenth century offers another. So, too, does the subsequent amalgamation of thirteen English colonies into a restless republic intent on exporting a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant brand of civilization even as it absorbed (and domesticated) a wide array of foreign influences.

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“Today electronics and automation make mandatory,” he wrote, “that everybody adjust to the vast global environment as if it were his little home town.” Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, War and Peace in the Global Village (New York, 1968), 12. 6. William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (New Haven, Connecticut, 1879 [rpt. 1919]), 215. 7. On the former, see Alfred W. Crosby Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Connecticut, 1972). 8. Thomas L. Friedman, “A Manifesto for a Fast World,” New York Times Magazine (March 28, 1999). 9. Alan Tooze, “Beyond the Crash,” Guardian (July 29, 2018). 10. Benjamin R. Barber, “Jihad vs. McWorld,” Atlantic (March 1992). 11.

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See also post–Cold War (Emerald City) consensus Bush Jr. and Bush Sr. and citizens vs. soldiers and consequences of containment and critics and defined democracy and Dulles and end of, with fall of Berlin Wall freedom and geopolitics and globalization and Hillary Clinton and ideology and limits and materialism and morality and Nixon and president as leader of Free World and Reagan and religion and Trump and Vietnam and Collins, Gail Columbian Exchange Comey, James common good Communism capitalism vs. collapse of Nixon in China and Wallace and conservatives consumerism and materialism consumer protection containment Coolidge, Calvin Council on Foreign Relations credit card debt crime criminal justice reform Cruz, Ted Cuba invasion of 1898 Obama and Cuban Missile Crisis culture wars Culture Wars (Hunter) Cyrus the Great death penalty Declaration of Independence Defense Department Defense of Marriage Act (1996) deindustrialization Deliberate Force, Operation demagogues democracy Democratic Party primaries of 2016 “deplorables” depression and anxiety Desert Storm, Operation Dewey, Commodore Dewey, Thomas discrimination diversity military and Obama and divorce Donaldson, Sam Doonesbury (Trudeau) Douthat, Ross Dowd, Maureen drugs and substance abuse Dukakis, Michael Duke University Dulles, John Foster Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) Eastern Europe economy.

Why the West Rules--For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
by Ian Morris
Published 11 Oct 2010

Random mutations could still turn dormant diseases back into killers that would burn through the human population like wildfire, but hosts and viruses would then work out a new balance where both could survive. People exposed for the first time to an unfamiliar package of germs have few defenses against the silent killers. The most famous example is what the geographer and historian Alfred Crosby has called the “Columbian Exchange,” the horrific, unintended fallout of Europe’s conquest of the New World since 1492 CE. Entirely separate disease pools had evolved in Europe and the Americas. America had unpleasant ailments of its own, such as syphilis, but the small, rather thinly spread American populations could not begin to compete with Europe’s rich repertoire of microbes.

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America had unpleasant ailments of its own, such as syphilis, but the small, rather thinly spread American populations could not begin to compete with Europe’s rich repertoire of microbes. The colonized peoples were epidemiological virgins. Everything from measles and meningitis to smallpox and typhus—and plenty in between—invaded their bodies when the Europeans arrived, rupturing their cells and killing them in foul ways. No one knows for sure how many died, but the Columbian Exchange probably cut short the lives of at least three out of every four people in the New World. “It appears visibly that God wishes that [the natives] yield their place to new peoples,” one sixteenth-century Frenchman concluded. A similar but more evenly balanced “Old World Exchange” seems to have begun in the second century CE.

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Spaniards liked to joke that their imperial overlords in Madrid were so inefficient that “if death came from Spain, we would all live forever,” but Native Americans probably did not find that very funny. For them death did come from Spain. Shielded by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, they had evolved no defenses against Old World germs, and within a few generations of Columbus’s landfall their numbers fell by at least three-quarters. This was the “Columbian Exchange” mentioned in Chapter 6: Europeans got a new continent and Native Americans got smallpox. Although European colonists sometimes visited horrifying cruelty on the people they encountered, death came to natives mostly unseen, as microbes on the breath or in body fluids. It also raced far ahead of the Europeans themselves, transmitted from colonists to natives and then spread inland every time an infected native met one who was still healthy.

An Edible History of Humanity
by Tom Standage
Published 30 Jun 2009

All this meant that the pineapple presented to Charles II was more than a mere fruit; it was a vivid symbol of his power. As European explorers, colonists, botanists, and traders sought out new plants, learned how to nurture them, and worked out where else in the world they might also thrive, they reshaped the world’s ecosystems. The “Columbian Exchange” of food crops between the Old and New worlds, in which wheat, sugar, rice, and bananas moved west and maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and chocolate moved east (to list just a handful of examples in each direction), was a big part of the story, but not the only part; Europeans also moved crops around within the Old and New worlds, transplanting Arabian coffee and Indian pepper to Indonesia, for example, and South American potatoes to North America.

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Had he known this in 1675, Charles II would no doubt have been proud, though he might have been disappointed to hear that the pineapple was not one of the many foods that would play a part in this tale. Instead, the two foods that are central to the story are sugar, which traveled west across the Atlantic, and the potato, which traveled in the opposite direction. COLUMBUS AND HIS EXCHANGE The Columbian Exchange, as the historian Alfred Crosby has called it, was aptly named because it really did start with Christopher Columbus himself. Although many other people carried plants, animals, people, diseases, and ideas between the Old and New worlds in the years to follow, Columbus was directly responsible for two of the earliest and most important exchanges of food crops with the Americas.

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Estimates of the size of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas vary from 9 million to 112 million, but a consensus figure of 50 million, which had been reduced by disease and warfare to some 8 million by 1650, gives an idea of the scale of the destruction. Even as their invisible biological allies wiped out the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Europeans began importing slaves from Africa on a vast scale to work on sugar plantations. The demographics of Africa and the Americas were transformed. But the Columbian Exchange also helped to alter the demographics of Eurasia. In China, the arrival of maize and sweet potatoes contributed to the increase in population from 140 million in 1650 to 400 million in 1850. Since maize could be grown in areas that were too dry for rice, and on hillsides that could not be irrigated, it added to the food supply and allowed people to live in new places.

The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality
by Oded Galor
Published 22 Mar 2022

At the same time, the fact that the potential crop yield is (unsurprisingly) highly correlated with the actual one suggests that crop yield is indeed the mechanism that triggered the evolution of this cultural trait. Alternatively, it could be that societies who are more long-term-oriented end up migrating to regions suited to long-term, high-yield crops. However, evidence suggests that the adoption of high-yield crops such as maize and the potato from the Americas following the Columbian Exchange had a significant effect on the long-term orientation of the already settled Old World populations.[31] This indicates that crop yields have at least partly shaped future-oriented behaviour through a process of cultural adaptation rather than selective migration. Importantly, studies of second-generation migrants that currently reside in Europe and the United States show that their degree of long-term orientation correlates with potential crop yields in their parental homelands rather than in the countries where they were born and raised.

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When combined with climate data from the past 1,500 years, and accounting for possible confounding factors from geography, culture and history, the evidence suggests that volatile climatic conditions have indeed contributed to the emergence of cultures with relatively low levels of loss aversion, while regions where climatic fluctuations are relatively uniform have contributed to more loss-averse cultures.[39] Again, of course, this association between climatic volatility and loss aversion may reflect the fact that loss-averse individuals and societies are more likely to settle in less volatile environments. However, as seen earlier, the adoption of new crops in the course of the Columbian Exchange with different growing seasons and thus different levels of vulnerability to climatic volatility allows us to test this possibility. The evidence suggests that the volatility associated with these new crops had a significant effect on the degree of loss neutrality among the already settled populations in the Old World.

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), 176, 184 abortion, 87–8 Aeneid (Virgil), 59 aeroplanes, 111 Africa agriculture in, 21, 179–80, 188–9 colonialism in, 157, 158, 187 diversity in, 220–32 emigration from, 127 fertility rates in, 112 Homo sapiens emergence in, 5, 18–20, 30, 119, 120, 124, 218–32, 221, 222, 237 income per capita in, 106 industrialisation in, 241 institutions in, 157, 187 livestock in, 179–80 living standards in, 7 malaria in, 180 marriage in, 87 Neolithic Revolution in, 202, 203, 204, 207 poverty in, 113 slave trade in, 173–4, 187 trade in, 136 trust in, 173–4 tsetse flies, 180 African Americans, 130–31, 155, 156, 215–17 Afrobarometer 173–4 Age of Enlightenment (c.1637–1800), 27, 58, 66, 170–71, 182, 212 agriculture climate and, 13, 15, 20, 21, 25, 155, 181, 186–7, 193–5, 203–4 comparative advantage in, 181, 211–12, 237 cooperation and, 168–9 diseases and, 8, 180 education and, 77, 81–3, 109, 140 future orientation and, 187–90, 213 gender roles and, 191–2 Green Revolution, 111, 117 hydraulic hypothesis, 184 innovations in, 61, 64, 181 institutions and, 208–10 irrigation, 22, 23, 120, 141–2, 160, 168, 184, 190 labour productivity, 131–2 livestock, 179–80, 203 Neolithic Revolution, see Neolithic Revolution soil and, 8, 21, 30, 141, 155, 186, 187, 191, 198, 204, 209, 236 Akkadian Empire (c.2334–2154 BCE), 23 algebra, 69 altitude, 51 American Civil War (1861–5), 62 Amsterdam, Netherlands, 40 Anatolia, 23, 40, 206 Angola, 154 antibiotics, 111 Aquinas, Thomas, 163 Arabian Nights, 59 Arctic region, 195 Argentina, 77, 154 Arkwright, Richard, 59, 72 Arrow, Kenneth, 172 art, 20, 22, 58, 62, 120, 216 Asia agriculture in, 188, 192 East–West orientation, 203 fertility rates in, 112 income per capita in, 106 industrialisation in, 241 living standards in, 7 marriage in, 87 Neolithic Revolution in, 202, 203 trade in, 136 see also Middle East Assyrian Empire (2500–609 BCE), 40 Athens, 40 Atlantic triangular trade, 136 Australia, 49, 106, 153, 154, 157 Austronesians, 206–7 automobiles, 61, 97, 101, 107, 111 Aztec civilisation, 154, 205 B Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, 19 Babylonian Empire (1895–539 BCE), 40 Bandy, Robert, 217 Banfield, Edward, 172 Bantu people, 207 Battle of the Books, The (Swift), 169 Belgium, 37, 64, 65, 72, 75, 138 Bell, Alexander Graham, 104 Berry, Charles ‘Chuck’, 216 Bessemer, Henry, 60 bicycles, 61 bifurcation theory, 46 Bill of Rights (1689), 148 biodiversity, 9, 29, 33, 202, 210, 236 Black Death (1346–53), 34–5, 36, 149–50, 159, 212 Blake, William, 57 Boas, Franz, 168 Bolivia, 131, 154, 229 Boserup, Ester, 191 brain, 14–17 Brazil, 103, 154, 216 Brexit (2016–20), 110 Brown, Moses, 72 Brown University, 1, 72, 239 Buddhism, 63 Byzantine Empire (395–1453), 48 C Caesar, Julius, 184 caloric yields, 189 Calvinism, 164 Cameroon, 207 Canada, 77, 108, 138, 154 canals, 61 Card, Addie, 78 cargo cults, 233–4 Caribbean, 113, 154, 155, 157, 186 Carthage, 23 Cartwright, Edmund, 59 Çatalhöyük, 23, 40 Catholicism, 148, 163, 217 Central America, see under Meso-America central heating, 101 centralised civilisations, 182–7 cephalopods, 14 de Cervantes, Miguel, 59 Chaplin, Charles, 105 Charlemagne, Emperor of the Romans, 184 Charles II, King of England and Scotland, 148 chemistry, 61, 69 Chicago, Illinois, 60 childbirth, 2, 41, 83 children education of, 8, 52–5, 62–83, 88–91, 94–8, 122, 129, 175 labour of, 57, 67, 78–83, 89, 93, 99, 122 mortality of, 2, 29, 41, 57, 89, 98, 121, 127, 128, 180 quantity–quality trade-off, 52–5, 88–91 Chile, 77, 146, 154 China agricultural productivity, 131 Black Death in (c. 1331–54), 34 centralised authority in, 182, 183, 184–6 coal mining in, 181 collectivism in, 190 dictatorship in, 146 diversity and, 226–9 education in, 64, 91 fertility rates in, 91 geography of, 182 growth in, 115 gunpowder, development of, 47, 61 income per capita in, 210 industrial regions, 108 naval exploration, 213 Neolithic Revolution in, 3, 21, 23, 122, 206, 210 New World crops in, 37–9 one-child policy (1979–2015), 112 Opium War, First (1839–42), 61 poverty in, 113, 114 printing, development of, 48 technological development in, 121, 176, 184 writing development of, 24 cholera, 205 Christianity, 63 Catholicism, 148, 163, 217 Protestantism, 63, 90, 163–4, 175, 184, 217 wealth, views on, 163 civil law systems, 154 civil liberties, 127 civilisations, dawn of, 22–5, 208–10, 236 class conflict, 73, 74, 78 climate, 13, 15, 20, 21, 25, 155, 181, 186–7, 193–5, 203–4 climate change, 116–18, 123, 241 coal mining, 59, 60, 71, 181 Cobbett, William, 86 Collapse (Diamond), 33 Colombia, 154 colonialism, 135–7, 140, 147, 152–9, 168, 175, 205, 235 Columbia, 103 Columbian Exchange, 35–9, 94–6, 195 Columbus, Christopher, 35, 47, 182–3 Comenius, John Amos, 65 common law systems, 154 Communist Manifesto, The (Marx and Engels), 62, 73 comparative advantage, 71, 137, 140, 141, 211–12 competition, 182–6, 198 concrete, 61 de Condorcet, Nicolas, 27 Confucianism, 63 consumption vs investment strategy, 188–90, 213 contraception, 85–6, 118 convergent evolution, 14–15 cooking, 15, 17 cooperation, 8, 168–9, 175, 236 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 44 Corinth, 40 Cortés, Hernán, 205 Covid-19 pandemic, 115, 130, 240 Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), 59 critical junctures, 212 Crompton, Samuel, 59 Cuba, 216 Cuitláhuac, Emperor of Tenochtitlan, 205 cultural traits, 51–5, 141, 161, 163–77, 187–98, 213 collectivism, 190–91 cooperation, 8, 168–9, 175, 236 entrepreneurship, 52, 72, 165, 182, 184, 193, 197 future orientation, 52, 141, 165, 169–71, 175, 187–90, 197–8, 213, 238 gender equality, see gender equality geography and, 181, 187–90, 208–10, 236 growth and, 169–71 human capital investment, 52–5, 80, 88–91, 94–8, 122, 165, 175 immigration and, 174 individualism, 165, 176, 190–91, 197 institutions and, 182 language and, 195–8 loss aversion, 192–5 prosperity and, 174–7 Protestant ethic, 164–5, 175, 184 racism and, 168 social hierarchies, 197 survival advantage of, 168 technology and, 52–5, 121, 169–70, 176, 231 transmission of, 171 trust, 8, 165, 172–4, 175, 236 Cyprus, 40 D Dante, 59 Darby, Abraham, 60 Darwin, Charles, 27, 50 decline of generations, 169 deindustrialisation, 107–10, 139, 140 democracy, 78, 151–2, 155, 160, 172–3 social capital and, 172–3 demographic dividend, 117 demographic transition, 6, 85–100, 106, 112–18, 175, 176, 198, 240 human capital and, 88–91, 112, 175, 211 Denmark, 104 Detroit, Michigan, 107–8, 217 Diamond, Jared, 21, 29, 32–3, 202, 203 Dickens, Charles, 57 dictatorships, 146 see also extractive institutions diet, 2, 25, 28, 30, 33, 95, 101, 107 diphtheria, 102 diseases, 2, 8, 40, 94, 102, 204–5, 236 agriculture and, 8, 180 Black Death (1346–53), 34–5, 36, 149–50, 159, 212 colonialism and, 156–7 germ theory, 102 immunity to, 51, 205 malaria, 156, 180, 205 sleeping sickness, 180 Spanish flu pandemic (1918–20), 106, 240 vaccinations, 102 diversity, 6, 9, 19, 142, 160, 215–32, 227–8, 237 innovation and, 9, 215–16, 226–30 measurement of, 223–4 origins of, 219–22 prosperity and, 217–18, 222, 224–32 Divine Comedy (Dante), 59 division of labour, 22, 191–2, 196–7, 204 Domino, Fats, 216 Don Quixote (Cervantes), 59 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 59 double-entry bookkeeping, 65 E East Germany (1949–90), 144 Easter Island, 32, 207 economic ice age, 39–41 Edison, Thomas, 60, 104 Education Act (UK, 1902), 76 education, 8, 52–5, 62–83, 88–98, 99, 118, 129, 238 agriculture and, 77, 81–3, 109, 140 child labour and, 57, 67, 78–83, 122 fertility rates and, 89–98, 99, 113, 122 human capital, see human capital industrialisation and, 64, 67–83, 89, 99, 109, 140 inequality and, 127, 140 investment in, 52–5, 80, 88–91, 94–8, 122, 165 land ownership and, 77, 155 technology and, 62–83, 99, 109, 110, 111–12 trade and, 137 universal public, 73–9 women and, 91, 92, 112 Egypt, 3, 20, 23, 24, 40, 63, 87, 88, 121, 207 Einstein, Albert, 44 electricity, 61, 101, 129, 130, 144 elevators, 61 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 147 Engels, Friedrich, 27, 62, 73 England, 3, 35, 37, 91, 147 Enlightenment (c.1637–1800), 27, 58, 66, 170–71, 182, 212 entrepreneurship, 52, 72, 165, 182, 184, 197 environmental degradation, 116–18, 241 Epic of Gilgamesh, 59 Ethiopia, 131, 229 Euphrates River, 20, 23, 206, 236 Europe income per capita, 106 industrialisation, see industrialisation institutions see institutions living standards in, 7, 41 Neolithic agriculture in, 35–7, 94–6, 188, 190, 192 Black Death (1346–53), 34–5, 36, 149–50, 159, 212 colonialism, 135–7, 140, 147, 152–9, 168, 175 competition in, 182–3, 184 East–West orientation, 203 economic growth in, 115 education in, 64–7 Enlightenment (c.1637–1800), 27, 58, 66, 170–71, 182, 212 fertility rates in, 85–6, 122 future orientation in, 190, 213 gender equality in, 92 geography of, 184–5 immigration to, 127, 192 Revolution in, 202, 203 New World crops in, 35–7, 94–6, 190 Protestant ethic in, 164–5, 175, 184 technological development in, 58, 61–2, 97, 212 trade in, 135–7 European Marriage Pattern, 86 European Miracle, 182, 213 European Social Survey, 189, 194 European Union (EU), 110 extinctions, 32, 88, 116, 167, 193, 203 extractive vs inclusive institutions, 145–61, 172, 186–7, 198, 209, 236 eye, evolution of, 14, 51 eyeglasses, 64 F Factory Acts (UK), 80 famines, 29, 40, 102, 193 Irish Famine (1845–9), 37, 96 Faust (Goethe), 59 feedback loops, 17, 48 feminism, 97 Ferdinand II, King of Aragon, 183 Fertile Crescent, 20, 21, 23, 33, 40, 48, 122, 202–4, 206, 210, 214, 226 fertility rates, 6, 85–98, 87, 112, 113, 117–18, 122, 123, 232 trade and, 137–8 feudalism, 62, 73, 147, 149–50, 159, 172 film, 105 financial crisis (2008), 115 Finland, 40 Florence, Italy, 34 food surpluses, 4, 28–41, 85, 94, 95 Ford, Henry, 107 France Black Death in, 34 colonialism, 153, 154 education in, 64, 67, 68, 70–71, 72, 75, 147 fertility rates in, 90 geography of, 185 guilds in, 150 industrialisation in, 109, 110, 138 late blight in, 37 life expectancy in, 40 living standards in, 147 Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), 62, 146, 153 Protestantism in, 164 trade in, 137 Fresnes-sur-Escaut, France, 70 future orientation, 52, 141, 165, 168–71, 175, 187–90, 197–8, 213, 236, 238 G Ganges River, 236 Gates, William ‘Bill’, 118 gender equality, 8, 91–4, 99, 106, 118, 122, 236 geography and, 191–2 language and, 196–7 wage gap, 91–4, 99, 122 general relativity, theory of, 44 General Social Survey, 194 Genoa, Republic of (c. 1000–1797), 183 geography, 179–99, 236 competition and, 182–6 future orientation and, 187–90, 197–8, 213 gender equality and, 191–2 individualism in, 190–91 institutions and, 181, 182, 186–7, 207, 208–10 language and, 195–8 loss aversion and, 192–5 Neolithic Revolution and, 203–4, 208–10, 212–14 geometry, 69 germ theory, 102 Germany, 64, 67, 75, 93, 110, 112, 137, 138, 164, 197 glass, 61 global warming, 116–18, 123 globalisation, 115, 137, 235 Godwin, William, 27 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 59 Goldin, Claudia, 111 grass analogy, 140–42 Great Depression (1929–39), 106, 115, 240 Great Fire of London (1666), 150 Great Migration (1916–70), 215 Great Pyramid, Giza, 24 Greece, 3, 18, 23, 40, 48, 58, 63, 88, 121, 160, 170, 213 Green Revolution, 111, 117 Greenland, 33, 49 guilds, 150 gunpowder, 47, 61 Guns, Germs and Steel (Diamond), 21 Gutenberg, Johannes, 48–9, 64, 104 H Habsburg Empire (1282–1918), 173 Hamburg, Germany, 34 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 59 hands, evolution of, 17 Hargreaves, James, 59 Hawaii, 48 head starts, 29, 34, 48, 146, 181, 185, 201–2, 204, 206, 210–12, 236–7 agricultural comparative advantage and, 181, 211–12, 237 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 9 Henry IV, King of France, 147 Henry VII King of England, 183 hierarchical societies, 98, 172, 197, 207, 208–10 high-yield crops, 111, 190, 213 Hill, Rowland, 104 Hine, Lewis, 78 Hobbes, Thomas, 2 Hofstede, Geert, 188 Holy Roman Empire (800–1806), 165, 172, 173 Homo erectus, 18 Homo technologicus, 119 Hong Kong, 154 hookworm, 90 hot-air balloons, 61 Huayna Capac, Incan Emperor, 205 Hugo, Victor, 59, 62 human capital, 6, 52–5, 66–73, 88–91, 93, 103, 111–12, 232 child labour and, 80, 81, 83, 122 colonialism and, 158 demographic transition and, 88–91, 112, 175, 232 dictatorships and, 146 industrialisation and, 66–73, 74, 76, 80, 81, 83, 109, 110, 140, 211 investment in, 52–5, 80, 88–91, 94–8, 122, 165, 175 resource curse and, 181 technology and, 62–83, 99, 109, 110, 111–12 human rights, 127 humanism, 170 Hume, David, 182 hunter-gatherer societies, 6, 17, 18, 20, 21–2, 30, 33–4, 203, 206, 207 hydraulic hypothesis, 184 I Ice Age, 18, 19 immigration, see migration Inca civilisation, 154, 205 inclusive vs extractive institutions, 145–61, 172, 186–7, 198, 209, 236 income effect, 89, 93 income per capita, 4, 8, 31, 102, 106, 109, 117, 122, 130, 131–5 diversity and, 229 future orientation and, 198 inequality, 131–5, 132, 134, 210 institutions and, 155, 160 trade and, 137 India, 23, 111, 112, 113, 131, 138, 154, 210 individualism, 165, 176, 190–91, 197 Indonesia, 154, 207 Industrial Revolution (1760–1840), see industrialisation industrialisation, 6, 45–7, 55, 57–62, 85, 86, 109, 121, 124, 139, 181, 198–9, 240 agriculture and, 181, 202 decline of, 107–10, 139, 140 education and, 64, 66–83, 89, 99, 109, 110, 140, 211 environment and, 116, 123, 241 institutions and, 147–51 skilled labour and, 67, 71, 137 trade and, 136, 138 inequality, 7, 9–10, 44, 74, 106 climate and, 155, 203–4 colonialism and, 135, 137, 140, 152–9, 235 cultural traits and, 163–77 diversity and, 215–32 education and, 127, 140 geography and, 179–99, 203–4 institutions and, 147–61, 172 legal systems and, 154–5 Neolithic Revolution and, 201–14, 236–7 trade and, 135–40 infant mortality, 2, 29, 41, 57, 89, 98, 121, 127, 128, 180 influenza, 205 innovation, 6, 58, 59, 111 age of growth, 111 climate change and, 118, 123 competition and, 184, 186, 198 cooking and, 17 diversity and, 9, 215–16, 226–30 education and, 53, 91, 99 food surpluses and, 4 industrialisation and, 58, 61–2, 65, 83 institutions and, 144, 161 literacy and, 72 Malthusian epoch, 4, 47, 48 Neolithic Revolution, 23, 120, 204 population size and, 47, 48, 120, 204 institutions, 147–61, 172, 175, 182–7, 198, 204, 213 climate and, 155–6 colonialism and, 152—9, 175 competition and, 182–6 democracy, 151–2, 172 geography and, 181, 182, 186–7, 198, 207, 208–10 technology and, 147–51, 176, 231 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 234 International Organization for Standardization, 111 Internet, 101, 111, 130 Inuit, 49, 195—6 invertebrates, 14 investment vs consumption strategy, 188–90, 213 Ireland, 36–7, 91, 94–6, 175 iron ore, 60 irrigation, 22, 23, 120, 141–2, 160, 168, 184, 190 Isabella I, Queen of Castile, 183 Islam, 63 Israel, 2, 13, 18, 201 Italy, 112, 127, 137, 147, 160, 171–3, 185 J Jacquard, Joseph-Marie, 150 James II and VII, King of England and Scotland, 148, 159 Japan, 62, 77, 112, 146, 210, 213, 226, 233 Jericho, 3, 22–3, 24 Jerusalem, 1–2 Jewish people; Judaism, 63, 88–9, 166–7, 169 João II, King of Portugal, 182–3 Joshua ben Gamla, 166 Judaean Revolt (66–70 CE), 166 Judah ha-Nasi, 166 K Kahneman, Daniel, 192 Kant, Immanuel, 170 Karataş, 40 Kay, John, 59 Kenya, 131 kettle analogy, 43, 46, 100 Keynes, John Maynard, 115 Khirokitia, 40 Khoisan, 207 Kitson, James, 75 Korea, 77, 91, 143, 144, 146, 151, 159, 171, 177, 185, 212, 226, 231 L labour productivity, 131 lactase persistence, 24–5 land ownership of, 77, 155 strategies of use, 188–90 see also agriculture landlocked countries, 181 language, 195–8, 221–2 Latin America, see Central America; South America law of diminishing marginal productivity, 133 Lee, William, 147 legal systems, 154–5 Leo X, Pope, 163 Lerna, 40 life expectancy, 2, 41, 57, 89, 99, 102–3, 103, 114, 121, 127, 128, 130 light bulbs, 60 linguistic niche hypothesis, 196 literacy, 2, 63–8, 66, 70–71, 72, 88, 92, 95, 107, 112 Judaism and, 166, 167 Ottoman Empire and, 184 Protestant Reformation and, 90, 164, 165, 167 literature, 58, 59, 62, 216 livestock, 179–80 living standards, 1–10, 28, 94, 99, 101–7, 114, 121–4, 127–31, 240 diversity and, 217–18, 222, 224–32 hunter-gatherer societies, 30, 33 Malthusian thesis and, 3–5, 6, 28–41, 240 London, England, 34, 150 long-term orientation, see future orientation loss aversion, 192–5 lost paradise myth, 34 Lumière brothers, 105 Luther, Martin, 90, 163 Luxembourg, 160 M Madagascar, 207 Madrid, Spain, 40 Mahabharata, 59 maize, 21, 35, 37–9, 190, 203 malaria, 156, 180, 205 Malthus, Thomas, 3–5, 27–30, 50 Malthusian epoch, 3–5, 6, 27–41, 45–7, 83, 85, 99–100, 102, 112, 151, 156, 232 cultural traits and, 52, 54, 89, 94, 95, 97, 98, 188, 193 economic ice age, 39–41 geography and, 181, 188, 193 population composition, 50, 54 population swings, 6, 33–9 poverty trap, 5, 25, 45, 121, 235, 240 Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517), 48 manufacturing, 107–10 Marconi, Guglielmo, 104 marriage, 86–7, 87 Marx, Karl, 9, 27, 62, 73, 74, 78 Mary II, King of England and Scotland, 148 Massachusetts, United States, 81 Mayan civilisation, 3, 33, 46, 121, 154 McCloskey, Deirdre, 57–8 McLean, Malcolm, 111 measles, 205 mechanical drawing, 69 Mediterranean Sea, 13, 19, 20, 127, 213 Meiji Restoration (1868), 62, 146, 213 Memphis, Egypt, 23 Meso-America colonialism in, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 186–7, 205–6 diversity in, 220–21 emigration from, 127 fertility rates in, 112 income per capita in, 106 industrialisation in, 241 institutions in, 156, 157, 158, 160, 186–7, 236 land ownership in, 77, 155 living conditions in, 7 Malthusian crises in, 33 Neolithic Revolution in, 21, 202, 203, 204, 205–6 population density in, 154, 156 poverty in, 113 trade in, 136 writing, development of, 24 Mesolithic period, 40 Mesopotamia, 23, 24, 40, 59 see also Fertile Crescent Methodism, 164 Mexico, 103, 108, 111, 154, 205 microscopes, 64 middle class, 62, 152 Middle East agriculture in, 20, 21, 23, 192, 202–4, 206, 210, 214 emigration from, 127 hunter-gatherer societies in, 33 life expectancy in, 40 marriage in, 87 Neolithic Revolution in, 20, 21, 23, 40, 48, 122, 192, 202–4, 206, 210, 214 migration, 127, 174, 217, 218 Mill, John Stuart, 27 mining, 59, 60, 61, 70, 71 Misérables, Les (Hugo), 59 mita system, 152–3 Mitochondrial Eve, 18 Modernisation Hypothesis, 152 Mokyr, Joel, 170 Mongol Empire (1206–1368), 34 Morse, Samuel, 60 mosquitoes, 180 moths, 51 Mount Carmel, Israel, 13, 18 multicultural societies, 218 Murasaki Shikibu, 59 music, 58, 215–16 N nanotechnology, 119 Naples, Italy, 40 Napoleon, Emperor of the French, 184 Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), 62, 146, 153 Native Americans, 33, 155 Natufian culture (13,000–9500 BCE), 20 Nea Nikomedeia, 40 Neanderthals, 13 Neolithic Revolution, 6, 9, 20–25, 29–41, 46, 48, 51, 120, 122, 199, 201–14, 210, 236–7 diseases and, 204–5 geography and, 199, 203–4 head start and, 29, 34, 48, 202, 204, 206, 210–12, 236–7 technology and, 29–30, 48, 120, 201–2, 204, 206, 207, 209–12 Netherlands, 37, 40, 64, 65, 75, 147, 148, 164, 213 New Guinea, 21, 207 New World crops, 35–9, 94–6, 195 New York City, 23, 60, 61, 217 New Zealand, 106, 153, 154, 157, 207 Newcomen, Thomas, 59 Nigeria, 207 Nile River, 18, 20, 23, 206, 207, 236 North America, 7, 41, 58, 62, 98 colonialism in, 37, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158 economic growth in, 115 fertility rates in, 85 industrialisation, 60, 72, 107, 241 institutions in, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 160, 175 land ownership in, 77, 155 Malthusian crises in, 33 Neolithic Revolution in, 202, 203, 204 technological development in, 58, 61–2 North Korea, 143, 144, 146, 151, 159, 171, 177, 212, 231 North, Douglass, 145 Norway, 104 nuclear energy, 44, 111 numeracy, 63, 67, 88 nurturing strategy, 53 O obesity, 171, 198 Oceania, 7, 32, 87, 105, 202, 203, 207 Ohalo II site, Israel, 201 oil crisis (1973), 115 Opium War, First (1839–42), 61 opportunity cost, 89, 93 Ottoman Empire (1299–1922), 1–2, 64, 173, 182, 183–4 Out of Africa hypothesis, 5, 18–20, 30, 119, 120, 124, 218–32, 221, 222, 237 outsourcing, 115 Owen, Robert, 75 P Pakistan, 111 Palmer, Robert, 215 paper, 61 Paraguay, 103 Paris, France, 34, 40, 150 Pasteur, Louis, 102 Paul the Apostle, 163 Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 72 pendulum clocks, 64 per capita income, see income per capita Perry, Matthew, 62 Persia, 48, 63, 121, 213 Peru, 152–3, 205 Pharisees, 166 phase transition, 43–6, 50, 83, 98, 99–100, 122, 151 Philippines, 207 phonographs, 104 Pickford, Mary, 105 Pitcairn Islands, 33 Pizarro, Francisco, 205 Plato, 9 Pleistocene period, 19 ploughing, 191–2 pneumonia, 205 politeness distinctions, 197 political extremism, 106 political fragmentation, 182–7, 207 pollution, 116–18 Polynesia, 32, 48 population, 46–55, 47 composition of, 50–55 demographic transition, 6, 85–100, 106, 112–18, 175 diseases and, 204–5 diversity of, 9, 142, 160, 177, 214, 215–32, 237 institutions and, 208 labour and, 34–5 Malthusian thesis, 3–5, 6, 28–41, 46, 50, 156 technology and, 5, 29–30, 31, 47–55, 89, 120–24, 156, 179, 181, 202, 211 unified growth theory, 46–55 Portugal, 38, 153, 154, 182–3 positive feedback loops, 17, 48 postal services, 104 potatoes, 36–7, 94–6 poverty, 113–14, 114 poverty trap, 5, 25, 45, 121, 235, 240 Presley, Elvis, 216 printing, 48–9, 64–5, 104, 183–4, 213 production lines, 61 property rights, 92, 144–6, 148, 154, 155, 167, 197, 198, 204, 234 Protestantism, 217 cultural traits, 164–5, 175, 184 Reformation (1517–1648), 63, 90, 163–4, 184 proximate vs ultimate factors, 9, 140–42, 198 Prussia (1525–1918), 68–9, 72, 90, 146, 153, 165 Puritans, 175 Putnam, Robert, 172 Pygmies, 207 Q Qing Empire (1636–1912), 61 Quakers, 175 quantity–quality trade-off, 52–5, 88–91 quantum mechanics, 44 quasi-natural historical experiments, 38–9, 70, 90 Quebec, 54 R racism, 106, 168, 198, 215, 216, 217 radio, 101, 104–5, 111 Rational Optimist, The (Ridley), 216 Red Sea, 19 Reformation (1517–1648), 63, 90, 163 refrigerators, 101 Renaissance (c. 1400–1600), 64, 170 resource curse, 181 Ricardo, David, 27, 144 rice, 190 Ridley, Matt, 216 Roberts, Richard, 80 rock ’n’ roll music, 215–16 Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, 90 Rome, ancient, 1–2, 40, 46, 63, 88, 121, 166, 170, 212 Rome, city of, 23 Roosevelt, Franklin, 217 Royal African Company, 148 rule of law, 144, 186, 204 running water, 101 Russian Empire (1721–1917), 73, 77 Russian Revolution (1917), 73 Rust Belt, 108, 110 S Sadducees, 166 Sahara Desert, 21, 179, 204, 214, 236 Sámi, 195–6 Scandinavia, 185, 211 science, 20, 22, 58, 69, 75, 120, 216 Scotland, 175 Scramble for Africa (1884–1914), 158 Sea of Galilee, 201 serial founder effect, 219–22 Seven Years War (1756–63), 154 sewerage, 101 Shakespeare, William, 59 Shimon ben Shetach, 166 Siberia, 236 silk, 81 Silk Road, 34 Sinai Peninsula, 18 Singapore, 146, 154 skin pigmentation, 51 skyscrapers, 60, 61 Slater, Samuel, 72 slavery, 8, 106, 136, 148–9, 154, 155, 168, 198, 236 sleeping sickness, 180 smallpox, 96, 102, 205 Smith, Adam, 144 smoking, 198 social capital, 172–3, 175 social cohesion, 9, 160, 167, 175, 186, 197, 218, 226, 229–31, 234, 237 social hierarchies, 98, 172, 197, 207, 208–10 soil, 8, 21, 30, 141, 155, 186, 187, 191, 198, 204, 209, 236 Solow, Robert, 132–3 Song Empire (960–1279), 176, 184 South America agricultural productivity in, 131 colonialism in, 154, 156, 157, 158, 186–7, 205 diversity in, 220–21 emigration from, 127 fertility rates in, 112 geography of, 186–7 income per capita in, 106 industrialisation in, 241 institutions in, 154, 156, 157, 158, 160, 186–7 land ownership in, 77, 155 living standards in, 7 Neolithic Revolution in, 202, 203, 204, 205–6 population density in, 154, 156 poverty in, 113 trade in, 136 South East Asia, 19, 20, 21, 131, 180, 184, 202 South Korea, 77, 91, 144, 146, 151, 159, 171, 177, 210, 212, 231 Soviet Union (1922–91), 59 Spaichi, Hans, 150 Spain, 40, 148–9, 152–3, 154, 183, 185, 205 Spanish flu pandemic (1918–20), 106, 240 Sputnik 1 launch (1957), 59 squirrels, 1, 239 Sri Lanka, 103 state formation, 208–10 steam engines, 59, 60, 70–71, 97 steam locomotives, 60, 97 steel, 60, 61 Stockholm, Sweden, 97–8 subsistence, 1, 4–5, 20, 32, 33, 36–7, 39, 94–6 substitution effect, 89, 93 Sumer (c. 4500–1900 BCE), 23, 24, 59 Sweden, 40, 93, 97–8, 104, 137, 138, 160 Swift, Jonathan, 169 Switzerland, 72, 104, 138, 160, 164, 185 T Taiwan, 77, 146, 206 Tale of Genji, The (Shikibu), 59 Tanna, Vanuatu, 233–4, 237–8 Tasmania, 49 taxation, 175, 208, 209, 211, 234 technology, 3, 20, 22, 24, 25, 111–12, 120–24, 147, 240 accelerations, 58–62 agricultural comparative advantage and, 181, 211–12, 237 competition and, 182–6 cultural traits and, 52–5, 121, 169–70, 176, 231 diversity and, 215–16, 226–30 education and, 62–83, 99, 109, 110, 111–12 hands, evolution of, 17 head starts, 29, 34, 48, 146, 181, 185, 201–2, 204, 206, 210–12, 236–7 institutions and, 147–51, 176, 231 living standards and, 104 Neolithic Revolution and, 29–30, 48, 120, 201–2, 204, 206, 207, 209–12 population and, 5, 29–30, 31, 47–55, 89, 120–24, 156, 179, 181, 202, 211 regressions in, 49 Tel Aswad, Syria, 201 Tel Jericho, West Bank, 201 telegraph, 60, 104 telephones, 104 telescopes, 64 television, 101, 111 textiles, 72, 79, 80, 93, 138, 147 Theory of Everything, 44 theory of general relativity, 44 thrifty gene hypothesis, 171 Tigris River, 20, 23, 206, 236 Titanic, 105 toilets, 101 Tonga, 48 trade, 135–40, 144, 185, 235 fertility rates and, 137–8 geography and, 181, 185 Transcaucasia, 21 Trump, Donald, 109–10 trust, 8, 165, 172–4, 175, 236 tsetse flies, 180 Turkey, 23, 40, 210 Tversky, Amos, 192 typhus, 37 U Uganda, 131 ultimate vs proximate factors, 9, 140–42, 198 unified growth theory, 44–55 United Kingdom Brexit (2016–20), 110 child labour in, 80–81 colonialism, 61, 138, 147, 153–5 education in, 67–8, 71–2, 75–6, 78, 91, 96–7 fertility rates in, 91, 83, 97 gender wage gap in, 93 geography of, 185 income per capita in, 210 industrial decline in, 108, 110 industrialisation in, 59, 67–8, 71–2, 75, 96–7, 138, 147, 148, 181 institutions in, 147–51, 154–5, 159 literacy in, 65 Neolithic Revolution in, 210 Opium War, First (1839–42), 61 postal service in, 104 Protestantism in, 164 trade in, 136–7 United Nations, 13 United States African Americans, 130–31, 155, 156, 215–17 agricultural productivity, 131 Apollo program (1961–72), 59 child labour in, 78, 81–3 Civil War (1861–5), 62 education in, 75, 77, 90 fertility rates in, 85, 92, 93 future orientation, 190 gender wage gap in, 93 Great Migration (1916–70), 215 hookworm in, 90 immigration to, 127, 192, 217 income per capita in, 106 industrial decline in, 107–8, 109–10 industrialisation in, 60–61, 67, 69, 71, 72, 138 infant mortality in, 130–31 institutions in, 155, 157, 175 land ownership in, 77 life expectancy in, 130 living standards in, 101, 103, 105, 106, 130 Pacific War (1941–5), 233 Ur, 23 urbanisation, 149, 153, 167, 211–12, 237 Uruguay, 77 Uruk, 23 V vaccinations, 102 Vanuatu, 48, 233–4, 237–8 Venice, Republic of (697–1797), 183 vertebrates, 14 Vietnam, 146 Vikings, 47 Virgil, 59 vitamin D, 51 Voltaire, 154 W wages, 39, 40 Black Death and, 34–5, 36, 149 fertility rates and, 89, 93 women, 91–4, 99, 122 Wallace, Alfred Russel, 27 War of the Worlds, The (Wells), 105 war, 39, 102, 123, 149, 154 washing machines, 101 Washington Consensus, 234 Watt, James, 59 Weber, Max, 164 welfare state, 74 Wells, Herbert George, 105 Wesley, John, 164 wheat, 21, 23, 28, 34, 36, 40, 94, 111, 133, 136, 190, 201, 202, 203 whooping cough, 102 Why Nations Fail (Acemoglu and Robinson), 145–6 William III and II, King of England and Scotland, 148, 159 Wittfogel, Karl, 184 Wizard of Oz, The (1939 film), 105 women childbirth, 2, 41, 83 education of, 91, 92, 112 gender wage gap, 91–4, 99, 122 woodwork, 61 World Bank, 112, 113, 234 World Values Survey, 189, 192, 194 World War I (1914–18), 105, 106, 136, 240 World War II (1939–45), 106, 115, 233, 240 writing, 24, 59 Y Yangtze River, 122, 185, 236 yellow fever, 156 Z Zealots, 166 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z About the Author Oded Galor is Herbert H.

1491
by Charles C. Mann
Published 8 Aug 2005

Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York: Norton. Crosby, A. W. 2003a. America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed. ———. 2003b. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Praeger, rev. ed. ———. 2002. Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology Through History. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1994. “The Columbian Voyages, the Columbian Exchange, and Their Historians,” in Germs, Seeds, and Animals: Studies in Ecological History. London: M. E. Sharpe. ———. 1992. “Hawaiian Depopulation as a Model for the Amerindian Experience,” in T.

…

Meanwhile, plantations of rubber trees, an Amazon native, undulate across Malaysian hillsides; peppers and tomatoes from Mesoamerica form the culinary backbones of Thailand and Italy; Andean potatoes lead Ireland to feast and famine; and apples, native to the Middle East, appear in markets from Manaus to Manila to Manhattan. Back in 1972 Crosby invented a term for this biological ferment: the Columbian Exchange. By knitting together the seams of Pangaea, Columbus set off an ecological explosion of a magnitude unseen since the Ice Ages. Some species were shocked into decline (most prominent among them Homo sapiens, which in the century and a half after Columbus lost a fifth of its number, mainly to disease).

…

Perhaps paradoxically, some works were so important to this book that my notes give short shrift to them; they are in the background everywhere, but rarely summoned to make a specific point. For the first section, these would include Terence d’Altroy’s The Incas; William Cronon’s Changes in the Land; Alfred W. Crosby’s Columbian Exchange and Ecological Imperialism; John Hemming’s Conquest of the Incas; Karen Ordahl Kuppermann’s Indians and English; María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco’s History of the Inca Realm; and Neal Salisbury’s Manitou and Providence. As I stitched together the second section, books that kept my keyboard constant company included Ignacio Bernal’s The Olmec World; Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel; Brian Fagan’s Ancient North America; Stuart Fiedel’s Prehistory of the Americas; Nina Jablonski’s edited collection, The First Americans; the special issue of the Boletín de Arqueología PUCP edited by Peter Kaulicke and William Isbell; Alan Kolata’s The Tiwanaku; Mike Moseley’s marvelous Incas and Their Ancestors; and the historical writings of David Meltzer, which I hope he will someday combine into a book, so that people like me won’t have to keep piles of photocopies.

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
by Toby Ord
Published 24 Mar 2020

We can’t rule out the loss of more than 90 percent of the population of the Americas during that century, though the number could also be much lower.12 And it is very difficult to tease out how much of this should be attributed to war and occupation, rather than disease. As a rough upper bound, the Columbian exchange may have killed as many as 10 percent of the world’s people.13 Centuries later, the world had become so interconnected that a truly global pandemic was possible. Near the end of the First World War, a devastating strain of influenza (known as the 1918 flu or Spanish Flu) spread to six continents, and even remote Pacific islands.

…

The 1918 flu pandemic was remarkable in having very little apparent effect on the world’s development despite its global reach. It looks like it was lost in the wake of the First World War, which despite a smaller death toll, seems to have had a much larger effect on the course of history.16 It is less clear what lesson to draw from the Columbian exchange due to our lack of good records and its mix of causes. Pandemics were clearly a part of what led to a regional collapse of civilization, but we don’t know whether this would have occurred had it not been for the accompanying violence and imperial rule. The strongest case against existential risk from natural pandemics is the fossil record argument from Chapter 3.

…

NOAA (2019). Global Monthly Mean CO2. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/. Norris, R. S., and Kristensen, H. M. (2012). “The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Nuclear Order of Battle, October and November 1962.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 68(6), 85–91. Nunn, N., and Qian, N. (2010). “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(2), 163–88. O’Toole, G. (2013). If the Bee Disappeared Off the Face of the Earth, Man Would Only Have Four Years Left to Live. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/27/einstein-bees/. Obama, B. (2016). Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Abe of Japan at Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality From the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
by Walter Scheidel
Published 17 Jan 2017

By the end of the medieval period, the gradual merging of the Old World’s regional disease pools in the wake of commercial and eventually military contacts had ensured maximum coverage, causing many of these killer diseases to become endemic. By contrast, indigenous Americans enjoyed a less severe disease environment and lacked any prior exposure to these Old World scourges. Exploration and conquest opened up what Alfred Crosby called the “Columbian exchange,” transatlantic contacts that swiftly introduced a plethora of lethal infections to the Americas. And although the New World returned the favor by sending syphilis the other way, the European pathogen contribution to the Americas was much more diverse and vastly more catastrophic.1 Smallpox and measles were the most devastating of the diseases introduced by Europeans: long endemic as early childhood diseases in the Old World, they struck the Americas in epidemic outbreaks.

…

This raises two pressing questions: Has there been no other way to level inequality? And is there now? It is time to explore less bloody alternatives to our Four Horsemen. 1 See Diamond 1997: 195–214 for the differences between the pre-Columbian Old and New World disease pools. Crosby 1972 and 2004 are classic accounts of the Columbian exchange. For a very brief summary, see Nunn and Qian 2010: 165–167. 2 The following survey is based on Cook 1998. My section caption is a quote from the Mayan Chilam Balam de Chuyamel in Cook 1998: 216. Quotes: 202, 67. 3 For the debate, see McCaa 2000; Newson 2006; Livi Bacci 2008 (who emphasizes the multiplicity of causal factors).

…

Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Economics, Working Paper No. 03/WP/2014. Crone, Patricia. 2003. Pre-industrial societies: anatomy of the pre-modern world. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Cronin, James E. 1991. The politics of state expansion: war, state and society in twentieth-century Britain. London: Routledge. Crosby, Alfred. 1972. The Columbian exchange: biological and cultural consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Westview Press. Crosby, Alfred. 2004. Ecological imperialism: the biological expansion of Europe, 900–1900. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Culbert, T. Patrick, ed. 1973. The Classic Maya collapse. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food
by Chris van Tulleken
Published 26 Jun 2023

’ * One of the criticisms of VAT is that poor people spend a far higher proportion of their income on it than rich people and so, to counteract this, certain essential goods are made VAT exempt (or, more properly, given a zero rate, which is the same thing but with a slight legal wrinkle that only tax lawyers understand). VAT is payable on all luxury goods. † For me, the whole episode sits uncomfortably alongside the online claim of P&G’s leadership team that it ‘always strives to use their knowledge and experience to improve consumers’ lives’. ‡ * In the ‘New World’, 1492 marks the beginning of the ‘Columbian exchange’, a strange euphemism that implies trade and mutual benefit, rather than what actually happened – the start of a period known as the Great Dying, but which would be better described as the Great Killing. Historians of pre-Columbian American history describe a cycle of murder, violence and slavery, catalysed by Columbus and continued by later Europeans to exploit the continent’s resources.

…

Available from: https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/27/kelloggs-court-challenge-new-uk-rules-high-sugar-cereals. 7 Cook SF, Borah W. Essays in Population History: Mexico and California. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979. 8 Denevan WM, Lovell WG. The Native Population of the Americas in 1492. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. 9 Nunn N, Qian N. The Columbian Exchange: a history of disease, food, and ideas. Journal of Economic Perspectives 2010; 24: 163–88. 10 Marshall M, Climate crisis: what lessons can we learn from the last great cooling-off period? 2022. Available from: theguardian.com/ environment/2022/may/o9/climate-crisis-lessons-to-learn-from-the-little-ice-age-cooling. 11 Koch A, Brierley C, Maslin MM, et al.

…

Abbott, 65, 179, 201, 296 ABC News, 101n Aboriginal Australians, 175 Accum, Frederick, 46 acetate, 88 Ad Hoc Joint Task Force, 65 Adane, Christina, 142–3 Addicted to Food (podcast), 168 Addicted to Food (Smith), 304 addiction, 9, 106, 151–68, 179, 206–7, 271, 303–4 additives, 208–21, 271, 272 regulation of, 225–33 ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), 209 Advertising Association, 205n Advertising Standards Agency, 209 advertising, see marketing Africa, 246–7, 286 agriculture antibiotic resistance and, 266 meat production, 259–63 oil production, 258–9 Agyemang, Charles, 247 AIBMR Life Sciences, 233 Air Canada, 151 airline food, 151 alcohol, 9, 128n, 164, 166, 199 Aldi, 159, 160, 264 Algeria, 25 alginate, 22 allergic diseases, 216 Alliance for Potato Research and Education (APRE), 101n Alliance to Save our Antibiotics, 266 Allison, David, 100n Alpen, 52 Alzheimer’s disease, 62 Amazon, 264 Amazon region, 238–43, 248–9, 262, 263 American Academy of Paediatrics, 292 American Beverage Association, 101n American College of Sports Medicine, 133 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,202 American Society for Nutrition, 65 Angola, 246, 286 anti-fat bias, 6 antibiotics, 216, 226, 230, 255, 266–7 antioxidant supplements, 47 anxiety, 156, 233 appetite regulation, 31, 34, 37, 41, 56–9, 104, 106–8, 160, 173 Apple, 140 Applebaum, Rhona, 133 apples, 171–2 Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), 240, 272, 277 Argentina, 262, 263 arms races, 1–4, 47, 74, 84, 86 arrowroot starch, 21 artificial colours, 205n artificial sweeteners, 5, 23, 90–91, 194n, 200–206, 209, 272 Asda, 159, 205n, 296 asthma, 214n, 216 astrology, 49–50 Atkins, Robert, 111, 116 atoms, 81 ATP (adenosine triphosphate), 82 Attia, Peter, 112 Auschwitz concentration camp, 73 Australasian Guideline, 292 Australia, 6, 80, 84, 140–41, 256 autoimmune diseases, 216 Avena, Nicole, 153–5, 167n, 168, 189 Awesome Chips, 140 baby food/formula, 93, 172n, 236, 274, 288–90 bacteria, 3, 4 butter and, 24 exudate, 22 first age of eating, 80–83 microbiome, 87–8, 155, 204, 213–21, 271, 272–3, 289 baked beans, 157–8 Ballarin, Oswaldo, 288, 289–90 Bank of England, 282 Barabási, Albert-László, 189 Barbosa, Felipe, 237 Barcarena, Brazil, 239–40, 265 BASF, 73 Batterham, Rachel, 35–7, 59, 61, 66, 145–6, 152 Bayer, 73 beef, 141–2, 189 farming of, 85–8, 92, 99, 190, 215, 260–61, 267, 274 protein isolates, 154 Belém, Brazil, 238, 248 Bellini, Alessandra, 297 BENEO, 65 Benin, 286 beriberi, 42 Berridge, Kent, 156n Bert, Paul, 103 beta-carotene, 47, 71 Bethesda, Maryland, 53 Better Food Index, 298 Biggest Loser, The, 54 Bilott, Rob, 212 Binley, Gary, 275 bisphenol A, 227 Bite Back, 297–8 bitter tastes, 194, 195, 196, 198–9 Black communities, 245–6 BlackRock, 282 bladder, 194n Blair, Steven, 122, 133, 134 blood fat profiles, 62 blood pressure, 109 blue whales, 102 Bluebell Capital, 282 BMI (body mass index), 50, 54, 138n, 242 body fat, 100–104 Bolton, Lizzie, 31 bones, 72, 85, 95–7, 175, 271 bonobos, 100 Boots, 296 Borneo, 259 Boston, Massachusetts, 139, 143 Boyland, Emma, 141 Boyle, Bob, 292 Bozer, Ahmet, 283 Brabeck-Letmathe, Peter, 284 Brazil, 6, 32, 41–5, 60, 75, 118, 157, 159, 236–43, 248–9 meat production in, 262, 263 plastic waste in, 268 soy industry, 239–40 traditional diet, displacement of, 43–4, 197–8, 236–49 bread, 173–4, 208–9 Break Free From Plastic, 267 breast cancer, 60, 62 breastfeeding, 42, 94–6, 130, 185, 187, 195, 214, 288–94 Brecon Beacons, Wales, 52 Bristol University, 25 British and Irish Legal Information Institute, 250 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 53, 125, 139, 168 British Dietetic Association, 296 British Heart Foundation, 128, 296 British Journal of Nutrition, 75 British Medical Journal, 49, 60, 236 British Museum, London, 180 British Nutrition Foundation, 295 Broad Leib, Emily, 231, 233, 234, 243 Brochet, Frédéric, 182n Brown, Alan, 93 Brown, Amy, 293 Bunge Limited, 277 Burger King, 140, 173 Burkina Faso, 286 Burmese pythons, 88 butter, 24–7, 28n, 70–75 butyrate, 88 buy-one-get-one-free deals, 283 C-reactive protein, 160 Cabo Verde, 286 caesarean delivery, 214n caffeine, 198, 199 calcium, 85, 120, 191, 195 Caldwell, Carlyle ‘Corky’, 21 calories, 4–5, 38, 40, 92 artificial sweeteners, 23 energy-dense foods, 66, 176–7, 271, 301 exercise and, 122–36 regulation system, 102–8 restriction of, 54 UPF, 10, 11, 32, 36, 45, 48, 57, 58, 65–6, 72, 90 Cambridge University, 59, 107, 125, 252, 291 Cameroon, 286 Campbell Soup Company, 65 Canada, 6, 80, 106, 151 Cancer Research UK, 296 cancer, 6, 9, 45, 60, 189, 216, 218, 227, 232, 267 Cannon, Geoffrey, 119n canola oil, 28 Cant, Alasdair, 148, 167 Carb Killa, 154, 155 carbohydrates, 43, 109, 111–17 carbon dioxide, 80, 81, 260, 263, 272 carbon, 80, 81–2, 85 carbon-chain saturation, 24 carboxymethylcellulose, 211, 217–19, 302 cardiovascular disease, 61, 62, 137, 189, 231 Cargill, 142, 277, 295 Carmody, Rachel, 88–9 Carney, Mark, 282, 283 carnivores, 85 carotenoids, 188 Carr, Allen, 11, 153 carrageenan, 15, 22 cattle, 85–8, 92, 99, 190, 215, 274 Cell Metabolism, 34 cells, 1–3 cellulose, 87 Center for Science in the Public Interest, 112 Central African Republic, 286 Centre for Industrial Rheology, 23 Centre for Social Justice, 296 Centre for the Study of the Senses, 180 Cereal Partners Worldwide, 64 Chad, 286 Change4 Life, 205 Channel 4 News, 125 Chauvin, Derek, 245 cheese, 46 Cheeselets, 254 Cheetos, 299 chemotherapy, 267 chewing, 174–5, 177, 183, 272 chewing gum, 212 Chi-Med, 285 Chicago, Illinois, 93, 130 chicken, 261–2, 264 chicken nuggets, 159 Chile, 299 chimpanzees, 3, 46, 89n, 100 China, 61, 247, 268, 291 chlorine, 81n, 85 chlorine dioxide, 229 cholecystokinin, 105n Christianity, 101 Chukotka, Russia, 186n cigarettes, see smoking CIMMYT, 65 cinnamon, 185n Citigroup, 276 climate change, 6, 255–68, 272 Clooney, George, 290 Clostridium difficile, 221 coal, 69–75, 90 cobalt, 85 Coca-Cola, 101n, 120, 121, 158, 187, 198–202, 283–4 cocaine and, 198 plastic waste, 267–8 research funding, 133–6, 295, 296 sugar in, 198–202 cocaine, 164, 166, 198, 199 Coco Pops, 30–31, 37, 38–40, 48, 172, 173 cocoa mass, 31 coconut fat, 29 coconut palms, 258 cod liver oil, 97 Code, The, 290 Colloid and Polymer Science, 71 Columbian exchange, 255n Compass Group/Chartwells UK, 297 Compass, 296 Conagra, 295 conflicts of interest, 64, 132–6, 178–9 Congo region, 118, 286 constipation, 157 Co-operative Group, 159, 205n, 264 copper, 85 Cordara, Roderick, 252, 254 corn, 21, 118, 225–6, 228, 229–30, 273 Corn Oil ONE, 225–6, 228, 229–30 coronary thrombosis, 45 cortisol, 143 cost-of-living crisis (2022–), 17–18 Costa Coffee, 140, 217, 297, 301 Costa Ferreira, Paula, 241, 243 Costcutter, 205n Côte d’Ivoire, 286 cottonseed oil, 27, 28 Covid-19 pandemic, 147 cows, see cattle COZ corn oil, 225–6, 228, 229–30 Cranswick’s, Hull, 264 Crawley, Helen, 295 Cream o’ Galloway, 19 Creed, Greg, 247 Crisco, 28 Crohn’s disease, 62, 216, 219 Crunchy Nut Clusters, 52 cyclamate, 201 Da Costa Louzada, Maria, 159–60, 301, 303 damascenone, 188 dandruff, 90 Danone, 65, 179, 201, 281, 282, 286, 292, 295, 296, 297 DATEM, 208, 211–13, 302 Davis, Clara, 46, 93–9 De Graaf, Kees, 178 Death in the Pot (Accum), 46 death, 6, 7, 47, 62, 189 Degesch, 73 dehydration, 198 delayed gratification, 148–9 Deliveroo, 297 Deltas, 254 dementia, 7, 62, 189 Democratic Republic of the Congo, 286 Denmark, 191 Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (UK), 124, 132 Department of Agriculture (US), 112, 189 depression, 62, 132, 227, 233 Deutsche Fettsäure Werke, 70 diabetes, 35, 62, 110, 198, 201–4, 216, 218, 220, 227, 241 Diabetes UK, 296 diacetyl, 70–71 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 164 diamorphine, 164 Dicken, Sam, 59–64, 66, 152 Dickinsonia costata, 83–4 diet experiments Hall, 55–9, 66, 175–6 Taubes, 112–15 van Tulleken, 35–7, 66, 102, 152–63 digestion ponds, 212 dimethylpolysiloxane, 244 diphosphates, 151 DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), 2–3, 85 dogs, 184–5 dolphins, 197 Domino’s Pizza, 247n dopamine, 105n, 156n Dorito Effect, The (Schatzker), 187 Doritos, 52, 251, 254 dose-dependent effects, 60 doubly labelled water sub-studies, 126–7, 129–30 Dr Pepper, 299 dreams, 156 dryness, 176 Duke University, 129 DuPont, 212–13, 229 Dusty Knuckle Potato Sourdough, 174 dysbiosis, 216–17, 234 dyspepsia, 62 E numbers, 210, 211, 244 Easy Way to Stop Smoking, The (Carr), 11, 153 eating, 4, 76, 79–99 first age of, 76, 79–83 second age of, 83–90, 100 third age of, 90–99, 108 emotional problems and, 147 instinct, 92–99 speed of, 177–8 Ebersole, Kara, 130 ecstasy, 68 edamame, 240, 261 Ediacara Hills, South Australia, 84 Edmonton, Alberta, 106 Egypt, ancient, 101 electrons, 82 elephants, 100 emulsifiers, 15, 17, 18, 19, 36, 154, 155, 160, 211 microbiome and, 217–19, 271, 272–3 endocrine system, 104, 108, 131, 272 Endres, John, 233 energy density, 66, 176–7, 271, 301 Eno, 285 Environmental Protection Agency (US), 212 environmental, social and governance (ESG), 278, 282 enzymes, 25, 26, 27n, 81n, 85, 86, 89 epilepsy, 116 Equatorial Guinea, 286 European Food Information Council, 66 European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 113 European Union (EU), 210, 233–4 Evonik Industries, 73 exercise, 122–36 Exercise is Medicine campaign, 133, 134, 136 Faber, Emmanuel, 282 Fahlberg, Constantin, 90 Fanta, 299 Fardet, Anthony, 171 Farooqi, Sadaf, 107 fats, 24–9, 43 hydrogenation, 26–7, 33, 231, 246 RBD (Refined, Bleached & Deodorized), 28–9 weight gain and, 110 fatty acids, 188–9 fatty liver disease, 62 feedback systems, 104, 108 Feingold, Ben, 209 FermaSure XL, 229 fertilisers, 257 fertility, 27, 131, 155, 227, 230, 233, 272 fibre, 55, 57, 60, 87, 155, 157, 171, 189, 215 Fidelity, 281 Finland, 175 First Steps Nutrition, 205, 295 fish oil, 47 Fisher, Franz, 69 Fitness Industry Association, 205n Five Guys, 140 fizzy drinks, 120–21 Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association (FEMA) 232 flavour; flavouring, 180–92, 193–207 enhancers, 193–4, 209–10 Fletcher, Paul, 163 Flössner, Otto, 71–2, 75 Floyd, George, 245 fluorine, 81n, 85 Food Additives Amendment (US, 1958), 227 Food and Drug Administration (US), 210, 225–32 food deserts/swamps, 139–40, 142–4 Food Foundation, 17–18 food matrix, 171, 191, 271 Food Standards Agency (UK), 40n, 210, 292 food waste, 128 FooDB database, 189 Forde, Ciarán, 64–5, 178–9 ‘forever chemicals’, 212 frailty, 62 France, 17, 60 free school meals, 142 Freeze Pops, 15 fried chicken, 245 Friedman, Milton, 282 Froneri, 279–81 Frosties, 299–300 fruit, 183 concentrate, 157 Gabon, 286 Galilei, Galileo, 109, 117 Gambia, 286 garlic, 189 Gearhardt, Ashley, 165 General Mills, 65 generally recognized as safe (GRAS), 228, 229, 230, 232 genes; genome, 1–3, 126, 138, 144–5, 147, 148, 177 Germany, 17, 68–75, 90–91 Ghana, 246–7, 286 ghrelin, 105n Gibney, Mike, 64 gingerbread men, 251 Global Energy Balance Network, 123, 133 glucose, 15, 31 glutamate, 193, 195 glycerine, 17, 18 ‘Good Cook, The’ (Olney), 44 Google, 140 Gordon, Aubrey, 50n Göring, Hermann, 71 gossypol, 27 Greece, ancient, 101 Greenland, 80 Greenpeace, 298 Greggs, 140, 302 Grenade, 154, 155 Grocer, The, 151 Growing Up in Singapore, 177 GSK, 285 Gü, 156n guanylate, 193, 195, 196 guar gum, 15, 17, 19, 22 Guardian, 245 Guinea, 286 Guinea Bissau, 286 gums, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 220, 272 Hackney Gelato, 15, 16 Hadean period, 79–80 Hadza people, 129–32 haem iron, 192 Haleon, 285 Hall, Kevin, 32, 34, 35, 51, 53–9, 60, 63, 106–7, 113, 168, 172 diet experiments, 55–9, 66, 175–6 Haribo, 52 Harper’s Weekly, 28n Hart, Paul, 16–29, 33, 66–7, 154, 188, 189, 206, 275–6 Harvard University, 88, 109, 114, 116, 159, 175, 231 Harvest Frost, MV, 240 heart disease, see cardiovascular disease Heath, Allister, 125 heavy water, 127 hedonic overdrive, 107 height, 8, 191 Heinz, 23, 158 Helicobacter pylori, 218 Hellmann’s, 23, 36 Henderson, Earl, 94–8 Henkel, Hugo, 70 herbicides, 257 herbivores, 85–8 heroin, 164, 199 Hershey, 295 Hervey, G.

Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit
by Barry Estabrook
Published 6 Jun 2011

But were it not for the efforts of Chetelat and his predecessors and colleagues at the Rick Center to find and conserve all seventeen species that make up the tomato family, there is a very real possibility that tomato production as we know it today would not exist. Of all the species that played a part in the great Columbian Exchange—the widespread mingling of plants, animals, and disease organisms between the Eastern and Western hemispheres following the establishment of Spanish colonies in the New World—the tomato surely would have topped the list as the least likely to succeed, never mind to become one of our favorite vegetables.

…

See also Campaign for Fair Food Benitez and, 1 boxing match, 1 Brown and, 1 early days, 1 fast food companies confrontation, 1 Flores and, 1 Florida governors and, 1 members, 1 surfxaholic36 and, 1 Whole Foods Market and, 1 Cobra, 1 Coles, Robert, 1 Colfer, Joan, 1 Collier County Health Department, 1, 2 Columbian Exchange, 1 community, pesticide exposure in, 1 Community Development Credit Union, 1 Compass Group, 1 conservation challenge, 1 consumer satisfaction, 1 convict lease programs, 1 cookbook, first appearance of tomato in, 1 Corkscrew Swamp, 1 Cortés, Hernán, 1 cover crops, 1, 2, 3 “coyote,” 1 crew bosses, 1 regular members of, 1 crime index, 1 prevention practices, 1 “crimson” gene, 1 Crist, Charlie, 1, 2 to Benitez, 1 to Reyes, 1 crop cover, 1, 2, 3 development, 1 management, 1 rotation, 1 cross-pollination, 1 Cuban tomatoes, 1 cubeta, 1 Cuello, Abel, 1 culture, tomato, 1 D Dade County, 1 Daiker, Davis, 1 Davilos, Ricardo, 1 Davis, Shelly, 1 debt-peonage, 1, 2 deformities.

The Locavore's Dilemma
by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu
Published 29 May 2012

Rhode observe in their 2008 survey of American agricultural history, the varieties of corn, wheat, fruits, cotton, and tobacco grown at the beginning of the 20th century were dramatically different from the varieties grown one hundred years earlier, while 1940s farm animals such as swine, sheep, and cattle bore little resemblance to those of 1800.10 Of course, along the way innovative farmers adopted and adapted domesticated plants and animals that had been developed in distant lands, such as in the “Columbian exchange” that followed the incorporation of the Americas into the world economy more than 500 years ago. Native American contributions included edible crops like the tomato, potato, sweet potato, chili pepper, cocoa, pineapples, beans, cassava, and corn, as well as tobacco and some varieties of cotton.

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See Common Agricultural Policy Carson, Rachel Cato the Elder Chambliss, Saxby Cheese(table) Chefs, elite status of professional Chicago meat-packing district China economic growth Han Churchill, Winston City agricultural productivity in developing counties development and economic growth edge food production in proximity to inner population percent living in surface area of trade and green See also Urbanization Cleveland, David Cliffe Leslie, Thomas Edward Climate change food security and trade and Climate criminals Climatic trends Coal Cockran, William Bourke Cocoa(table) Coffee(table) Collingwood, Henry W. Collinsville, Illinois Columbian exchange Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus Commodities boards nonedible agricultural sold in London(table) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Communication technologies Community-supported agriculture (CSA) pitfalls of Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) Condiments(table) Consistency Consumer behavior poor producer-, relationship standards of living and transportation Consumption energy European substitutions during military blockades expenditures local of meat products per capita in Denmark of protein, vitamins, and minerals unsustainable Convenience Conventional produce nutrition Cooke, Morris Llewellyn Cooperatives agricultural service Cork, Ireland Corn Belt Corporate welfare Countermeasures, Agricultural Crago, Linda Critser, Greg Cronon, William Crop diversification failures staple American See also specific crop types Cropland Crunchy Cons (Dreher) CSA.

A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America
by Tony Horwitz
Published 1 Jan 2008

There are a number of excellent books about environmental history and the interchange of plants, animals, and microorganisms known as the Columbian Exchange. Pioneering works in this field include Alfred Crosby’s Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 and William Cronon’s Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. More recent is Charles Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, an excellent and balanced overview of current scholarship on the Columbian Exchange, disease, and New World demography. My material on Verrazzano is mostly drawn from Lawrence Wroth’s The Voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano, which includes not only the navigator’s writings but a comprehensive look at what’s known about his life and voyages, as well as the geographical thinking of his day.

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.: The Florida State Historical Society, 1923. Cotten, Sallie Southall. The White Doe or the Legend of Virginia Dare. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1901. Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983. Crosby, Alfred. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1973. ———. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. London: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Cushing, Frank Hamilton. Zuñi: Selected Writings of Frank Hamilton Cushing. Edited by Jesse Green.

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy
by Philip Coggan
Published 6 Feb 2020

Only 14 types of mammals weighing over 100 pounds were domesticated and Jared Diamond points out that these were unevenly distributed; South America had just the llama and its close relative, the alpaca.19 North America, Australia and sub-Saharan Africa had no qualifying mammals at all. This must, Diamond argues, have held back economic development in those continents. As humans moved around the world, they took their plants and animals with them, with devastating effects on the indigenous flora and fauna. The clearest example of this was the “Columbian exchange”, which followed the European “discovery”20 of the Americas in the late 15th century. Corn was being grown in Spain and Portugal by the 1520s, and reached China by the 1550s. It produced 100 to 200 times as much grain for every seed that was sown, compared with a multiple of four to six for wheat.

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Between 1470 and 1820, Europe’s merchant shipping fleet rose 17-fold in size.8 After 1500, the transport of heavy goods, such as Baltic timber, made larger ships economical. The Dutch developed the flute (or fluyt), which had more cargo space and needed smaller crews.9 The arrival of European settlers and expropriators in the Americas linked the world together for the first time. It resulted in the Columbian exchange, whereby American crops were brought to Europe and Asia, and European crops and livestock headed the other way (see Chapter 2). But Europeans headed east as well as west. The Portuguese were the first to break into the Asian markets and quickly established a protection racket over shipping in the Indian Ocean.

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Some of this was the result of military action or brutal treatment in places like Potosí. But most damage was caused by disease. The American population had never experienced the viruses that cause smallpox, influenza or measles, or bacteria that lead to tuberculosis and cholera.16 This was the stark downside of the Columbian exchange. It is important not to romanticise the pre-European societies of Latin America. Several civilisations had come and gone, with ecological decline probably playing a part in the collapse of the “classic” era in the first millennium CE. In 1500, both the Aztec and Inca societies were relatively recent developments and were technologically unsophisticated.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
by Elizabeth Kolbert
Published 11 Feb 2014

By the time humans pushed into North America, around thirteen thousand years ago, they had domesticated dogs, which they brought with them across the Bering land bridge. The Polynesians who settled Hawaii around fifteen hundred years ago were accompanied not only by rats but also by lice, fleas, and pigs. The “discovery” of the New World initiated a vast biological swap meet—the so-called Columbian Exchange—which took the process to a whole new level. Even as Darwin was elaborating the principles of geographic distribution, those principles were being deliberately undermined by groups known as acclimatization societies. The very year On the Origin of Species was published, a member of an acclimatization society based in Melbourne released the first rabbits into Australia.

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See also specific periods binomial nomenclature BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification) biodiversity climate change and coral reefs and expansion and contraction of fragmentation and local ocean acidification and rainforests and term introduced time and tropical vs. cold climates and Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP) Biosphere birds Amazonian Bardsey Island and K-T extinction and megafauna number of species of Birds of America, The (Audubon) bittersweet, oriental bivalves Lima lima rudist bluejays bonobos Boule, Marcellin brachiopods Brandsson, Jón Brassicaceae family breadfruit trees bromeliads Bronx Zoo bryozoans Buckland, William Buffon, George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buia, Maria Cristina Burdick, Alan burdock butterflies blue morpho Caecilians calcification Caldeira, Ken California Cambrian period Camelops Canada captive breeding carbon dioxide (CO2) deep-sea injection ice ages and ocean acidification and past vs. present levels Carboniferous period cardinals Caribbean Carson, Rachel Cartier, Jacques Cartwright, George Castello Arogonese sea vents catastrophism cats, large saber-toothed (Smilodon) cattle, domestic Cave, Alexander Cenozoic era Center for Invasive Species Research Charcot, Jean-Baptiste Charles Island Chastain, John chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) Chicxulub crater chimpanzees Christmas holly (Ilex aquifolium) chytrid fungus Cincinnati Zoo clams giant Clark, William climate change (global warming) adaptation and biodiversity and carbon emissions and cold-loving species and coral reefs and earlier extinctions and future of geologic traces of current invasive species and megafauna and Neanderthals and ocean acidification and rainforest and rate of, and species-area relationship and wildlife reserves clownfish coccolithophore (Emiliania huxleyi) cock-of-the-rocks, Andean Cohn-Haft, Mario Columbian Exchange Condon, Dan condors, California conodonts Conservation Biology Conservation International continental drift Cook, James coralline algae coral reefs bleaching and Darwin and marine life and ocean acidification and spawning and corals Acropora millepora elkhorn (Acropora palmata) rugose staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) tabulate correlation of parts crane, whooping Cretaceous period extinctions at end of (Cretaceous-Tertiary, K-T, extinction) crocodiles crow, Hawaiian Cruise, Tom Crump, Paul Crutzen, Paul Cruz, Rudi curlews Cuvier, Georges (Jean-Léopold-Nicolas-Frédéric).

The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism
by Joyce Appleby
Published 22 Dec 2009

The conquests of Mexico and Peru gave Spaniards access to Aztec and Incan mines as well. Gold and silver extracted from these mines began pouring into Europe. Far more important, the ships crossing the Atlantic brought animals and plants that dramatically transformed the societies on both sides of the ocean. What has been called the Columbian exchange completed the biological and botanic homogeneity of our planet.2 Alas, germs lethal to the inhabitants of the New World were part of that exchange. The arrival of newcomers in the Western Hemisphere triggered an unintended holocaust, for the Europeans carried with them lethal microorganisms against which the native population had no protection.

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Joyce Oldham Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, 1978), 158–70, 199–216, 242. CHAPTER 2. TRADING IN NEW DIRECTIONS 1. C. R. Boxer, Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 1415–1825: A Succinct Survey (Berkeley, 1969), 14; Holland Cotter, “Portugal Conquering and Also Conquered,” New York Times, June 28, 2007. 2. Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT, 1972). 3. Leonard Y. Andaya, The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period (Honolulu, 1993), 151; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Holding the World in Balance: The Connected History of the Iberian Overseas Empires, 1500–1640,” American Historical Review, 112 (2007): 1367–68. 4.

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Kindleberger, A Financial History of Western Europe, 2nd ed. (New York, 1993), 173–76. 20. Dennis O. Flinn and Arturo Giraldez, “Cycles of Silver: Global Economic Unity through the Mid-Eighteenth Century,” Journal of World History, 13 (2002): 391–427. CHAPTER 3. CRUCIAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE COUNTRYSIDE 1. Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT, 1972). 2. Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 2nd ed. (Armonk, NY, 2006), 07. 3. Quoted in Andrew B. Appleby, “Diet in Sixteenth-Century England,” in Charles Webster, ed., Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979). 4.

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World
by William J. Bernstein
Published 5 May 2009

Try to imagine Italian cuisine without the tomato, the highlands around Darjeeling without tea plants, an American table without wheat bread or beef, a cafe anywhere in the world beyond coffee's birthplace in Yemen, or German cooking without the potato. Such was the world's limited range of farm produce before the "Columbian exchange," the invasion of billions of acres of cropland by species from remote continents in the decades following 1492. How and why did this occur, and what does it tell us about the nature of trade? During the seven centuries between the death of the Prophet Muhammad and the Renaissance, the Muslim states of Europe, Asia, and Africa outshone and towered over western Christendom.

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Friedman, The World Is Flat (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). 15. Warmington, 35-39; see also William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York: Anchor, 1998), 128. 16. Warmington, 279-284. See also Ian Carapace, review of Roman Coins from India (Paula J. Turner) in The Classical Review, 41 (January 1991): 264-265. 17. Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1973), 75-81. 18. Quoted ibid., 88. 19. Quoted ibid., 21. 20. Patricia Risso, personal communication. 21. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (New York: Harcourt, 1936), 383. Chapter 1 1. Daniel Boorstin, Hidden History (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 14. 2.

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Crafts, Nicholas, "Globalization and Growth in the Twentieth Century," IMF working paper WP/00/44. Crawford, H. E. W., "Mesopotamia's Invisible Exports in the Third Millennium BC," World Archaeology 5 (October 1973): 232-241. Critchell, James Troubridge, and Joseph Raymond, A History of the Frozen Meat Trade, 2nd ed. (London: Constable, 1912). Crosby, Alfred W., The Columbian Exchange (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1973). Curtin, Philip D., "Africa and the Wider Monetary World, 1250-1850," in J. F. Richards, ed., Precious Metals in the Later and Early Modern Worlds (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1983). Curtin, Philip D., The Atlantic Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969).

Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science
by James Poskett
Published 22 Mar 2022

Helen Curry, Nicholas Jardine, James Secord, and Emma Spary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 116–8, and Carrasco and Sessions, Daily Life, 88 and 230–7. 7Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500–1700 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), and John Henry, The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1997). 8Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science (London: Bell, 1949), David Wootton, The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 2015), Robert Merton, ‘Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England’, Osiris 4 (1938), Dorothy Stimson, ‘Puritanism and the New Philosophy in 17th Century England’, Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine 3 (1935), Christopher Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 9Toby Huff, Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Antonio Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press), Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), William Burns, The Scientific Revolution in Global Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), Klaus Vogel, ‘European Expansion and Self-Definition’, in The Cambridge History of Science: Early Modern Science, eds. Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and McClellan III and Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, 99–176. 10Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport: Praeger, 2003), 1–22, and J. Worth Estes, ‘The European Reception of the First Drugs from the New World’, Pharmacy in History 37 (1995): 3. 11Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston, ‘Introduction: The Age of the New’, in Park and Daston, eds., Cambridge History of Science: Early Modern Science, Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences, 10–48, and Shapin, Scientific Revolution, 15–118. 12Anthony Grafton with April Shelford and Nancy Siraisi, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1992), 1–10, Paula Findlen, ‘Natural History’, in Park and Daston, eds., The Cambridge History of Science: Early Modern Science, 435–58, and Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature, 1–13 and 101–27. 13Crosby, Columbian Exchange, 24, Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts, 84, and Asúa and French, A New World of Animals, 2. 14Andres Prieto, Missionary Scientists: Jesuit Science in Spanish South America, 1570–1810 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press), 18–34, and Thayne Ford, ‘Stranger in a Foreign Land: José de Acosta’s Scientific Realizations in Sixteenth-Century Peru’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998): 19–22. 15Prieto, Missionary Scientists, 151–69, Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts, 1, and Ford, ‘Stranger in a Foreign Land’, 31–2. 16José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, trans.

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Worth Estes, ‘The European Reception of the First Drugs from the New World’, Pharmacy in History 37 (1995): 3. 11Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston, ‘Introduction: The Age of the New’, in Park and Daston, eds., Cambridge History of Science: Early Modern Science, Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences, 10–48, and Shapin, Scientific Revolution, 15–118. 12Anthony Grafton with April Shelford and Nancy Siraisi, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1992), 1–10, Paula Findlen, ‘Natural History’, in Park and Daston, eds., The Cambridge History of Science: Early Modern Science, 435–58, and Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature, 1–13 and 101–27. 13Crosby, Columbian Exchange, 24, Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts, 84, and Asúa and French, A New World of Animals, 2. 14Andres Prieto, Missionary Scientists: Jesuit Science in Spanish South America, 1570–1810 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press), 18–34, and Thayne Ford, ‘Stranger in a Foreign Land: José de Acosta’s Scientific Realizations in Sixteenth-Century Peru’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998): 19–22. 15Prieto, Missionary Scientists, 151–69, Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts, 1, and Ford, ‘Stranger in a Foreign Land’, 31–2. 16José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, trans.

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Eliot, ‘The Discovery of America and the Discovery of Man’, in Anthony Pagden, ed., Facing Each Other: The World’s Perception of Europe and Europe’s Perception of the World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), David Abulafia, The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), and Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 23–4. 43Cecil Clough, ‘The New World and the Italian Renaissance’, in The European Outthrust and Encounter, eds. Cecil Clough and P. Hair (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994), 301, Davies, Renaissance Ethnography, 30 and 70, Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, 71, and Crosby, Columbian Exchange, 28. 44Saul Jarcho, ‘Origin of the American Indian as Suggested by Fray Joseph de Acosta (1589)’, Isis 50 (1959), Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, 51, and Pagden, Fall of Natural Man, 150. 45Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, 51–3 and 63–71. 46Diego von Vacano, ‘Las Casas and the Birth of Race’, History of Political Thought 33 (2012), Manuel Giménez Fernández, ‘Fray Bartolomé de las Casas: A Biographical Sketch’, in Bartolomé de las Casas in History: Towards an Understanding of the Man and His Work, eds.

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
by David Graeber and David Wengrow
Published 18 Oct 2021

How far can geography go in explaining history, rather than simply informing it? * * * — Back in the 1970s and 1980s, a geographer called Alfred W. Crosby came up with a number of important theories about how ecology shaped the course of history. Among other things, he was the first to draw attention to the ‘Columbian exchange’, the remarkable crossover of non-human species set in motion by Europeans’ arrival in the Americas after 1492, and its transformative effect on the global configuration of culture, economy and cuisine. Tobacco, peppers, potatoes and turkeys flowed into Eurasia; maize, rubber and chickens entered Africa; and citrus fruits, coffee, horses, donkeys and livestock travelled to the Americas.

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None of this is to deny the fact that crops frequently ‘got around’ various parts of the Old World, and often on a surprising scale, as with the westward transfer of Chinese millets to the Indus, mirrored by the eastward dissemination of western/central Asian bread wheat to China around 2000 bc. But efforts (notably by Jones et al. 2011) to characterize such early crop transfers as precursors to the ‘Columbian exchange’ of the sixteenth century ad (see below) are misplaced, since they ignore a number of important contrasts. These are spelled out by Boivin, Fuller and Crowther (2012), who note that early crop transfers in Eurasia took place within a ‘long-term, slow-growing network of connections and exchanges’ over many millennia, often initially in small and experimental quantities, and driven not by centres of urban expansion but by highly mobile and often small-scale intermediary groups such as the mounted pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe or the maritime nomads of the Indian Ocean.

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World Archaeology 37 (2): 177–96. Bogaard, Amy et al. 2014. ‘Locating land use at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey: the implications of 87SR/86SR signatures in plants and sheep tooth sequences.’ Archaeometry 56 (5): 860–77. Boivin, Nicole, Dorian Q. Fuller and Alison Crowther. 2012. ‘Old World globalization and the Columbian exchange: comparison and contrast.’ World Archaeology 44 (3): 452–69. Boivin, Nicole et al. 2016. ‘Ecological consequences of human niche construction: examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113: 6388–96. Bookchin, Murray 1982.

Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History
by Lewis Dartnell
Published 13 May 2019

† India’s black peppercorns are botanically very different from bell (sweet) peppers and chilli peppers, which are both fruits of Capsicum plants native to Central and South America. These New World species were unknown to the rest of the world until the great fifteenth-century transfer of domesticated plants and animals that occurred after the European discovery of the Americas, known as the Columbian Exchange. ‡ So much so that in the late seventeenth century, after the Second Anglo-Dutch War, it was agreed that the Dutch claim over Manhattan be ceded to the English in exchange for the spice island of Run, one of the smallest Banda islands. Run is just 3.5 kilometres long, but its acquisition allowed the Dutch to secure their nutmeg trading monopoly in the East Indies.

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Index Abbasids 212 Aberdeen: granite 148, 151 Abu Dhabi: Sheikh Zayed Mosque 136 Abu Simbel, Egypt: Great Temple of Rameses II 132 Achaemenid Empire 202 Acheulean tools 17, 22 acid rain 142, 280 Aden 107 Aden, Gulf of 11 adobe bricks 131, 155 Aegean/Aegean Sea 99, 100, 117, 162 Aegospotami, Battle of (405 BC) 118 Afar region/triangle 11, 18 Afghanistan 183, 190, 194 Africa 11, 15, 21, 56, 98, 104, 105, 106, 139, 160, 218n, 219, 220, 267, 285 animals 88, 89 hominin migration from 22, 23, 45–6, 47, 52, 63 plants 67, 87 see East, North, South and West Africa African-Americans 125–6 Agassiz, Lake 60, 61–2 agriculture/farming 25, 26, 28, 52, 59, 61, 62, 63–5, 70–71, 87–8, 90, 130, 203, 205, 255, 256–7, 258, 280, 281, 285 and climate change 280 and oil 274 and population growth 70 tools and ploughs 76, 77, 165–6, 215n, 255, 268, 285, 286 see also cereal crops; fruit; legumes aircraft engines 175, 176 Akkadians 131 Akrotiri, Thera 163 Akshardham, Delhi 136 Alabama 125, 126 cotton plantations 125, 253–4 Alans 207 Alaska 48–9, 52, 195 Alborán microcontinent 218n Alborz Mountains 29–30 Alcáçovas, Treaty of (1479) 229, 230 Alexander the Great 101, 117n, 202 Alexandria 101, 187 Library 227 algae 138, 171, 261 Algeria 100 alpacas 76, 88, 89 Alps, the 32, 56, 58, 116, 135, 140, 154, 159, 163, 285 Altai Mountains 47, 196, 202 aluminium 174–5, 177, 182 aluminium silicates 266 Amazon 7, 63, 189 rainforest 223n, 275, 285 America(s) 55, 194n animals 88–9 discovery of 231, 237 human migration into 48–52 see also North America; South America; United States American Civil War 124, 126, 254 American War of Revolution (1775–83) 122 ammonites 138 Amnissos, Crete 162 amphibians 79, 262 Amsterdam: banking 97 Anatolia 131, 157, 165, 204, 205 Andes Mountains 32, 54, 66, 67, 74 angiosperms 40, 78, 79–82, 90, 141n Angkor Wat, Cambodia 129 animals, wild 13, 33–4, 49, 72, 83, 88–9, 66n domestication of 52, 59, 74–8, 88–90, 199 megafauna 53n see also mammals Antarctica 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 53, 86, 104, 267, 277 antelopes 12, 83 ‘Anthropocene’ Age 3 antimony 175 APP mammals 82, 84, 85, 86 Appalachian Mountains 55, 124, 125, 267, 270 Aqaba, Gulf of 110n Arabia/Arabian Peninsula 11, 27, 28, 47, 53, 75, 104, 107, 108–9, 110, 115, 188, 191 camels 89 deserts 29, 190, 192, 215, 285 stone tools 52n Aragon, Spain 218 Aral Sea 105, 196 architecture 129–30, 131 American 134–5, 136 and n ancient Egyptian 132–3 British 134, 151–3, 154–5 Minoan 161, 162 Roman 136n, 162n Arctic, the 36, 38, 39, 40, 43, 64, 85 Arctic Ocean 60 Ardipithecus ramidus 13–15, 18 Argentina: pampas 196 artiodactyls 82–3, 84, 86, 144 Asia, South East 10, 75, 91, 119, 239 islands 111–15, 112–13 asphalt 273, 274 Assyrian Empire 27, 131, 202 asteroids 94, 143n, 168, 178n, 179 astronomy 194, 252n Athens 116, 117–18 Atlantic Ocean 43, 61, 62, 95, 96, 99, 104, 106, 122, 139, 218, 219–20, 222, 226, 227, 229–30, 231, 237, 238, 267 and Mediterranean 105, 106, 118 Atlantic Trade Triangle 246, 249, 250–51, 252–4 Atlas Mountains 105, 163, 267 Attila the Hun 207 aurochs 74 Australia 10, 42, 48, 52n, 54, 121, 252 and n, 267, 285 domesticable animals 88 rare earth metals 181 grasses 87 Australopithecus 14–15, 16 A. afarensis 14, 18 Avars 203 avocados 66n Awash river valley 13, 14, 18 Azores, the 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 229, 230, 231 Aztec culture 28 Bab-el-Mandeb strait 47, 107, 108, 110, 119, 121 Babylon 71, 273 Babylonians 131 Bacan Islands 114 Baghdad 110, 190, 212 Bahamas, the 230 Bahrain 120 Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan 197n Balaclava, Battle of (1854) 129 Banda Islands 111, 112–13, 114, 115 Banded Iron Formations (BIFs) 169–70, 173, 177, 179 Bank of England, London 134 banks and banking 97, 134 Barbarossa, Operation 215 Barbegal, France: waterwheels 257 barley 61, 65, 67, 117 basalt eruptions/flood basalt 141, 142, 143, 144, 145 basalt(ic) rocks 11, 141, 143, 145, 146, 160 Batavia (Jakarta), Indonesia 252 batteries, rechargeable 176, 180 bay (herb) 115n beans 66, 81 Beatles, the: ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ 14n Bedouins 129 belemnites 138 Belgium 96, 269, 284 Belize 28 Bering land bridge/Strait 48, 49, 51, 52, 54, 89, 191 Bessemer Process 166–7 BIFs see Banded Iron Formations Big Bang 167 Biological Old Regime 258 bipedalism 14–15, 16 birds 33, 80, 219n, 263 bison 49, 214n bitumen 273 ‘Black Death’ (accumulation of shale) 279 Black Death (plague) 211–12 Black Sea 105, 106, 117, 118, 120, 185, 190, 196, 207, 278n ‘black smokers’ 159, 160, 163 blast furnaces 165, 211, 257, 259 Bojador, Cape 223–4, 225 bone china 149 Borneo 112 Bosphorus 196, 117, 118, 120 Boston, Massachusetts 56 Brahmaputra River 91 brassicas 81, 82 Brazil 181, 244n, 247n coffee plantations 252, 253, 254 Brazil Current 238, 239, 253 bricks 131, 139, 149, 152, 174, 255 adobe 131, 155 firebricks 131–2 Britain/England 56–9, 97 architecture 134, 152–3, 154–5 ceramics 149–50 coalfields/mines 259–60, 266, 269, 270–72, 271 corsairs 249 electricity 271n exploration 229, 231 geology 150–53, 151 Labour Party 270, 271, 271–2 maritime trade 107n, 245 railways 260 Roman coal mines 259 Royal Navy 58, 118, 119 steam engines 259–60 see also Industrial Revolution; London British Museum, London 134, 148 bromine 175 bronze/bronze artefacts 1578, 161, 165, 174 Bronze Age 99, 137, 156, 158, 160–61, 164, 174, 200n Brouwer, Captain Henrik 250–51 Brouwer Route 119n, 246, 250, 250–52 bubonic plague 211–12 Buckingham Palace, London 134 Buffalo, New York 55 Bukhara, Uzbekistan 190, 212 Bulgars 203, 204 Burgundians 207 Burma 92 Bush, President George W. 124 Bushveld Complex, South Africa 179–80 butane 276 Byblos 101n Byzantine Empire 205, 213 Cabot, John 231 cacti 80 calcium carbonate 41, 129, 133, 139, 140 Calicut, India 240 California 52n, 248 Cambodia 92 Cambrian Period 152, 153 camels 19, 49, 75, 76, 77, 83, 88, 89, 107, 187, 191–2, 193, 197 Bactrian camels 89, 191 dromedaries 89, 191 Canada 49, 60, 63, 89, 163, 179, 195, 267, 277 fur trade 195 canals 71, 74, 150 and n, 152, 187 Canary Current 237 Canary Islands 218–19, 220, 222, 223, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230 Cape Cod, Massachusetts 56 Cape of Good Hope 121, 225–6, 231, 250 Cape Town 252 Cape Verde Islands 218, 219, 220, 229, 239, 253n capitalism 96–7, 154, 270 caravans, merchant 81, 107, 110, 187, 188, 192–3, 194, 201, 211, 218 caravels 246 carbon 1, 85n, 157, 165, 166, 167, 175, 261, 263, 273, 275–6, 278, 279, 280, 281 carbon dioxide 10, 38, 40, 42, 44, 65, 84, 85 and n, 139, 142, 143, 144–5, 170, 171, 172, 261, 265, 275, 279–80, 281 and n, 287 Carboniferous Period 6, 78–9, 134, 151, 261–8 Caribbean, the 28, 52, 61, 230, 231, 237 sugar plantations 252, 253, 254 Carnegie, Andrew 270 Carolinas, the 124, 125 cotton plantations 253–4 Carpathian Mountains 163, 185, 196, 204 Carrara marble 135 cars/automobiles 174, 273 Carthage 100–1, 105n, 208 cartwheel hubs 130 Caspian Sea 105, 120, 196, 201, 207 cassava 131 Castile, Spain 217, 218 catalysts, chemical 178, 180 catalytic converters 178 cathedrals 127, 129, 134 Catholicism 185n cattle/cows 67, 74, 75, 76, 77, 82n, 83, 84n, 86–7, 88, 172n, 198, 198, 201 Caucasus 185, 196, 204, 207, 209, 215 cedars/cedarwood 73, 70, 101n, 131 cellulose 263, 264 cement 139, 140–41 ‘pozzolanic’ 162n Cenozoic cooling 9–10, 39–40, 81 Cenozoic era 42, 44, 90, 141n Central Steppe see Kazakh Steppe ceramics/pottery 131–2, 255 porcelain 112, 115, 149–50 cereal crops 65, 67–9, 70, 78, 80, 86–7, 90, 125, 287; see also grain(s) Cerne Abbas Giant, Dorset 137 Cerro Rico see Potosí Ceuta, Morocco 217–18 Ceylon see Sri Lanka chalk 132, 136–8, 139–40, 152 Channel Tunnel 137 charcoal 157, 161, 164, 166, 173n, 255, 269 chariots, war 76, 116n, 200n chert 17n, 156, 170 Chicago 55, 56, 135 chickens 74 Chile 54 chimpanzees 7, 14, 16, 46 China 28n, 182, 183–5, 186, 187, 190, 195, 206, 213, 214 agriculture 63, 65–6, 67, 77, 184 blast furnaces 165, 257 bronze 157 bubonic plague 211 canals 187 coal 258–9, 264 collar harnesses 77 compasses 169 exports 112, 115, 249 first humans 48, 52n, 53 ginkgo 79 Great Wall 203–4, 208 Homo erectus 23, 47 Mongols (Yuan dynasty) 209, 210, 212, 214 and oil 121 population 92, 186, 211, 284 porcelain 112, 115, 149 rare earth metals 177, 181 salt production 273 silk 112, 115, 187–8, 193n and South American silver 249 and steppe nomads 202–3 tea 112 and Tibet 91–3 waterwheels 165, 257 and Xiongnu 202, 206 china, bone 149 see also porcelain chokepoints, naval 98, 115, 118–19, 121, 217n, 273 Christianity 185n, 217 cinnamon 113, 114, 193, 241 civilisations, early 25–30, 26–7, 70–74, 90, 98–9, 132 Clarke, Arthur C. 94 clathrate ice 85–6 clay 130, 131–2, 152, 266 soils 154–5, 166 Cleopatra VII, of Egypt 101, 147 ‘Cleopatra’s Needles’ 147 Cleveland, Ohio 55 climate changes 2–3, 9–10, 11–12, 18–19, 21–5, 61, 63, 64, 70–71, 72, 84–5, 86, 143–4, 279–81; see also ice ages Clinton, Hillary 122 cloves 114, 115n, 241, 247 clubmosses 262 clunch 152 coal 78, 149, 258–60, 279 formation of 261–8, 267, 274, 280 politics of 269, 270, 270–72, 271 cobalt 159, 175 coccolithophores 138, 139, 140, 144 coccoliths 274, 275 cockroaches 262 cocoa 66n coconuts 81 Cocos Plate 28 cod 95, 97 coffee plantations, Brazilian 252, 253 coins 168n, 182 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Kublai Khan 210 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 97n, 234 Cologne Cathedral 127 Colombia: platinum 178n Colosseum, Rome 133 Columbian Exchange 113n Columbus, Christopher 52, 227–31, 236, 239, 241 comets 94, 143n, 178n compasses, navigation 118n, 169 concrete 56, 139, 140–41, 272 reinforced 130n, 167 Congo 7, 11 conifers 79, 130, 141, 195 Constantinople (Istanbul) 185n, 193n, 205, 207, 211, 213 cooking food 15, 17, 69, 131, 132 cooling, global see Cenozoic cooling; ice ages copper/copper ore 157, 158, 159, 160–62, 163–4, 174, 175, 179, 182, 201n smelting 131, 156, 157, 161 coppicing 256 coral/coral reefs 193, 252n, 280 Cordilleran ice sheet 49 coriander 115n Corinth 117 Coriolis effect 233, 235, 237 Cornwall Eden Project 150n granite 267n kaolin 149, 150n tin mines 158, 267n Corsica 208 Cotswolds, the 152 cotton 82, 112, 125, 126, 193, 252, 253–4, 255, 259, 263, 269 courgettes 66n cows see cattle Cretaceous Period 40, 42, 80, 123, 124, 137, 138, 139, 141n, 143n, 144, 145, 152, 178n, 274, 276–9, 278 Crete 99, 161–3 Crimean Peninsula 129 crocodiles 72, 85 crops 255 domestication of 52, 63–4, 65–9, 68–9 rotation 255 see also cereal crops; grain(s) Cuba 230 Cumans 203 Cumberland: coalfields 272 cumin 115n current sailing see sailing and navigation cyanobacteria 171, 173 Cyclades, the 99 Cyprus 99, 160 copper mining 158, 160–62, 163 Troodos Mountains 160, 163 Da Gama, Vasco 239–41, 244 Danube River/Valley 185 and n, 196, 204, 206, 207, 208 Dardanelles, the 117, 118, 120 ‘Dark Ages’ 219 Dartmoor 147, 151 dates (fruit) 81 Dead Sea 106, 110n Deccan Traps 143n deer 83 Delhi: Akshardham 136 Denisovan hominins 16, 23, 47, 50–51, 51, 53 deserts 1, 12, 29, 61, 72, 73, 80, 81, 89, 100, 107, 148n, 184, 189, 190–92, 195, 215–16, 232, 285 see also specific deserts Detroit, Michigan 55 Dias, Bartolomeu 225–7, 229, 239 diatoms 140, 171, 274 dinoflagellates 85, 274 dinosaurs 40, 80, 82, 141, 143n Diomede Islands 48 Djibouti 11, 18 DNA, hominins’ 45–7 Dogger Bank/Doggerland 95, 96, 97 dogs 74 doldrums, the 224, 234–5, 239 donkeys 76, 83, 88, 89, 192 Dover, Strait of 57, 59 dragonflies, giant 262–3, 265 Drake, Sir Francis 55, 249 Dublin: Leinster House 136n Durham: coalfields 272 Dutch East India Company 250 dysprosium 175 Dzungaria, China 197, 214 Dzungarian Gate, China–Kazakhstan border 189, 196–7, 203, 204 Eanes, Gil 223–4 Earth 282–3, 284, 286–7 circumference 227, 228 creation 94, 168 first circumnavigation 232, 248 magnetic field 169 orbit round the Sun 19, 21, 22, 24, 35, 36–9, 37 tilt 19, 35, 36–9, 37, 38, 44–5; see also Milankovitch cycles see also climate changes; tectonic plates earthenware pots 131, 149 earthquakes 8, 25, 28, 29, 30 East Africa 7–8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16 climate 12, 18–25, 44 tectonic processes 10–13, 18–21, 24, 25, 30, 189 East African Rift 2n, 10–13, 17n, 18, 20, 20–25, 44, 108, 189, 287 East China Sea 114, 187 East India Company 222n East Indies 111 Eastern Desert 107, 133 Eastern Orthodox Church 185n Eastern Steppe 197 eccentricity cycle 19, 21, 22, 36, 37, 39 Ecuador: platinum 178n Edinburgh 151 Egypt/ancient Egypt 26, 28n, 64, 72–3, 100, 101, 107, 110, 119, 157, 184 buildings 132–3 pharaohs 72, 101, 127, 129, 147 pyramids 127–8, 129, 133, 138 sculpture 133, 147–8 electricity 156, 174, 271n, 272, 281, 282–3, 284, 286 electronic devices 157, 168, 175, 176, 178, 180, 181–2 elephants 33, 72, 256n Elgon, Mount 12 elm 130 Empire State Building, New York 134 Energy Return on Investment (EROI) index 274 English Channel 56, 57, 58–9, 134, 137 Eocene Epoch 129 equator, the 189, 232, 233, 234, 235, 238 equids 88–9, 197–8 Eratosthenes 227 Eridu 71 Eritrea 11 EROI index see Energy Return on Investment Erzgebirge Mountains: tin mines 158 ethane 276 Ethiopia 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, 28n, 72 Etna, Mount 117 Etruscans 27, 28 Euphrates, River 27, 65, 90, 107 Eurasia 9, 26, 27, 28, 39, 42, 47, 56, 77, 106, 143, 183, 194 climate 2, 48, 196–7 fauna and flora 49, 53n, 79, 87–90 warfare 76 Exeter Cathedral 134 Exploration, Age of 96, 216, 217, 246 extinctions, mass 40, 82, 85, 141, 142–3 and n, 144, 145, 178n factories (coastal forts) 253 farming see agriculture feldspar 148 Ferdinand II, of Aragon 227 ferns 78, 79, 262 Ferrel cells 235–6, 248 Fertile Crescent 63, 65, 66, 67, 158, 269 fertilisers, artificial 120, 178–9 feudalism 212 Finland 195, 286 fir trees 79, 130, 141 fire 15, 17, 69, 131–2, 173–4 firebricks 131–2 fish/fishing 95–6, 97, 275, 280 flax 82 flint 17n, 137, 139–40, 156, 164 Florida 237 flour 63, 68–9, 257 flowers see plants and flowers foraminifera/forams 85, 128–9, 133, 138, 139, 140, 144, 275 forests see rainforests; trees/forests fossils 13–14, 18, 40, 52n, 137–8, 141, 150n, 160 France 56, 57, 58, 185, 207, 208, 267, 269, 284 corsairs 249 fur trappers 195 maritime trade 245 waterwheels 257 wine regions 137 frankincense 192, 193 Franks 207, 208 frogs 85 fruit/fruit trees 78, 81 fungi 263, 264 fur trade 195 Galilee, Lake 110n gallium 176, 180 Ganges Basin 268 Ganges River 26, 66, 267 Gansu Corridor 184–5, 188, 203, 204 gas, natural 274, 276, 279, 280 Gaul 185, 207 Gazelles 61, 72, 275 genetic diversity 45–7 Genghis Khan 205, 209 Genoa/Genoese 99, 211, 212, 217, 227, 229 geological map, first 150 and n Germanic tribes 185n, 206–7, 208, 269 Germany 58, 59, 127, 185n, 208, 273, 284 Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland 143 Gibraltar 217n Strait of 99, 101, 106, 118, 158, 217 and n, 220 ginger 112–13, 114, 241 ginkgo 79 giraffes 83 Giza, Egypt: pyramids 127–8, 129, 133, 138 glaciation/glaciers 31, 32, 40, 54–7, 58, 60, 91, 146, 171–2, 184, 264–5 glass/glass-making/glassware 115, 132, 140, 193, 255 glazing pottery 131 globalisation 246 global warming 31, 38, 86, 281n; see also climate changes; greenhouse gases gneiss 133 Goa, India 245 goats 67, 74, 75, 77, 83, 88, 117 Gobi Desert 184, 185, 189, 191, 197 GOE see Great Oxidation Event gold 159, 168 and n, 174, 175, 178, 182, 192, 193, 218 Gona, Ethiopia 18 Gondwana 139, 264, 265, 267 gourds 66n grain(s) 63, 65, 65, 67–8, 73, 74, 116–18, 120, 166, 200, 205, 208, 257; see also cereal crops Grampian Mountains 148 Granada, Spain 218 and n granite 127–8, 132, 133, 145–8, 158, 267n grasses 67, 77, 80–81, 87–8, 90 grasslands 15, 77; see also savannah; steppes Great Hungarian Plain 196, 205 Great Indian Desert 29 Great Oxidation Event (GOE) 171–2, 173, 280n Great Pyramid, Giza 127–8, 129, 138 Great Sandy Desert, Australia 190 Great Wall of China 203–4, 208 Greece/ancient Greeks 27, 28, 73, 99, 100, 107, 110–11, 115–18, 135 armies 116n, 118 city-states 73, 116–17 Huns 207 greenhouse effect 10, 40, 42, 84–5, 142, 171 greenhouse gases 38, 40, 42, 44, 279–80 see also carbon dioxide; methane Greenland 32, 40, 96, 143 Grenville Mountains 153 Guatemala 28 guilds, medieval 212 Guinea, Gulf of 224, 239, 253 guinea fowl 74 guinea pigs: and scurvy 241n Gulf Stream 43, 61, 237, 238, 286 Gunflint Iron Formation 170n gunpowder 194, 200n, 211, 213 gymnosperms 79, 141 gyres, ocean 237, 238n, 247 Hadley cells 232–3, 235–6, 285 haematite 170 Haifa, Israel 101 Han dynasty (China) 93, 183, 184, 186, 187 and n, 190–91, 203–4 Harappan civilization 26–7, 64 Hawaii 107n, 222n helium 167, 180n Hellespont, the 117, 118, 120 hemp 82 Henry VII, of England 231 Herat, Afghanistan 190, 194 herbicides 120, 274 herbs 115n Herculaneum 162 Herodotus 73 hickory 130 hides/leather 75, 77, 88, 140, 193, 255 structures 130 Himalayas, the 9, 10, 11, 26, 32, 42, 48, 159, 184, 191, 195, 203, 242, 243, 268, 285 Hindu Kush 190, 203 hippopotamuses 33, 83n Hispaniola 230 Hitler, Adolf 215 Holland see Netherlands Holocene Epoch 32, 40, 42, 64–5 Homer: Iliad 200n hominins 7–8, 12–16, 22, 23, 30, 44, 53 bipedalism 14–15, 16 brains and intelligence 15, 16, 17, 19–20, 22, 24, 25 DNA 45–7 as hunters 15, 17 migration from Africa 22, 23, 45–6, 47, 52, 63 and see below Homo erectus 15–18, 22, 23, 47 Homo habilis 15, 16 Homo heidelbergensis 16 Homo neanderthalensis see Neanderthals Homo sapiens/humans 7, 8, 16, 22, 23, 25, 47, 49–54, 84 Hormuz, Strait of 107, 119, 120–21 ‘horse latitudes’ 235 horses 49, 75, 76, 77, 83, 86–7, 88, 89–90, 192, 197–200, 201–2, 205, 213, 214 Hudson Bay, Canada 49 Humboldt Current 247, 249 Hungary 185n, 202, 209 Huns 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208 hunter-gatherers 15, 61, 62, 63, 70, 74, 75, 80, 197 hydrogen 167, 175 hydrogen chloride 142 hydrogen sulphide 280 Iberian Peninsula 104, 105, 185, 208, 217 see also Portugal; Spain ice ages 19, 23, 24, 31–5, 34–5, 38–9, 44–5, 48–52, 53-60, 61, 64, 95, 172, 265 Little Ice Age 195n, 211 ichthyosaurs 133 igneous rocks 132, 179 incense 115, 192 India 9, 26, 27, 28n, 42, 48, 91, 92, 104, 110–11, 114, 188, 191, 202, 203, 213, 228, 244, 245, 267, 285 cotton 112, 193, 259, 269 eruption of Deccan Traps 143n exports 193 Mogul Empire 210n, 249 monsoons/monsoon winds 1, 10, 110, 242–4 population 284 rare earth metals 177 spices 112–13, 115, 218 Indian Ocean 10, 11, 29, 107, 108, 110, 111, 119, 187, 191, 226, 227, 229, 237, 238, 239–40, 243, 244, 245, 248, 252 Indiana limestone 134–5 indigo 193 indium 175, 176, 180, 181, 182 Indonesia 47, 48, 54, 121, 285 volcanic activity 111 Indonesian Seaway 10, 11 Indus River/Valley 26, 91, 107, 190, 268 civilisations 26–7, 66, 73, 90, 157 Industrial Revolution 5, 31, 78, 97, 125, 130n, 150, 152, 167, 254, 259–60, 266, 268, 269, 279, 286 insects 80, 262–3, 265 internal combustion engine 78, 273 Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) 234–5, 243 Iran 29–30, 48, 110, 120, 121, 190; see also Persia Iraq 48, 71, 120 iridium 177–8 iron 1, 92, 130n, 163, 164–5, 167, 168–9, 170, 174, 177, 178, 280n and Banded Iron Formations 169–70, 173, 177 cast 165 production 164–5, 183, 257, 259, 260, 266, 269, 270 tools and weapons 128, 165–6, 173, 174, 285 wrought 164–5, 166 see also steel Iron Age 156, 165, 167, 174 irrigation 65, 71, 73, 90, 92, 116, 200 Isabella, of Castile 226n, 227, 229, 230 Isfahan, Iran 190 Islam/Islamic culture/Muslims 110, 205, 212, 213, 217–18 and diet 83n Israel 52n, 101n, 163, 285 Istanbul see Constantinople Italy 105n, 133, 207, 208, 285 see also Rome ITCZ see Intertropical Convergence Zone jade 183 Jakarta, Indonesia 252 Janissaries 205 Japan/Japanese 121, 122n, 222n, 228, 245, 248 exports 112 landfill mining 182 Java 111, 114, 119n, 251, 252 Jefferson, President Thomas 136n, 147 Joao II, of Portugal 226, 229 Jordan valley 110n Judaism: and diet 83n Jupiter 36, 180n Jurassic Coast, England 137–8 Jurassic Period 133, 134, 274, 279 Kalahari Desert 190 Kalmuks 203 kaolin 148–9, 150n Karakorum, Mongolia 209, 211 Kazakh Steppe 196, 197n, 201 Kellingley, Yorkshire: coalmine 271 Kenya 10, 239 Kenya, Mount 12 kerosene 273 Khitans 202 Khufu, Pharaoh 127 Khwarezmids 212 Khyber Pass 190, 203, 204 Kilimajaro, Mount 12 Kirghiz, the 202 Kish 71 Knossos palace, Crete 161 Korea/South Korea 121, 184 Krakatoa, eruption of (1883) 111 Kublai Khan 210 Kunlun Mountains, China 191 Kuwait 120 Laetoli, Tanzania 14 lakes 20, 20, 21, 57, 72 ‘amplifier’ 20, 21, 22, 24, 44 meltwater 60 Lancashire: coalfields 272 landfill mining 182 ‘lanthanide’ elements 176 lanthanum 176–7 lapis lazuli 183 larches 79 Laurasia 139, 267 Laurentia 153 Laurentide ice sheet 49, 55–6 lava, volcanic 12–13, 24, 132, 141–2, 143, 144 lead 131, 159, 163, 168, 174 leather see hides Lebanon 101n, 131, 163, 285 Le Clerc, ‘Peg Leg’ 249 legumes 81 Lesser Antilles 230 Levant, the 23, 60, 61, 65, 73, 74 Lewis (Meriwether) and Clark (William) 55 Libya 100, 277 lignin 264 limestone 85n, 132, 144, 153, 257, 266 hot-spring 133 Indiana 134–5 nummulitic 127, 128–9, 132–3 oolitic 133–4 Tethyean 135–6 travertine 133 linen 193, 255, 263 lions 33–4 lithium 167, 180, 182 llamas 74, 76, 88, 89 loess soils 56, 65, 184 and n Lombards 207 London 135, 137, 152, 154–5, 272 Bank of England 134 British Museum 134, 148 Buckingham Palace 134 Cleopatra’s Needle 147 Great Fire (1666) 134 Marble Arch 135 One Canada Square 154–5 St Paul’s Cathedral 134 The Shard 154–5 Tower of London 134 Underground/Tube 155 Los Angeles 248 Getty Center 133 Lucy (hominin) 14, 18 lycopsids 262 Macau, China 245 mace 114, 115n Mackenzie River 60 Madeira 218, 220, 222, 229, 253n Magellan, Ferdinand 54, 247–8 Magellan Strait 54–5 magma 11, 20, 28, 111, 132, 142, 143, 145, 146, 148n, 158, 1 59, 179 Magna Carta 58 magnetic field, Earth’s 169 magnetite 170 magnets 175, 176, 180n Magyars 203, 204 Maison Carrée, Nîmes, France 136n maize 66, 67 Makian Island 114 Malabar Coast, India 114, 240 Malacca, Malaysia 114–15, 245 Strait of 114, 115, 119, 121, 249 Malay Peninsula 114–15, 245 Mali 10, 193 Malindi, Kenya 239 Mallorca 221 mammals 5, 7, 12, 40, 53n, 61, 75, 86–7, 88, 90, 141n, 144 APP 82–4 mammoths 31, 49, 66n Manchuria 197, 202 Mani Peninsula, Greece 135 Manila Cathedral 136 Manila Galleon Route 246, 248–9, 250, 250–51 Mao Zedong 91 map-making 194 marble 132, 135–6 Marble Arch, London 135 marine snow 275 marjoram 115n Marmara, Sea of 117 mastodons 66n mathematics 194 Mayan civilisation 28, 64 meat 17, 75, 77, 83n, 84, 90, 198, 199, 255 medicines 82, 114, 175, 178, 194 Mediterranean region/Sea 28, 98–106, 112, 116, 118, 135, 158, 160, 163, 185, 187, 246 Megara, Greece 117 Mekong River 91 Melanesia 47 Merv, Turkmenistan 190, 212 Mesoamerica 28, 63, 66, 67, 129 Mesopotamia 26, 27, 28, 65, 67, 70–71, 71, 72, 200, 202 bronze 157–8 civilisations 130–31, 132 Mesozoic Era 42, 141 metals/metalworking 74, 130 and n, 131, 156–7, 255 casting 157 smelting 131, 132, 156 see also specific metals metamorphic rocks 132 methane 40–41, 84, 85n, 171–2, 172n, 276, 280n methane clathrate 85–6 Mexican War of Independence (1810–21) 248 Mexico 28, 66, 74, 248 Gulf of 279 Michelangelo Buonnaroti: David 135 microchips 17n, 148n, 175–6 Mid-Atlantic Ridge 9, 160, 221 Middle East 47, 65, 81, 104, 119, 120, 197, 202, 209, 211, 215n` Middle Passage 253n Milankovitch cycles 19, 37, 37–9, 44, 60, 70, 281n Military Revolution 213 milk 75–6, 88, 90, 199, 255 millet 65, 57, 184 millstones 63, 68 Ming dynasty (China) 204, 212 Minoan civilisation 27–8, 99, 161–3 Linear A script 163n Mississippi River 55, 123, 124, 125 Missouri River 55 mitochondria 45 Mitochondrial Eve 45–6 mobile phones see smartphones Mogadishu, Somalia 240 Mogul Empire 210n, 249 Mojave Desert 191 Moluccas, the 112–13, 113, 114, 115, 247 and n Mongol Empire 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 209–13, 214 Mongolia 47, 197, 209 monsoons 72, 114, 189–90, 192, 238–9, 285 winds 110, 192, 240–44, 243, 251 moraines 54, 55–6, 95 Morocco 217–18, 223, 267 mortar 132, 139, 140–41 Moscow 195 Moti Island 114 mountain ranges 8, 9, 26, 28, 91, 98, 99, 104–5, 139, 144, 146–7, 159–60, 267–8, 285; see also volcanoes and specific ranges Mousterian tools 17, 22 Mozambique 11, 239 mules 76, 77 Mumbai, India 107n Muslims see Islam Mycenaeans 163 myrrh 192 Nagasaki, Japan 245 Napoleon Bonaparte 58, 59, 222n Native Americans 47 Natufians 61, 62 Neanderthals 16, 17, 23–4, 47, 50–51, 51, 53, 164 Neoclassicism: in architecture 136n Neolithic era 63–5, 158, 198 Nepal 92 Netherlands 58, 96–7, 114n, 119 and n, 284 corsairs 249 and Japan 122n maritime trade 245, 250–52 windmills 257 Newfoundland 96, 231 New Guinea 10, 48, 63 agriculture 66, 67 New York 55, 56, 114n, 153–4 Chrysler Building 153 Cleopatra’s Needle 147 Empire State Building 134, 153 Rockefeller Center 153 skyscrapers 154, 155 United Nations building 134, 145 Yankee Stadium 134 New Zealand 32, 237 nickel 167, 168, 175, 179 Nile, River/Nile Valley 23, 65, 72–3, 90, 100, 101, 106, 127, 132, 133, 184, 185, 187, 285 Delta 102, 107 Nineveh 71 Nippur 71 nitrogen 170, 178–9 noble metals see platinum group metals nomadic tribes 200, 201–3, 204–5, 206, 286 see also pastoral nomads Noranda (mine), Canada 163 Norfolk: cottages 152 Norilsk, Russia: mines 179 Norse fishermen and seafarers 95, 96 North Africa 89, 110, 128, 129, 138, 206, 208, 211, 215 agriculture 63, 65 camel caravans 192–3 climate 72, 101 coastline 99, 100–2, 105, 185, 217n North America 32, 33, 39, 43, 44, 48, 49, 51, 60, 63, 64, 103–4, 139, 143 animals 53n, 197, 214n grasses 87 prairies 79, 196, 214n, 284 see also Canada; United States North Atlantic Garbage Patch 238n North Atlantic Gyre 238n North Atlantic Igneous Province 143 North Downs 137 North Pole 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 224 North Sea 57, 95, 96, 279, 286 Northumberland: coalfields 272 Norway 54, 286 nuclear fission/fusion 167–8, 169, 182n, 281 Nummulites/nummulitic limestone 128–9, 132–3 nutmeg 114, 114n, 115n, 241, 247 oats 67 Obama, President Barack 124 obsidian 17n, 140, 156 Oceania 47 oceans 5, 10, 41, 43, 85, 86, 94–5, 97–8 acidic 280 anoxic 142, 173, 278, 278–9 Banded Iron Formations 170, 171, 179 black smokers (hydrothermal vents) 159, 160 chokepoints 98, 115, 118–19, 121, 217n, 273 crust 8–9, 94, 104, 139, 142, 145–6, 159, 160, 163, 221 currents and current sailing 5, 41, 219–20, 222, 223–4, 226, 227, 230–31, 232, 244n, 246 doldrums 224, 234–5, 239 falling/lower levels 32, 34, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 53–4, 56–7, 89, 95, 125, 138–9 gyres 237, 238n, 247 and iron 173 and plankton 85, 144–5, 274–6 rising/higher levels 31, 33, 38, 40, 52, 54, 57, 60, 96, 97, 124–5, 129, 138, 221, 268, 277, 280 salt content 105–6 thermohaline circulation 61–2, 278 see also specific oceans and seas ochre 164 Ogodei Khan 209 Ohio River 55 oil 120–21, 262–3, 273–9, 280, 286, 287 ‘oil window’ 276 Oldowan tools 16–17, 18, 22 olive oil 257 Oman 131 onagers 89 One Thousand and One Nights 110 ooliths 133–4 oolitic limestone 134 ophiolites 160, 163, 201n opium 115 oregano 115n Organic Energy Economy 258 orogeny 267n Orpheus and Eurydice 135 osmium 177 ostriches 72 Ostrogoths 207, 208 Ottoman Turks 205, 213 oxen 75, 77, 200 Oxford University 134 oxygen 167, 170–74, 175, 265, 275, 278, 280 ozone layer 142 172 and n Pacific Ocean 10, 43, 111, 122, 191, 222n, 237, 247, 248 Pacific Trash Vortex 238n Pakistan 92, 284 Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 40, 84–6, 129, 143, 145, 279–80, 287 Palaeogene Period 42, 178n Palaeozoic Era 42, 141 Palestine 185 Palin, Sarah 48n palladium 175, 177, 179, 182n Pamir Mountains 189, 191 Panama Canal 55, 120 Panama Isthmus 43, 44, 49, 88, 89, 249 Pangea 87, 103, 104, 138, 139, 141, 143, 144, 201n, 262, 267, 267, 268, 276 Panthalassa 103n Pantheon, Rome 135, 162n paper/paper-making 79, 194, 263 Paris Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel 200n Cleopatra’s Needle 147 Parks, Rosa 126 pastoral nomads 77, 200, 201, 203, 213, 214, 286 horse-riding 201–2, 208, 213–14, 215 Patagonian Desert 190 Patagonian Ice Sheet 54 Patzinaks 203 ‘Pax Mongolica’ 210–11 Pearl Harbor 222n peat 261–2, 263, 265, 266, 268 Peloponnesian War (431–405 BC) 117–18, 120 Pentagon, Virginia 134 pepper/peppercorns 112–13, 114, 115n, 193, 241 peppers 81, 113n perissodactyls 82–3, 84, 86, 144 permafrost 33, 86, 91 Permian Period 42, 103, 138, 141, 142, 143, 179, 264 Persia 27, 117n, 187, 188–9, 202, 207 exports 131, 193 kerosene 273 mythology 200n Wall 207–8 windmills 257 Persian Gulf 70, 104, 107, 108, 110, 119 oil 120, 121, 279, 286 Peru 67, 278n, 286 pesticides 120, 274 PETM see Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum petroleum 178, 273 PGMs see platinum group metals pharaohs 72, 101, 127, 129, 147 pharmaceuticals 120, 178, 274 Pharos, island of 101 Philippines, the 248, 249 philosophies, spread of 194 Phoenicia/Phoenicians 99, 100, 101n, 107, 158, 163, 219, 237 photosynthesis 142, 171, 258, 261, 265, 274–5 phytoplankton 274–5 pig iron 165, 166, 177 pigs 74, 83, 88 pine trees 79, 130, 161 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 270 plague 211–12 plankton 85, 138, 140, 144, 145, 274–6, 278, 287 plants and flowers 78 angiosperms domestication of 52, 59, 62, 64, 65–7, 68, 81, 87, 214n gymnosperms see also cereal crops; crops; photosynthesis plastics 120, 150n, 175, 178, 238n, 274 plate tectonics see tectonics platinum 177, 178–9, 182 platinum group metals (PGMs) 168, 176, 177–8, 179–80, 182n pliosaurs 133 ploughs 76, 77, 165–6, 215n, 255, 268, 285, 286 Polar cells 235 Polaris 37, 224 Polo, Marco 258–9 Pompeii 162 Pontic–Caspian Steppe 196, 214 population growth 2, 22–3, 70, 72, 87, 117, 166, 255, 256, 257 porcelain 112, 115, 149–50, 249 Portland stone 134 ports 98, 100, 101, 105n, 115, 119, 194, 212 Portugal/Portuguese 193, 217–18, 219–20, 222, 229, 245, 247n sailors 119, 193, 223–7, 231, 234, 239–41, 244–5, 247–8 slavery/slave trade 218, 222, 253n Portuguese Route 249–50, 250–51 potatoes 66, 81, 82, 131 Potosí silver mines, Bolivia 248–9 pottery see ceramics precession 19, 21, 23, 36–7, 37, 44 primates 82, 84, 86, 144 printing 194 Pripet Marshes 204 promethium 176 propane 276 Protestantism 185n Ptolemy (geographer) 111, 226 pumpkins 66n pyramids 127–8, 129, 133, 138 Pyrenees Mountains 267 Qatar 120 Qin dynasty (China) 184, 203 Qing dynasty (China) 91, 195, 214 quartz 148 and n quartzite 17n Quaternary Period 31, 32, 34–5, 40, 42 quicklime 139 radiolarians 140, 275 railways 55, 56, 100, 150n, 152, 167, 260 rain-shadow effect 11, 190, 195, 214n rainfall 10, 11, 21, 64, 142, 189, 280 rainforests 7, 80, 190, 223n, 232, 275, 285 rare earth metals (REMs) 168, 176–7, 180, 181–2 Ravenscroft, George 140 Reconquista, the 217, 219 Red Sea 11, 104, 107, 108–10, 121, 133, 187, 192, 193 redwoods 79 Reformation, Protestant 185n religions 194 see also Christianity; Islam; Judaism REMs see rare earth metals reptiles 79, 82, 133 Rhine, River 57, 185, 206, 207, 208 rhinoceroses 33, 83 rhodium 177, 182n rice 65–6, 67, 69, 91 Rio Tinto mine, Spain 163 rivers 2, 41, 61, 70, 72, 90, 91–3, 92, 116, 144 see also specific rivers roads 2, 56, 74, 93, 100, 187, 273, 274 Roaring Forties 43, 237, 250, 251, 252 and n rock types 132; see also basalt(ic) rocks; shale rocks Rocky Mountains 55 Rodinia 153 Roman Empire/Romans 27, 28, 73, 99, 100–1, 110–11, 162, 183, 185–7, 190–91, 206–8, 210–11, 218 architecture 136n, 162n coalmines 259 metalworking 259 population 186 underfloor heating systems 259 waterwheel 257 Rome 185, 207, 208 Colosseum 133 Pantheon 135, 162n Trajan’s Column 135 root plants 81–2 rosemary 115n Rove Formation 170n Rub’ al-Khali Desert 191 rubber, synthetic 178 rubies 241 ruminants 83; see also cattle/cows Run, island of 114n Rushmore, Mount 147 Russia/Soviet Union 48–9, 195, 197n, 209, 213, 214 Hitler’s invasion 215 trade 120 wheatfields 214, 215n see also Siberia ruthenium 177, 182n Rwanda 28n rye 61, 52, 67 sabre-toothed tigers 31, 49 saffron 115n Sahara Desert 66, 72, 89, 189, 192–3, 217–18, 220, 223n Sahel, the 63, 66, 74 Sahul 48 sailing and navigation 118n, 169 current sailing (volta do mar) 219–20, 223–4, 226, 227, 230–31, 232, 244n in doldrums 224, 234–5, 239 see also oceans; ships; trade routes, maritime St Christopher, Gulf of 226 Saint Helena 221n St Lawrence River 55 St Paul’s Cathedral, London 134 Salisbury Plain 137 salt 105, 193, 273 Salween River 91 Samarkand, Uzbekistan 190, 194, 212 Sanchi Stupa, India 129 sand 148n sandstone 132, 151–2, 276 Nubian 132, 133 Santa Marta, Gulf of 225 Santa Vitória, Brazil 225 Santorini (Thera) 162–3 Sao Tomé 225 Sardinia 99, 208 Sargasso Sea 238n Saturn 181n Saudi Arabia 120–21 savannah 7–8, 12, 14, 24, 66, 189 Scandinavia 32, 57, 58, 95, 195 scandium 176 schist 153, 154 Scotland 54, 57, 58, 148, 150 screens, TV and smartphone 176, 181 scurvy 240 and n, 241 Scythians 202 seas see oceans seaweed 171, 238n sedimentary rocks 132 Sefidabeh, Iran 29 Serengeti Desert 33 Shah Jahan 249 shale rock 125, 170, 266, 276, 279 sheep 74, 75, 76, 77, 83, 86–7, 88, 117, 198, 199, 201, 209 ships/shipping 78, 95, 96, 98, 101n, 107–8, 117–21, 167, 193, 219, 228, 246 galleons 237, 246, 248–9 galleys 219 hammocks 230n masts 130 scurvy 240 and n, 241 slave ships 253–4 steamships 107n, 122n, 260 warships 119, 122n see also sailing and navigation Siberia 32, 47, 48, 52, 142, 185, 195, 201n, 267, 279, 286 Siberian Traps 141–2, 143, 179 Sicily 105n, 208 siderophile metals 168, 178 Sierra Nevada Mountains 218n silica/silicon/silicon dioxide 17n, 140, 146, 148n, 167, 168, 175, 178n silk 112, 115, 187 and n, 193n, 249, 255 Silk Road 110, 182, 186, 187–91, 193–4, 197, 203–4, 211, 215, 285 silver 159, 163, 168, 174, 175, 177, 182, 193, 248–9 Sinai/Sinai Peninsula 23, 47, 131 Sinai Desert 110, 192 sisal 82 skyscrapers 153, 154, 155, 167 slate 132, 152–3 slavery/slave trade 116n, 125–6, 205, 218, 222, 253–4, 269 sloths, ground 49 smartphones 168, 175, 176, 181–2 Smith, William 150n Snowball Earth 172 solar energy 67, 171, 255, 257–8, 281 solar wind 169 Somatic Energy Regime 258 Sonoran Desert 191 sorghum 66, 67 South Africa 11 Cape of Good Hope 121, 225–6, 231, 250 platinum group metals 179–80 rare earth metals 177 veld 196 South America 42, 43, 48, 49–50, 54, 89, 104, 139, 237, 267 slave trade 254 South China Sea 115 South Downs 137 Southern Cross 225 South Pole 42, 43, 44, 103, 265 Soviet Union see Russia soya beans 65 Spain/the Spanish 58, 59, 90, 118, 218 and n, 226n, 227, 229, 231, 247n, 267 explorers and navigators 119, 218n, 219, 231, 237, 245, 247, 248–9 galleons 246, 249 mines 163 Reconquista 217, 218 saffron 115n Visigoths 208 Sparta 117–18 Spice Islands 96, 240, 245, 247, 251 spice trade 112–15, 193, 211, 218, 241, 245, 249, 252 spiders 262 spore-forming plants 78–9 spruce trees 79 squash plants 66, 81, 214n Sri Lanka (Ceylon) 113, 221, 245n Staffordshire: coalfields 272 star fossils 138 stars 37, 118n, 148n, 167–8, 169, 224, 227, 240, 252n, 281 steam engines 78, 97, 149, 233, 254, 259–60, 273 steam-powered machinery 148 steamships 107n, 122n, 260 steel 130n, 166–7, 174, 255, 272 step pyramids, Mesoamerican 128 steppes 33, 61, 62, 77, 79, 89, 196–203, 198–9, 204, 208 nomads 200, 204–5, 206, 208, 213–14 stirrups 194 stock market, first 97 Stoke-on-Trent: potteries 149 Stonehenge, England 137 Strabo 111, 228 ‘subtropical highs’ 232, 233 Sudbury Basin, Canada 179 Suez, Gulf of 110n Suez Canal 107n, 120, 121 Suffolk: cottages 152 sugar plantations 222, 252, 253 Sugarloaf Mountain, Rio de Janeiro 147 sulphides 157, 159, 280 sulphur 1, 167, 259 sulphur dioxide 142 Sumatra 111, 112, 114, 115, 119n, 252 Sumerians 71, 131 Sun, the/sunlight 36, 41, 43, 44, 171, 232, 258, 281 Earth’s orbit round 19, 21, 22, 24, 35, 36–9, 37 proto- 9, 168 solar wind 169 ultraviolet radiation 142, 170, 172 and n see also solar energy Sunda Strait 119n, 252 Sundaland 48 sunflowers 214n supernovae 167 swamp forests 262–3, 265–6, 268, 274 Sweden 286 Syria 163, 285 Tabriz, Iran 30 taiga 79, 195, 196 Taj Mahal, Agra, India 249 Taklamakan Desert 185, 189–90, 191 Tambora, eruption of (1815) 111, 141n tantalum 175 Tanzania 10, 11, 14 tapirs 83 Tarim Basin, China 185, 189, 204 taro 66 Tasmania 48, 97 Taurus Mountains 74, 163 Teays River 55 tectonic plates 8–10, 11, 12–13, 18, 24, 25, 41, 43, 56, 88, 98–9, 102–3, 106, 111, 135, 145–6, 148n, 159, 160, 161–2, 190–91, 218n, 262, 266, 268 and convergent plate boundary 9 and early civilisations 25–30, 70 Tehran, Iran 29–30 Ternate Island 114 Tethyean limestone 135 Tethys Ocean/Sea 102–3, 103, 104, 104–5, 105, 129, 135, 136, 138, 160, 163, 218n, 267, 274, 276–7, 279, 285 textiles 259, 269; see also cotton; wool Thames, River/Thames Valley 57, 154 Thar Desert 191 thatch-roofed buildings 152 Thebes, Egypt: Luxor Temple 132 Thera (Santorini) 162–3 thermohaline circulation 61–2, 278 Thirty Years War (1618–48) 58 thrust faults 28–30 thyme 115n Tian Shan Mountains 191, 196 Tibet/Tibetan Plateau 10, 28n, 91–3, 92, 184, 185, 191, 242, 243, 285 Ticino, River 140 Tidore Island 114 Tigris, River 27, 65, 90, 107 timber 73, 79, 130, 255–6 timber-framed houses 152 Timbuktu, Mali 193 tin 158, 164, 175, 267n tipis 130 Tivoli, Italy: mineral springs 133 Toba, eruption of 111 tobacco 252, 254 toilets, Minoan 161 tomatoes 66, 81 tools 15, 16–17, 22, 24, 137, 140, 156 Acheulean 17, 22 agricultural 76, 165–6, see also ploughs bronze 157–8, 161, 164, 165 iron 165 Oldowan 16–17, 18, 22 steel 166–7 Tordesillas line 247n Toscanelli, Paolo dal Pozzo 228 Towers of Paine, Chile 147 trade routes 29, 30, 58, 76, 89, 110, 158, 185, 194, 203, 215 maritime 106–11, 108–9, 110, 112, 114–15, 118, 119–21, 194, 216, 218, 232, 247–54 see also Silk Road trade winds 73, 219, 220, 230, 233–4, 235, 237, 238, 243–4, 246, 247, 253 Trafalgar, Battle of (1805) 58, 118 travertine 133 trees/forests 12, 15, 33, 40, 44, 61, 78, 79, 80, 81, 85, 161, 189, 255, 258, 263–4 and coal formation 261–5 coppicing 256, 258, 259 swamp 262–3, 265, 266 see also rainforests; timber Triassic Period 141, 143 Troodos Mountains, Cyprus 160, 163 Trump, President Donald 122, 124 tsunamis 25, 163 tundra 31, 33, 53, 79, 195 tungsten 168 Tunisia 100, 105 Turkey 65, 70, 88 see also Ottoman Turks turkeys 74 Turkmenistan 190, 212 Uffington White Horse, Oxfordshire 137 Uighurs 202 Ukraine 120, 202 Umayyad Caliphate 217 ungulates 12, 82–4, 86–7, 90, 196, 200, 287 see also camels; cattle; hippopotamuses; horses; pigs; rhinoceroses; zebras etc United Arab Emirates 120 United Nations building, New York 134, 145 United States 55–6, 121, 122, 124–5, 262, 267 architecture 134–5, 136 ‘Black Belt’ 125–6 coal industry 279–70 cotton plantations 125, 252, 253–4 elections (2008, 2012, 2016) 122, 123, 124 forests 195 and Hawaii 107n, 222n Indiana limestone 134–5 and Japan 122n, 222n population 284 rare earth metals 181 slavery 125–6, 253–4 see also Alaska; North America Ur 71 Ural Mountains 163, 196, 200–1 and n, 267 uranium 168, 181n, 182n Uruk 71 Uzbekistan 190, 194, 212 Vandals 207, 208 Variscan Orogeny 267 Vega 37 vegetables 66 and n, 69, 78, 81–2, 131 Venezuela 231, 279 Venice 99, 115, 140, 211, 212, 217, 229 Vienna 209 Vietnam 92 Virginia Pentagon 134 State Capitol 136n tobacco plantations 254 University Library 136n Visigoths 207, 208 volcanoes/volcanic activity 8, 9, 12–13, 24, 25, 28, 43, 85–6, 98, 107, 111, 133, 141–2, 162 and n, 172, 173, 221n, 222, 277 Krakatoa 111 Mount Elgon 12 Mount Etna 117 Mount Kenya 12 Mount Kilimanjaro 12 Popocatepetl 28 Potosí (Cerro Rico) 177, 248n Tambora 111, 141n Thera 162–3 Vesuvius 162 wagons 76, 77, 200 Wales coal 266, 272 slate 152–3 warfare 57–8, 76, 98, 101, 116n, 117–18, 119, 122, 124, 126, 184, 200n, 217, 222n, 229, 245, 247n, 248, 254 nomadic tribes 201–3, 204–6, 213 see also gunpowder; weapons Washington, DC Capitol Building 136n Hoover Building 136n National Cathedral 134 Peace Monument 136 Treasury Building 136n White House 136n water buffalo 77 Waterloo, Battle of (1815) 222n waterwheels 68, 130, 165, 257, 259 wattle and daub 152 Weald–Artois anticline 56, 154 weapons 17, 137, 140, 156, 200n bronze 116n, 157–8, 164, 165 iron 165, 166 steel 166, 174 West Africa 66, 75, 242 coastline 193, 218, 223, 224, 253 Western Ghats, India 114 Western Steppe 196, 201 whales 83n, 95, 275 wheat 61, 65, 67, 87–8, 117, 184, 214, 215n, 286 White Cliffs of Dover 57, 137, 138, 145 White House, the 136n Wight, Isle of 137, 221 wigwams 130 wildebeest 33 windmills 68, 96, 130, 257 winds 5, 32, 56, 61, 99, 197, 216, 220, 223n, 232–3 and Coriolis effect 233, 235, 237 easterly trade winds 73, 219, 220, 230, 233–4, 235, 237, 238, 243–4, 246, 247, 253 monsoon 110, 192, 240–44, 243, 251 polar easterly 235, 238 solar 169 southwesterly/westerly 220, 226, 230, 236, 237, 238, 239, 244 wool 76, 77, 88, 90, 115, 201, 255, 259 Wren, Sir Christopher: St Paul’s Cathedral 134 writing/script Minoan 163n Phoenician 101n Sumerian 131 Xiongnu, the 202, 206; see also Huns Y-chromosome Adam 46 yams 66, 82 Yangtze River 28n, 65–6, 91, 184, 187 Yankee Stadium, New York 134 Yellow River/Valley 28n, 63, 65, 73, 90, 91, 184, 187 yew trees 79 Yorkshire 134, 152, 271, 272 Yosemite National Park, USA 147 Younger Dryas Event 61, 62, 64 yttrium 175, 176 Yuan dynasty (China) 91, 210, 212 yurts 130 Zagros Mountains 27, 71, 74, 104, 110 zebras 12, 83, 89 ziggurats 131 zinc 159, 163, 174 zooplankton 275

The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality
by Angus Deaton
Published 15 Mar 2013

The historian Ian Morris has described how increased trade around the second century CE merged previously separate disease pools that, since the beginning of agriculture, had evolved in the West, South Asia, and East Asia, “as if they were on different planets.” Catastrophic plagues broke out in China and in the eastern outposts of the Roman Empire.25 The Columbian exchange after 1492 is an even better-known example.26 Many historical epidemics started from new trade routes or new conquests. The plague of Athens in 430 BCE was attributed to trade, and bubonic plague was brought to Europe in 1347 by rats aboard trading ships. The cholera epidemic of the nineteenth century is thought to have come from Asia thanks to the activities of the British in India, and its subsequent spread through Europe and North America was speeded by the new railways.

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Jim Oeppen and James W. Vaupel, 2002, “Broken limits to life expectancy,” Science 296 (May 10), 1029–31. See also Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, 2011, “A pitched battle over life span,” Science 333 (July 29), 549–50. 25. Morris, Why the West rules; quote on p. 296. 26. Alfred W. Crosby, [1973] 2003, The Columbian exchange: Biological and cultural consequences of 1492, Greenwood; Jared Diamond, 2005, Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies, Norton; and Charles C. Mann, 2011, 1493: Uncovering the new world that Columbus created, Knopf. 27. Phyllis B. Eveleth and James M. Tanner, 1991, Worldwide variation in human growth, Cambridge University Press, and Roderick Floud, Kenneth Wachter, and Anabel Gregory, 2006, Height, health, and history: Nutritional status in the United Kingdom, 1750–1980, Cambridge University Press. 28.

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking
by Michael Bhaskar
Published 2 Nov 2021

Absent some radical change, we move ever closer to a point of declining combinatorial possibility. Throughout history the collision of cultures has been a fecund ground in this regard. Consider how the European Renaissance was sparked by trade with East, allowing the recovery of lost works, or how the Columbian Exchange following the connection of the Americas with Eurasia sparked a pan-continental transformation in everything from diet to economics. Yet globalisation has homogenised the world. We wear the same clothes (jeans, suits and baseball caps), eat the same foods (pizza, noodles, beer, cola), work for and buy from the same companies (Apple, Walmart, VW, Nestlé) watch the same films (Disney), speak the same languages (English), worship the same idols (TikTok, Pokémon, the Beatles).

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(2019), ‘Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology’, Nature 566, pp. 378–82 Wuchty, Stefan, Jones, Benjamin F., and Uzzi, Brian (2007), ‘The Increasing Dominance of Teams in Production of Knowledge’, Science, Vol. 316 No. 5827, pp. 1036–9 Xinhua (2019), ‘China to build scientific research station on Moon's south pole’, Xinhua, accessed 18 January 2021, available at http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-04/24/c_138004666.htm Yueh, Linda (2018), The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today, London: Penguin Viking Index ‘0,10’ exhibition 103 ‘0-I’ ideas 31 Aadhaar 265 abstraction 103 AC motor 287, 288 academia 209 Académie des sciences 47 Adam (robot) 235–6 Adams, John 211 Adler, Alfred 188 Adobe 265 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) 180, 247, 253, 296, 317 AEG 34 aeroplanes 62–6, 68–70, 71, 219 Aeschylus 3 Africa 267, 279–80, 295 age/ageing 122, 158–60, 193 AGI see artificial general intelligence Agrarian Revolution 252 agricultural production 92–3 AI see artificial intelligence Akcigit, Ufuk 193 Alexander the Great 159 Alexander, Albert 52 Alexandrian Library 4, 295, 304 algorithms 175, 185, 196, 224, 235, 245 aliens 240–1, 306, 308–9, 337 Allison, Jim 58 Alphabet 193, 225, 265, 294, 295 AlphaFold software 225–6, 227, 228–9, 233 AlphaGo software 226–7, 228, 233 AlQuraishi, Mohammed 225, 226, 229 Amazon 84–5, 214, 272 Amazon Prime Air 71 American Revolution 139 amino acids 223, 226 Ampère, André-Marie 74–5 Anaximander 35 ancestors 10–12 ancient Greeks 1–6, 7–8, 291, 303–4 Anderson, Kurt 106 Angkor Wat 43 anthrax 47–8, 51 Anthropocene 14–15 anti-reason 211–12 anti-science 211–12 antibacterials 234 antibiotics 38, 52–3, 124, 125, 217, 315 resistance to 235 Apollo missions 70, 315, 316, 317, 318 Apple 33, 85, 159, 185, 186, 193, 272, 296, 312 Aquinas, Thomas 36 AR see augmented reality archaeology 153–4 Archimedes 1–6, 7–8, 19, 27, 32, 37, 39, 291, 304 architecture 103, 115, 188 ARIA 297 Aristarchus 5 Aristotle 24, 108, 282, 304 Arkwright, Richard 25, 26, 34, 253 Armstrong, Louis 103 ARPA see Advanced Research Projects Agency art 99–104, 107–8, 176–7, 236, 321, 339 Artemis (Moon mission) 71, 218 artificial general intelligence (AGI) 226, 237–8, 249, 250, 310, 313, 330, 341 artificial intelligence (AI) 225–9, 233–41, 246–7, 248, 249–52, 262, 266, 300, 310, 312–13, 323, 329, 330, 331, 338 arts 152, 293 see also specific arts Artsimovich, Lev 147 arXiv 116 Asia 264, 267–8, 273, 275 Asimov, Isaac, Foundation 45 Astor, John Jacob 288 astronomy 30, 231, 232 AT&T 85, 181, 183, 185, 197 Ates, Sina T. 193 Athens 24, 295 Atlantis 154 augmented reality (AR) 241–2, 338 authoritarianism 112–13, 284 autonomous vehicles 71, 72, 219 ‘Axial Age’ 108 Azoulay, Pierre 317–18 Bach, J.S. 236 bacillus 46 Bacon, Francis 25, 259 bacteria 38, 46, 53 Bahcall, Safi 31 Ballets Russes 99–100 Baltimore and Ohio railway 67 Banks, Iain M. 310 Bardeen, John 182 BASF 289 Batchelor, Charles 286 Bates, Paul 226 Bayes, Thomas 289 Beagle (ship) 36 Beethoven, Ludwig van 26 Beijing Genomics Institute 257, 294–5 Bell Labs 180–4, 186–8, 190, 206, 214, 217, 289, 296, 322 Benz, Karl 68, 219, 330 Bergson, Henri 109 Bessemer process 80 Bezos, Jeff 71, 326 Bhattacharya, Jay 201, 202, 321 Biden, Joe 59 Big Bang 117, 174, 181 Big Big Ideas 79–80 big ideas 5, 8, 11, 13–19 adoption 28 and an uncertain future 302–36 and art 99–103 artificial 223–38 and the Big Ideas Famine 13 and bisociation 36 blockers to 17–18 and breakthrough problems 46–73, 77, 86, 98, 222, 250, 301 and the ‘burden of knowledge’ effect 154–65, 175, 178, 235, 338 and business formation 95 ceiling 18 conception 37 definition 27–8, 40–1 Enlightenment 132–40, 136–40 era of 109–10 erroneous 176 evidence for 222, 223–54 execution 37 ‘fishing out’ mechanism 152 future of 45, 98, 302–36, 337–43 harmful nature 41–2 how they work 23–45 and the Idea Paradox 178–9, 187, 191, 217, 226, 250, 254, 283–4, 301, 312, 342 and the Kardashev Scale 337–43 long and winding course of 4, 5, 35–8, 136 and the low-hanging fruit paradox 149–54, 167, 178 and luck 38–9 moral 136, 138 nature of 169–72 necessity of 41–3 need for 42–3 normalisation of 171–5, 178 originality of 28 paradox of 143–79 and patents 97 process of 37–8 purchase 37–8 and resources 128 and rights 132–40 and ‘ripeness’ 39 and short-termism 192 slow death of 106–7 slowdown of 98 society's reaction to 216 and specialisation 156, 157–8 today 21–140 tomorrow 141–343 big pharma 31, 60, 185, 217–18, 226 Big Science 118–19 Bill of Rights 137 Bingham, Hiram 153 biology 243–8, 300 synthetic 245–6, 251, 310, 329 BioNTech 218, 298 biotech 195–6, 240, 246, 255–8, 262, 266, 307 bisociation 36 Björk 104 Black, Joseph 26 ‘black swan’ events 307, 310 Bletchley Park 180, 296 Bloom, Nick 91, 92, 93 Boeing 69, 72, 162, 165, 192, 238 Bohr, Niels 104, 118, 159 Boltsmann, Ludwig 188 Boston Consulting Group 204 Botha, P.W. 114 Bowie, David 107 Boyer, Herbert 243 Boyle, Robert 232 Brahe, Tycho 36, 229, 292 brain 166, 246–8, 299–300 collective 299, 300–1 whole brain emulations (‘ems’) 248–9, 341 brain drains 197 brain-to-machine interfaces 247–8 Branson, Richard 71 Brattain, Walter 182 Brazil 266–7, 268, 279 breakthrough organisations 294–9 breakthrough problems 46–73, 77, 86, 98, 222, 234, 250, 301 breakthroughs 2–5, 27–8, 32–7, 41, 129, 152, 156 and expedition novelty 333 hostility to 187 medical 58–60 missing 175 near-misses 160 nuclear power 145 price of 87–98 and short-termism 192 slowdown of 87, 94 society's reaction to 216 and universities 204 see also ‘Eureka’ moments breast cancer 94 Brexit referendum 2016: 208 Brin, Sergey 319, 326 Britain 24, 146, 259, 283, 297 see also United Kingdom British Telecom 196 Brunel, Isambard Kingdom 67 Brunelleschi 232 Bruno, Giordano 216 Buddhism 108, 175, 264–5, 340 Buhler, Charlotte 188–9 Buhler, Karl 188–9 ‘burden of knowledge’ effect 154–65, 175, 178, 235, 338 bureaucracy 198–87, 280–1 Bush, George W. 211 Bush, Vannevar 168, 314–15, 317 business start-ups 95–6 Cage, John 104 Callard, Agnes 111 Caltech 184 Cambridge University 75, 76, 124, 235–6, 257, 294–6 canals 67 cancer 57–61, 76, 93–4, 131, 234, 245, 318 research 59–61 capital and economic growth 88 gray 192, 196 human 275, 277 capitalism 36, 111–13, 186, 189, 191–8 CAR-Ts see chimeric antigen receptor T-cells carbon dioxide emissions 220–1 Cardwell's Law 283 Carey, Nessa 244 Carnap, Rudolf 189 Carnarvon, Lord 153 cars 289 electric 71 flying 71 Carter, Howard 153 Carter, Jimmy 58 Carthage 3, 43 Cartright, Mary 163 CASP see Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction Cassin, René 135 Catholic Church 206, 230 Cavendish Laboratory 76, 294 Cell (journal) 234 censorship 210–11 Census Bureau (US) 78 Centers for Disease Control 212 Cerf, Vint 253 CERN 118, 233, 239, 252, 296 Chain, Ernst 52, 60, 124 Champollion, Jean-François 155 Chang, Peng Chun 135 change 10–13, 18–19, 24 rapid 30, 32 resistance to 222 slowdown 85 chaos theory 163 Chaplin, Charlie 104 Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de 300 Charpentier, Emmanuelle 244, 256 chemistry 49, 56, 104, 117, 118, 124, 149–50, 159, 241, 244 chemotherapy 57 Chicago 10 chicken cholera 46 chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CAR-Ts) 58, 61 China 15, 25, 71–2, 111, 112, 138, 208, 213, 216, 255–64, 265, 266, 267, 268, 275, 277, 279, 280, 283, 284–5, 312, 313, 314, 319, 328 Han 259, 260 Ming 284, 308, 309 Qing 260 Song 24, 259–60, 306 Tang 259–60 Zhou 259 Christianity 108, 303–4, 340 Church, George 245 cities 270–2, 308–9, 340 civilisation collapse 42–4 decay 187 cleantech 195 climate change 219–21, 284, 313–14, 338 clinical trials 218 cliodynamics 339 coal 23, 24, 26, 80, 220 Cocteau, Jean 101 cognitive complexity, high 332–3 cognitive diversity 281–3 Cognitive Revolution 252 Cohen, Stanley N. 243, 244 collective intelligence 339 collectivism 282 Collison, Patrick 117, 272 colour 75 Coltrane, John 104 Columbian Exchange 177 Columbus 38 comfort zones, stepping outside of 334 communism 111, 133, 134, 173, 217, 284 companies creation 95–6 numbers 96–7 competition 87, 283 complacency 221–2 complexity 161–7, 178, 204, 208, 298, 302, 329 high cognitive 332–3 compliance 205–6 computational power 128–9, 168, 234, 250 computer games 107 computers 166–7, 240, 253 computing 254 see also quantum computing Confucianism 133, 259 Confucius 24, 108, 109, 282 Congressional Budget Office 82 connectivity 272 Conon of Samos 4 consciousness 248, 340 consequences 328–9 consolidation, age of 86 Constantine 303 convergence 174, 311–12 Copernicus 29, 30, 41, 152, 171, 229, 232, 292 copyright 195 corporations 204–5 cosmic background microwave radiation 117, 181 cotton weaving, flying shuttle 24–5 Coulomb, Charles-Augustin de 74–5 counterculture 106 Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic 13, 14, 15, 55, 86, 113–14, 193, 202, 208, 212, 218, 251–2, 263, 283–4, 297–8, 309, 318, 327 vaccine 125, 245 Cowen, Tyler 13, 82, 94–5, 221 cowpox 47 creativity 188, 283 and artificial intelligence 236 crisis in 108 decrease 106–8 and universities 203 Crete 43 Crick, Francis 119, 296 CRISPR 243, 244, 251, 255–8, 299 Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) 224–6, 228 Cronin, Lee 242 crop yields 92–3 cultural diversity 281–3 cultural homogenisation 177 cultural rebellion 106–7 Cultural Revolution 114, 305 culture, stuck 106 Cunard 67 Curie, Marie 104, 144, 203, 289–90, 332 Daniels, John T. 62–3 Daoism 259 dark matter/energy/force 338 DARPA see Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Darwin, Charles 34, 35–6, 37–8, 41, 77, 109, 118, 171, 289 Darwin, Erasmus 35 data 233 datasets, large 28 Davy, Sir Humphrey 149, 150 Debussy, Claude 100–1 decision-making, bad 43–4 Declaration of Independence 1776: 137 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen 1789: 137 DeepMind 225–9, 296 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 315 democracy 111–12 Deng Xiaoping 261 deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) 119, 223–4, 243, 251, 255, 339 DNA sequencing 56 Derrida, Jacques 109 Deutsch, David 126, 203 Diaghilev, Sergei 99–101 Diamond, Jared 42 Digital Age 180 digital technology 241–2, 243 diminishing returns 87, 91, 94, 97, 118, 123, 126, 130–1, 150, 161, 169, 173, 222, 250, 276, 285, 301 Dirac, Paul 159–60 disruption 34, 96, 109, 119, 157 diversity, cultural 281–3 DNA see deoxyribonucleic acid Dorling, Danny 171 Doudna, Jennifer 244, 251, 256 Douglas, Mary 290 Douthat, Ross 14, 106 drag 65 Drake equation 306 Drezner, Daniel 214 drones, delivery 71, 72 Drucker, Peter 189 drugs 55–7, 124, 235 Eroom's Law 55, 57, 61, 92–3, 119, 161, 234, 245, 338 and machine learning 234 research and development 55–7, 61, 92–4, 119, 161, 172–3, 217–18, 234, 245, 315, 338 see also pharmaceutical industry Duchamp, Marcel 103, 171 DuPont 184 Dutch East India Company 34 Dyson, Freeman 120 dystopias 305–8 East India Company 34 Easter Island 42–3 Eastern Europe 138 ecocides 42–3 economic growth 240, 272, 273, 316 endogenous 94 and ideas 88, 89–92, 95 process of 87–8 slowdown 82, 83, 84, 85, 178 economics 87–9, 98, 339, 340 contradictions of 87 Economist, The (magazine) 188 Edelman annual trust barometer 209 Edison, Thomas 183–4, 286–9, 290, 293 education 127, 277, 324–8 Einstein, Albert 11, 29, 74, 77, 104, 109, 117, 119, 124, 159–60, 203, 332 Eisenstein, Elizabeth 231 Eldredge, Niles 30 electric cars 71 electricity 11, 74–7, 81, 286–7, 289 electromagnetic fields 76 electromagnetic waves 75, 76 elements (chemical) 149–50 Elizabeth II 144–5 employment 204–5 Encyclopædia Britannica 97, 128, 155 ‘End of History’ 112 energy 337–8, 341–2 availability 85 use per capita 85 see also nuclear power engineering 243 England 25, 144–5, 309 Englert, François 118 Enlightenment 130, 136–40, 252 see also Industrial Enlightenment; neo-Enlightenment Eno, Brian 295 entrepreneurship, decline 96 epigenetics 164 epigraphy 236–7 epistemic polarisation 210 Epstein, David 334 Eratosthenes 5 Eroom's Law 55, 57, 61, 92–3, 119, 161, 234, 245, 338 ethical issues 256–7 Euclid 3, 304 ‘Eureka’ moments 2–5, 35, 36–7, 129, 163 Europe 95, 247, 258–60, 268, 268, 271, 283, 304, 308 European Space Agency 71 European Union (EU) 206, 216, 262, 266 Evans, Arthur 153 evolutionary theory 30, 35–6 expedition novelty 333 experimental spaces 296–8 Expressionism 104 Facebook 34, 159, 170, 197 Fahrenheit 232 failure, fear of 335 Faraday, Michael 75 FCC see Future Circular Collider FDA see Food and Drug Administration Federal Reserve (US) 82 Feigenbaum, Mitchell 163 fermentation 49 Fermi, Enrico 143, 159, 306 Fermi Paradox 306 Fernández-Armesto, Felipe 109 fertility rates 269 Feynman, Richard 77, 166, 332 film 104, 106–7, 108, 115 financialism 191–8, 206–7, 214, 217, 219 Firebird, The (ballet) 99–100 ‘first knowledge economy’ 25–6 First World War 54, 99, 104, 187, 188–9 Fisk, James 182 Fleming, Alexander 38, 52, 60, 332 flight 36, 62–6, 68–70, 71, 335 Flint & Company 64 flooding 220, 284 Florey, Howard 52, 60, 124, 332 Flyer, the 62–4, 66, 72 Foldit software 225 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 55, 60, 93, 212 food supply 81 Ford 34, 253 Ford, Henry 68, 104, 219 Fordism 81 Foucault, Michel 110 Fraenkel, Eduard 124 France 49–51, 54, 64, 67, 95, 279, 309, 332 franchises 31 Franklin, Benjamin 119, 211 Frederick the Great 292 French Revolution 137, 275 Freud, Sigmund 34, 36, 77, 104, 171, 188, 190, 216 frontier 278–9, 283–4, 302, 310–11 Fukuyama, Francis 111–12 fundamentalism 213 Future Circular Collider (FCC) 239 futurology 44 Gagarin, Yuri 70 Galen 303 Galileo 206, 231, 232, 291, 322 Galois, Évariste 159 GDPR see General Data Protection Regulation Gell-Mann, Murray 77 gene editing 243–4, 251, 255–8 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 206 General Electric (GE) 33, 184, 265, 288, 333 General Motors 289 Generation Z 86 genes 223–4 genetic engineering 243–4, 251, 253, 255–8 genetic science 163–4, 202 genius 26 genome, human 119, 202, 244, 255–7, 296, 313 genome sequencing 243–4 germ theory of disease 50–1, 53 Germany 54, 95, 96, 279, 283, 292, 332 Gesamtkunstwerk 99 Gibson, William 241 Glendon, Mary Ann 135 global warming 147 globalisation 177 Go 226–7 Gödel, Kurt 41, 168 Goldman Sachs 197 Goodhart's Law 199 Google 34, 85, 185, 197, 240, 272, 318 20 per cent time 319–20 Google Glass 241 Google Maps 86 Google Scholar 116 Google X 294 Gordon, Robert 13, 83, 94–5 Gouges, Olympe de 137 Gould, Stephen Jay 30 Gove, Michael 208 government 205, 207, 214, 216, 252, 267–8, 297 funding 185–6, 249, 252, 314–19, 321 GPT language prediction 234, 236 Graeber, David 13–14, 111 grants 120, 185–6, 195, 202, 316, 317, 319, 321–3 gravitational waves 117–18, 119 Great Acceleration 309–10 Great Convergence 255–301, 339 Great Disruption 96 Great Enrichment (Great Divergence) 23, 26, 258 Great Exhibition 1851: 293, 309 Great Stagnation Debate 13–14, 16, 17, 45, 72, 82–3, 87, 94–6, 129, 150, 240, 279, 338 Greenland 42 Gropius, Walter 103 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 82, 90, 128, 278, 318 GDP per capita 23, 78, 82 growth cultures 25 growth theory, endogenous 88–9, 94 Gutenberg, Johannes 36 Guzey, Alexey 200, 322 Haber, Fritz 332 Haber-Bosch process 289 Hadid, Zaha 152 Hahn, Otto 144 Hamilton, Margaret 316 Harari, Yuval Noah 114–15, 236 Harris, Robert 307 Harvard Fellows 200 Harvard, John 156 Harvey, William 34, 291–2 Hassabis, Demis 229, 233 Hayek, Friedrich 189 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 36 Heisenberg, Werner 41, 159, 168, 332 heliocentric theory 5, 29, 118, 232, 304 helium 145 Hendrix, Jimi 105 Henry Adams curve 85 Hero of Alexandria 39 Herper, Matthew 55 Hertz, Heinrich 76 Herzl, Theodor 188 Hesse, Herman 307 Hieron II, king of Syracuse 1–2 Higgs, Peter 118 Higgs boson 117–18, 119, 239 Hinduism 133 Hiroshima 144 Hitler, Adolf 138, 188 Hodgkin, Dorothy 124, 332 Hollingsworth, J.

The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World
by Oliver Morton
Published 26 Sep 2015

Maize, coffee, potatoes and chilli peppers spread from the Americas to the Old World; wheat, rice, horses and cattle travelled in the opposite direction, and these economically important transfers were far outnumbered by those due to chance, or to a yen for exotic decoration. The Earth’s ecosystems have become much less distinct as a result of this ‘Columbian Exchange’ – in fact, the degree to which so many things now grow so widely across the Earth has led some ecologists to talk about the present not as the Anthropocene, but as the Homogenocene. The ecological homogenization was a symptom of greater shifts that came about as Europe imposed its will on the newly emptied parts of the world.

…

.* The path the world has followed since the harnessing of fossil fuels has been to a large extent a continuation of this process. Oil in particular has often been extracted far from where it has been used on terms that favoured the far-off users and local elites; until very recently the nations that did the using were those that came out on top in the Columbian Exchange and its aftermath through their prowess at organizing trade and violence. But where once the industrial world drew its growth just from the productivity of places far away in space, now it also draws its growth from places far away in time – from Carboniferous forests and Cretaceous seabeds whose areas far exceed those of the ghost acres which fed and fuelled Britain’s Industrial Revolution.

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor
by David S. Landes
Published 14 Sep 1999

For others, Holland and England, it was a chance to do new things in new ways, to catch the wave of technological progress. And for still others, such as the Amerindians or Tasmanians, it was apocalypse, a terrible fate imposed from without. The Opening brought first an exchange—the so-called Columbian exchange—of the life forms of two biospheres. The Europeans found in the New World new peoples and animals, but above all, new plants—some nutritive (maize [Indian corn], cocoa [cacao], potato, sweet potato), some addictive and harmful (tobacco, coca), some industrially useful (new hardwoods, rubber).

…

If Spain has neither money nor gold nor silver, it is because it has these things, and if it is poor, it is because it is rich…. One would think that one wanted to make of this republic a republic of enchanted people living outside the natural order. —Martin Gonzales de Cellorigo, 16004 Well before the agriculture and manufactures came the loot and booty. The Columbian exchange redistributed wealth as well as flora and fauna—a one-stage transfer from old rich to new. The primary economic significance of the influx of wealth from overseas, however, lay in its uneven effects. Some people got rich only to spend; others to save and invest. The same with countries: some were little richer in the end than at the beginning, while others used their new fortune to grow more money.

…

Scientific Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present. Symposium on the History of Science, Oxford University, 9-15 July 1961. London: Heinemann. Crone, Patricia. 1989. Pre-Industrial Societies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Crosby, Alfred W., Jr. 1972. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood. —————. 1994. Germs, Seeds & Animals: Studies in Ecological History. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Crosland, Maurice. 1967. The Society of Arcueil: A View of French Science at the Time of Napoleon I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ.

A Short History of Humanity: How Migration Made Us Who We Are
by Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe
Published 8 Apr 2021

Nat Ecol Evol, 2018. 2(3): 520–28. Dobyns, H. F., Disease transfer at contact. Annu Rev Anthropol, 1993. 22: 273–91. Farhi, D., and N. Dupin, Origins of syphilis and management in the immuno-competent patient: facts and controversies. Clin Dermatol, 2010. 28(5): 533–38. Crosby, A. W., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. 2003. Praeger. Diamond, J. G., Guns, Germs and Steel. 1997. W. W. Norton. Winau, R., Seuchen und Plagen: Seit Armors Köcher vergiftete Pfeile führt. 2002. Fundiert. Schuenemann, V. J., et al., Historic Treponema pallidum genomes from Colonial Mexico retrieved from archaeological remains.

The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation
by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler
Published 14 Sep 2021

“they fell down so generally”: “William Bradford on the Great Sickness among New England Indians (1633),” Westshore Community College. Some estimate that up to 90 percent: Marr and Cathey, “New Hypothesis for Cause of Epidemic among Native Americans, New England, 1616–1619.” Europeans turned to quarantine: Tognotti. Syphilis seems to have been: Nunn and Qian, “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas.” Harper et al., “The Origin and Antiquity of Syphilis Revisited: An Appraisal of Old World Pre-Columbian Evidence for Treponemal Infection.” Since Africa became part: Chippaux and Chippaux, “Yellow Fever in Africa and the Americas: A Historical and Epidemiological Perspective.”

…

Accessed January 18, 2021. https://www.neat1968.org/about-neat. Norwich, John Julius. Byzantium: The Early Centuries. New York: Knopf, 1989. Novotney, Amy. “The Psychology of Scarcity.” Monitor on Psychology 45, no. 2 (February 2014): 28. www.apa.org/monitor/2014/02/scarcity. Nunn, Nathan, and Nancy Qian. “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 24, no. 2 (June 2010): 163–88. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.24.2.163. “Nursing Home Costs and Ways to Pay.” Caring.com. Accessed December 26, 2020. www.caring.com/senior-living/nursing-homes/how-to-pay. “NYC-Queens Community District 3—Jackson Heights & North Corona PUMA, NY.”

Future Sex
by Emily Witt
Published 10 Oct 2016

We talked about the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco, an organization started by Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, who is trying to genetically resurrect megafauna. I talked about how I had gone to see Charles C. Mann, the author of the books 1491 and 1493, speak at the Long Now Foundation. He had listened to the podcast. We talked about 1493, about how in North America, before the Columbian exchange, there were no earthworms, and how the Spanish had hired samurai to fight the Aztecs in Mexico, and how somebody should make a movie about that. We talked about Narnia and Ursula K. Le Guin. He was reading The Wizard of Earthsea. We talked about how Le Guin was an anarchist and a polyamorist.

The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History
by Greg Woolf
Published 14 May 2020

Perhaps the best illustration of this is what happened when Europe and the New World were brought dramatically back into contact by the voyages of the navigators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was not just long-separated humans that came into contact, but entire biota.5 The encounter has been termed the Columbian Exchange, but that sounds a little benign. Most populations have some degree of immunity or resistance to pathogens with whom they have cohabited for a long time. The encounter with an unfamiliar disease pool is much more threatening. New World societies collapsed as much under the pressure of Old World diseases like smallpox, measles, and whooping cough as in the face of guns and iron technology.

…

By 3000 b.c.e. farming communities were to be found across Eurasia, India, Africa, and the Americas wherever possible. Foraging was restricted to the densest tropical forests, to desert regions, and to the Arctic. The first Pacific mariners were farmers; so were the first settlers on the North Atlantic islands and probably Madagascar. In the five centuries since the Columbian Exchange our various farming regimes have joined up, so that most local agricultural societies can deploy a rich combination of domesticated crops and animals. The global ecosystem has shifted gear, even if it has not stabilized. These changes are irreversible. Biodiversity plummets wherever farming takes hold.

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World
by Deirdre N. McCloskey
Published 15 Nov 2011

But they were brought also to China and India, by trade and the spread of ideas in seeds, not by conquest. If stout Cortez had failed, and if the Spaniards had been satisfied to trade with the Aztecs and Mayans and Incas instead of putting them to the sword, and to the corvée, the main, agricultural effects of the Columbian Exchange would nonetheless have taken place. The European conquest of other parts of the world came in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from unusual daring (think again of Cortez, or Pizarro, or Clive of India) and from guns, germs, and steel. The greater triumph of imperialism awaited the nineteenth century, giving even little European countries like Belgium extensive empires thanks to gunboats, high-muzzle-velocity carbines, and well-ordered armies, backed by the intercontinental shipping by steam to deploy them quickly.

…

When ideas pioneered by the privileged yielded cheap versions, the poor eventually benefited. “Ignorance, not hunger, is the villain of mortality history.”23 Yet one can admit on the material side that the poor eventually benefited, too, from eating better, in potatoes and tomatoes from the Columbian Exchange. The betterment was a dance between ideational and material causes. As I have argued against my allies Mokyr and Jacob, though, ideas from high science were not casual until late in the story. None of the early medical advances that Johansson speaks of had anything to do with theoretical breakthroughs.

…

.: on Defoe, 256; peasants, 433; quotes Taine, 674n5; realism, 258 Cohen, Aharon, 127 Cohen, Edward: banking in ancient Athens, 663n22 Colander, David: on redistribution, 580 Coleman, Donald: British failure, 691n8; gentlemen and players, 676n14 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: “clerisy,” xvi Collier, Paul: bottom fifth/seventh, 73, 660n2 Columbian Exchange, 92 Columbus, Christopher, 397 Comin, Diego: lag of technologies, 78 common law, English: comparative, 415, 521; and growth, xxxiv; view of time, 583–584 Communist Manifesto, 97, 574, 627; Fabians, and Acemoglu and Robinson, 97 communitarianism, 95, 228; medieval, 669n10; Walzer, 561, 645 comparative advantage and absolute advantage, 75, 513; in labor market, 63; and modern mercantilism, 463; and regional specialization, 408 competition: Clough on, 597; among employers, 595; entry and profit, 58; Hayek on, 202–203; mercantilism, 64; and monopoly, xxxiv, 121; openness, 40–41, 280; political, 85, 288, 351–352, 396, 399–400; Smith on, 207; Toynbee on, 97; tragedy of, xxxii–xxxiii; wooing customers, 59–60, 522–623.

After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405
by John Darwin
Published 5 Feb 2008

The threat of further Ottoman expansion hung over Europe until the 1690s. In India and East Asia, Europe’s remoteness made its mode of land warfare almost entirely irrelevant. In much the same way, patterns of consumption, codes of social etiquette and notions of hierarchy in the rest of Eurasia showed few signs of being influenced by Europeans’ behaviour. The ‘Columbian Exchange’ between the natural products of the Old World and the New diversified Eurasian agriculture with novel plants like maize and potatoes, but created no dependence upon European suppliers.124 European activity in the Americas aroused little if any interest in the rest of Eurasia.125 Islamic and East Asian cosmology showed no loss of confidence in the face of European learning, or the violent upheaval in European religion and ritual.

…

For the effects of America, see J. H. Elliott, ‘Final Reflections’, in K. O. Kupperman (ed.), America in European Consciousness 1493–1750 (Chapel Hill, NC, and London, 1995), p. 406. 123. See J. de Vries, The European Economy in the Age of Crisis 1600–1750 (pbk edn, Cambridge, 1976), p. 130. 124. See A.W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange (Westport, Conn., 1972);.A.J.R. Russell-Wood, A World on the Move (New York, 1992). 125. See B. Lewis, Cultures in Conflict (Oxford, 1995) for Ottoman indifference to the Americas. CHAPTER 3: THE EARLY MODERN EQUILIBRIUM 1. J.B. Brebner, The Explorers of North America (pbk edn, New York, 1955), p. 255. 2.

Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline
by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson
Published 5 Feb 2019

“Plagued by Dear Labour,” Economist, 21 October 2013. http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/10/economic-history-1 24 Ker Than, “Massive Population Drop Among Native Americans, DNA Shows,” National Geographic News, 5 December 2011. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/12/111205-native-americans-europeans-population-dna-genetics-science 25 William M. Donovan, The Native Population of the Americas in 1492 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 7. 26 Nathan Nunn and Nancy Quinn, “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food and Ideas,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Spring 2010), p. 165. https://web.viu.ca/davies/H131/ColumbianExchange.pdf 27 World Population to 2300 (New York: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs/Population Division, 2004), Table 2.

Ambition, a History
by William Casey King
Published 14 Sep 2013

Stephanie Moser, Ancestral Images: The Iconography of Human Origins (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 78; Bernadette Bucher, Icon and Conquest: A Structural Analysis of the illustrations of de Bry’s Great voyages, trans. Basia Miller Gulati (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 25. Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972). 26. “1629 Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony,” image drawn from Smithsonian Source, “Primary Sources,” http://www.smithsoniansource.org/display/primarysource/viewdetails.aspx?PrimarySourceId=1200. “Come over and help us” is from Acts 16:9–10. 27.

How to Spend a Trillion Dollars
by Rowan Hooper
Published 15 Jan 2020

The udders of dairy cows grew, and the cattle became stubbier and bulkier, carrying far more muscle. As the domestic animal developed, the auroch itself was hunted to extinction. The last one died in the seventeenth century. But its descendants, they took over the world. The Europeans took cattle with them to the Americas as part of the Columbian Exchange, the globalisation of food species that began when trade was established between Europe and the Americas. Corn (maize), beans, potatoes, tomatoes went east to Europe, while domestic cattle and chickens (and smallpox), and wheat and sugar, went the other way. And that’s when the story of cattle goes up a notch.

The Pineapple: King of Fruits
by Francesca Beauman
Published 22 Feb 2011

MacNutt (tr.), De Orbe Novo: the Eight Decades of Peter Martyr d’Anghera (1912) I. 262. 14 For Spain in this period, see Henry Kamen, Spain’s Road to Empire: the Making of a World Power 1492–1763 (2002). 15 For the relation between the New World and the Old World, see Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (1972); Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World (1993); Antonello Gerbi, Nature in the New World, tr. Jeremy Moyle (1985); and J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New (1970). 16 Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: the Impact of Printing 1450–1800, tr.

Origin Story: A Big History of Everything
by David Christian
Published 21 May 2018

For the first time since plate tectonics had created the single supercontinent of Pangaea, two hundred and fifty million years ago, genes, organisms, information, and diseases could flow within a single worldwide system. The world historian Alfred Crosby described this ecological revolution as the “Columbian Exchange,” and he showed that globalization would transform the biosphere as much as it transformed human history.3 In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels argued that these changes kick-started modern capitalism. The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
by Peter Frankopan
Published 26 Aug 2015

McCaa, ‘Spanish and Nahuatl Views on Smallpox and Demographic Catastrophe in Mexico’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 25 (1995), 397–431. In general, see A. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT, 2003). 54Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Mexico City, 1992), p. 491; López de Gómara, Life of the Conqueror, 141–2, pp. 285–7. 55Cook, Born to Die, pp. 15–59. Also Crosby, Columbian Exchange, pp. 56, 58; C. Merbs, ‘A New World of Infectious Disease’, Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 35.3 (1993), 4. 56Fernández de Enciso, Suma de geografía, cited by E.

The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge
by Matt Ridley

Gutenberg made printed books affordable, which kicked off an increase in literacy, which created a market for spectacles, which led to work on lenses that in turn resulted in the invention of microscopes and telescopes, which unleashed the discovery that the earth went round the sun. In 1493, his magnificent account of the great Columbian exchange that followed contact between the eastern and western hemispheres, Charles Mann shows how again and again the forces that truly shaped history came from below, not above. For instance, the American Revolution was won by the malaria parasite, which devastated General Charles Cornwallis’s army in the Carolinas and on the Chesapeake Bay, at least as much as it was won by George Washington.

Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live
by Nicholas A. Christakis
Published 27 Oct 2020

Clinicians Trace a Ferocious Rampage through the Body, from Brain to Toes,” Science, April 17, 2020. 80 S.A. Lauer et al., “The Incubation Period of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) from Publicly Reported Confirmed Cases: Estimation and Application,” Ann Intern Med, May 5, 2020. 81 W.H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1976; A.W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972. 82 E.N. Lorenz, “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” American Association for the Advancement of Science, 139th Meeting, December 29, 1972. 83 E.N. Lorenz, The Essence of Chaos, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993, p. 134. 84 E.N.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee
by Jared Diamond
Published 2 Jan 1991

Smith, 'Origins of agriculture in eastern North America', Science 246, pp. 1566-71 (1989). Three pioneering books point out the asymmetrical intercontinental spread of diseases, pests, and weeds: William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Anchor Press, Garden City, New York, 1976); and Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Greenwood Press, Westport, 1972), and Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986). Chapter 15: Horses, Hittites, and History Two stimulating, knowledgeable recent books summarizing the Indo-European problem are by Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language (Jonathan Cape, London, 1987), and J.P.

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
by Michael Pollan
Published 22 Apr 2013

.* Researchers hypothesize that, shortly after Columbus’s voyages, this cold-tolerant yeast found its way to Europe, perhaps in a shipment of lumber, or in a barrel that was then used to brew beer. So it appears that lager, like the tomato and the potato and the chili pepper, is yet another gift from the New World to the Old, tendered as part of the Columbian Exchange. S. cerevisiae has demonstrated remarkable ingenuity in exploiting the human desire for alcohol, particularly in finding ways to transport itself from one batch of the stuff to another. Some strains get themselves passed on by colonizing the vessels in which alcohol is fermented, or the wooden tools used to stir the pot.

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
by Yuval Noah Harari
Published 1 Mar 2015

‘Global Burden of Disease, Injuries and Risk Factors Study 2013’, Lancet, 18 December 2014, accessed 18 December 2014, http://www.thelancet.com/themed/global-burden-of-disease; Stephen Adams, ‘Obesity Killing Three Times As Many As Malnutrition’, Telegraph, 13 December 2012, accessed 18 December 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9742960/Obesity-killing-three-times-as-many-as-malnutrition.html. 6. Robert S. Lopez, The Birth of Europe [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1990), 427. 7. Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972); William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977). 8. Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma and the Fall of Old Mexico (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 443–6; Rodolfo Acuna-Soto et al., ‘Megadrought and Megadeath in 16th Century Mexico’, Historical Review 8:4 (2002), 360–2; Sherburne F.

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
by Andrés Reséndez
Published 11 Apr 2016

Yet his own analysis of the demographic debacle of Mexico, offered in the guise of ten plagues, is remarkably consistent with the analysis offered by Las Casas. See Massimo Livi Bacci, Conquest: The Destruction of the American Indios (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2008), 25–30. 4. On the delayed arrival of smallpox, see Alfred W. Crosby Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972), 46; and Livi Bacci, “Return to Hispaniola,” 42. Carl O. Sauer noted as much in the mid-1960s in The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 204. Writing in 2002, Noble David Cook made the best case for an early introduction of smallpox to Española but conceded that no one had yet found any mention of the illness among the Taíno population in 1493 or 1494.

Lonely Planet Colombia (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , Alex Egerton , Tom Masters and Kevin Raub
Published 30 Jun 2015

It's OK to pass them; just show the contents of your bag and stay clear of the fence-side sidewalks. Casa de MonedaMUSEUM (Mint; MAP GOOGLE MAP ; www.banrepcultural.org; Calle 11 No 4-93; h9am-7pm Mon-Sat, 10am-5pm Sun)F This historic museum inside the Banco de la República complex houses the Colección Numismática. The exhibits start with pre-Columbian exchanges of pots and lead chronologically to misshapen coins, the introduction of a centralized bank in 1880, and the making of the cute tree art on the current 500 peso coin in the late 1990s. Colección de ArteMUSEUM ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; www.banrepcultural.org; Calle 11 No 4-14; h9am-7pm Mon-Sat, 10am-5pm Sun)F Most of Banco de la República's permanent Colección de Arte, which features 800 pieces by 250 different artists spread over 16 exhibition halls at two addresses, is reached via elaborate staircases within the same museum complex as Casa de Moneda and Museo Botero.

Vegetable Literacy
by Deborah Madison
Published 19 Mar 2013

This is the potato as a luxury, not as filler standing between you and starvation. And a well-grown potato, one cultivated in rich, organic soil and properly handled, is the one that’s full of antioxidants and flavor. Potatoes are a New World food that traveled to the Old World from their origin in Peru as part of the Columbian exchange, along with tomatoes, chiles, and chocolate. Like lentils, they are one of the truly ancient foods of the world. They first came to Spain in the mid-1500s (although it might have been sweet potatoes that arrived there; they seem to have shared a name) and became popular when they were said to be an aphrodisiac, a surefire way to make any strange, new vegetable popular.

The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
by Joseph Henrich
Published 7 Sep 2020

Robinson (eds.), Africa’s Development in Historical Perspective (pp. 489–512). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nunn, N., and De La Sierra, R. S. (2017). Why being wrong can be right: Magical warfare technologies and the persistence of false beliefs. American Economic Review 107 (5), 582–87. Nunn, N., and Qian, N. (2010). The Columbian exchange: A history of disease, food, and ideas. World Crops 24 (2), 163–88. Nunn, N., and Qian, N. (2011). The potato’s contribution to population and urbanization: Evidence from a historical experiment. Quarterly Journal of Economics 126 (2), 593–650. Nunn, N., and Wantchekon, L. (2011). The slave trade and the origins of mistrust in Africa.

The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind
by Jan Lucassen
Published 26 Jul 2021

Like the Maya and Aztec empires in Mexico, the Inca could also build on a long tradition of predecessors, like the Chimu Empire (850–1450) in Peru. If my impression is correct, most other well-developed polities in the Americas can also be characterized as ‘tributary’, but that has yet to be investigated thoroughly. The study of these highly developed polities in Central and South America, before the ‘Columbian encounter’ or ‘Columbian exchange’, as the post-1492 events are currently described, is extremely important. After all, ‘they represent the result of a natural experiment in independent parallel socio-economic evolution: in the absence of information transfers for up to 13,000 years, any institutional similarities that arose in the Old and New Worlds must be viewed as genuine analogues, as similar solutions to comparable challenges’.158 Archaeologists have tried to reconstruct the emergence of complex societies since the second millennium BCE by working back from the combined archaeological information and historical evidence (from Spanish descriptions as well as American Indian hieroglyphics) available for the Aztecs, Inca and, to a certain extent, the Maya and other American societies around 1500.

Europe: A History
by Norman Davies
Published 1 Jan 1996

If childhood was discovered in early modern Europe, adolescence was discovered by the Romantics, after Goethe’s Werther, and ‘senior citizens’ by the post-industrial era. Europe’s intercourse with America, heretofore a largely hermetic ecological zone, led to a vast Exchange of people, diseases, plants, and animals. This ‘Columbian Exchange’ worked decidedly in Europe’s favour. European colonists braved hardship and deprivation, and in some places faced hostile ‘Indians’. But their losses were minuscule compared to the genocidal casualties which they and their firearms inflicted. They brought some benefits, but with them depopulation and despoliation on a grand scale.

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It is curious that the historian who in The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) so brilliantly exposed the teleological tendencies of political historiography should have argued for ‘the strategic line in the development of science’. 20. P. M. Harman, The Scientific Revolution (Lancaster, 1983), 17. 21. Quoted by A. W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn., 1972), 11. 22. Ibid. 23. See ibid.; also Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise (New York, 1991). 24. See J. Larner, ‘The Certainty of Columbus’, History, 73/237 (1988), 3–23, for a summary of the changing historiography; also Garry Wills, ‘Man of the Year’, New York Review of Books, 22 Nov. 1991. 25.