World History
From the first river-valley cities to globalization, told as maps that move, trade networks that flow, and empires that rise and fall.
14 units · 107 topics · 539 questions
Why our species walked out of Africa, how farming appeared independently around the world, and the chain from surplus grain to the first cities.
Human Migration Out of Africa · Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherer Life · The Neolithic Revolution · Domestication of Plants and Animals · +2 more
Why the first cities all sat on a handful of rivers, and how Sumer, Egypt, the Indus, and Shang China turned a flood cycle into a civilization.
Why Civilizations Cluster on Rivers · Sumer and the First Cities · Hammurabi's Code · Ancient Egypt, the Nile, and the Pharaohs · +4 more
How mountainous geography scattered Greece into rival city-states, and how Athens, Sparta, and Alexander each turned that fact into a different kind of power.
Greek Geography and the Polis · Athenian Democracy · Sparta and Militarized Society · The Persian Wars · +3 more
How a small city-state on the Tiber built a republic, then an empire that ringed the Mediterranean, then lost the west but not the east.
The Roman Republic and Its Government · The Punic Wars · From Republic to Empire: Caesar and Augustus · The Pax Romana and Roman Infrastructure · +3 more
From Vedic migrations and the caste system to Ashoka's conversion and Buddhism's spread across Asia.
Aryan Migrations and Vedic Society · The Caste System · The Origins of Hinduism · The Buddha's Life and Teachings · +3 more
How the Mandate of Heaven, three rival philosophies, and one ruthless unifier built the imperial system that ran China for two thousand years.
The Zhou Dynasty and the Mandate of Heaven · Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism · Qin Shi Huangdi Unifies China · The Han Dynasty and Imperial China · +2 more
Nubian pyramids, Bantu migrations, and the Maya, Aztec, and Inca empires that rose in the Americas with no contact with the rest of the world.
The Kingdom of Kush · The Kingdom of Axum · Bantu Migrations Across Africa · The Olmec: Mother Culture of Mesoamerica · +5 more
How one prophet's message in Mecca became a caliphate stretching from Spain to India within a century, and a golden age of learning in Baghdad.
Muhammad and the Origins of Islam · The Five Pillars of Islam · The Early Islamic Conquests · The Sunni-Shia Split · +3 more
How Rome's eastern half survived a thousand years longer than its western half, and how feudalism, the Church, and holy war organized life in the Latin west.
The Byzantine Empire and Justinian's Code · The Great Schism of 1054 · Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire · Feudalism as an Obligation Pyramid · +4 more
The Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, and trans-Saharan networks linking the post-classical world, the Mongols who briefly united it, and the plague that followed.
The Silk Roads Connect Eurasia · The Indian Ocean Trade Network · Trans-Saharan Trade and West African Kingdoms · Mansa Musa's Pilgrimage · +5 more
How the rediscovery of classical learning, a printing press, and a religious revolt remade Europe just as its ships began reaching the rest of the world.
The Italian Renaissance and Humanism · The Printing Press and the Spread of Ideas · The Protestant Reformation · The Catholic Counter-Reformation · +2 more
Crops, diseases, and people crossing oceans for the first time, gunpowder empires ruling from Istanbul to Delhi, and new ideas about reason and power.
The Columbian Exchange · The Demographic Collapse of Native Americans · The Atlantic Slave Trade · The Plantation Complex and Sugar · +4 more
How Enlightenment ideas ignited revolutions on three continents while steam power moved production from the cottage to the factory.
The American Revolution · The French Revolution · Napoleon and the Reshaping of Europe · Latin American Wars of Independence · +5 more
How a scramble for colonies, an assassination, and a decade of economic collapse triggered the century's great conflicts, and what came after them.
New Imperialism and the Scramble for Africa · The Alliance System and the Causes of World War One · The Russian Revolution · Totalitarian States Between the Wars · +6 more