The outline below is compiled and taken from John A. Garraty and Peter Gay, eds., The Columbia History of the World, 1972; and thus there is no present claim to originality in content or organization

In purpose, however, there is no explicit dependence on the above or other work; naturally, of course, I absorb and process existing thought, such as may have come to my attention

1.2 PURPOSES: HISTORY AS THE ‘STORY’ OF THOUGHT AND ACTION

To give a sense of the processes and forces involved with sufficient focus on:

Showing the interplay of ideas and action

Areas of consideration: religion, myth, art and literature; philosophy, humanities, and the study of history; technology, science, and mathematics; economic, exploration, commercial and trade; law, military and political; education, meaning, journey, and commitment

The general and the singular and their interplay in history and power

The general: populations that may be thought of as homogeneous for the purposes of the account, their processes and their interactions; patriarchalism

The singular: individuals and singular events or small focal groups of the same – especially those that are at focal points of history; charisma

Showing the dynamics without having to resort to explicit theory or concept; events and interactions will be selected to show the dynamics and trends as a picture… without requiring or denying any inference of pattern or predictability especially a principle of pattern or predictability that can be generalized to application to all history

An outline for History, a possible future work mentioned above

A framework for Journey in Being… especially the studies toward Journey in Being – see Design for a Journey in Being… for:

Philosophy

Knowledge; the academic disciplines

Influence – History, the present document, as a History of Influence

Being and its variety; Being and its Journey in Transformation

1.3 PERIODS

There was originally a section that characterized periods of history according to ‘sentiment’ e.g. the time from prehistory till 700 BC may have been labeled ‘myth,’ 700 BC to 300 AD ‘philosophy,’ 300 AD to 1500 AD ‘chaos,’ and 1500 AD till the present ‘exploration and science’

The intention was to use a suggestive character as a label. However, the labels are caricatures and the old system is abandoned

1.4 WHITEHEAD’S CONCEPT OF HISTORY

The source for this section is A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 1933

1.4.1 Relativity and focus

Whitehead emphasizes the commonplace acknowledgement of interpretation as relative and theoretical

He notes that Adventures of Ideas focuses on European History and its sources in Greek and Hebrew culture and civilization; the book is, in part, an attempt to identify the theoretical background of meaning and interpretation for the European tradition

1.4.2 History as interplay between ‘force’ and ‘inspiration’

[A special case of variation and selection]

Force is ‘blind’; inspiration includes ideas and criticism; no novelty is ever entirely novel: even within ‘force’ there is a constructive element

The history of civilization is the history (adventure) of ideas

Examples of force and ideas in European History: barbarians and Christianity; industrial revolution and democracy

Whitehead would put ‘barbarians’ in quotes for this designation is from the European perspective; objectively, for Europe, ‘barbarians’ functioned as ‘force’

Whitehead, notes this as an example of relativity of perspective in that the culture and ideas of the barbarians –e.g. the Goths and other invading peoples– were advanced and refreshing

1.4.3 Kinds of influence

Society, function, change in interaction with ideas

Modern cosmology or ‘world view’ influences how individuals experience their world

1.4.4 Sociological function, change and ideas

The human soul and the humanitarian ideal

Aspects of freedom; from force to persuasion

Foresight [and understanding which results in foresight] in social function

1.4.5 Modern cosmology [metaphysics, world view] and how individuals experience their world

Cosmology. Nature and the laws of nature; four types of cosmology: cosmology is expressed in laws or understanding of the patterns of nature regarding whose character there are four classic kinds of interpretation; these are the schools of immanence, of imposition, of mere description [positivism,] and of conventional interpretation; cosmology, science and faith

Philosophy. Objectivity and subjectivity; Cartesianism; time, coherences; appearance and reality; and philosophic method

Civilization. Truth, beauty, adventure, and peace

2 HISTORY: A BRIEF OUTLINE

2.1 THE ANCIENT WORLD

2.1.1 Before History

2.1.1.1 The Universe

Here, I omit details; the history of the universe may later be covered in Physics, below and subsequently

The idea of an initial singularity [big bang] may explain features of the known or visible universe; this does not imply that the history of the entire universe known and unknown is described by such a singularity. The domain of the unknown is, almost without doubt, much larger if not infinitely larger than that of the known. From physical cosmology it is understood that the known universe, almost homogeneous on a large scale, is, perhaps, a mere bubble in a much larger arena

From the sections on nothingness and general cosmology in Journey in Being, a foundation of the vast spatio-temporal extent and variety of larger arena, the one universe, may be seen in indeterminism and the void. From the non-spatiotemporal, acausal void arises space-time-actuality and causation and law; and law includes physics but is not restricted to the physics of the known universe and may be much more varied

2.1.1.2 Geological Evolution of Earth: Geochronology

2.1.1.3 Evolution of Life on Earth: Biochronology

ERA	PERIOD	EPOCH	TIME OF BEGINNING [millions of years ago]	GEO- AND BIOLOGICAL EVENTS
ARCHEOZOIC PROTEROZOID [primitive and soft life forms]	Precambrian periods	Numerous minor sub-divisions of only local application	4,600	Origin of earth and solar system
			4,000 [?]	Origin of life in a reducing atmosphere leading later to production of oxygen
			2,500 [?]	Photosynthetic oxygen; permitted first global oxidation of iron ores
			1,500 [?]	First primitive soft-bodied animals; main types of invertebrates and some aquatic plants
			700	Great Eocambrian Ice Age
PALEOZOIC [origin and rise of shelled invertebrates and vertebrates; abundance of fishes and amphibians; first reptiles]	Cambrian		600	Many aquatic, some land plants; trilobites, brachiopods and many other invertebrates; first shell-forming invertebrates – attributed to rising alkalinity of the ocean: shell fossils common
	Ordovician		500	Ice Age in Africa Earliest known chordates; graptolites and corals widespread
	Silurian		435	Caledonian mountain building Club mosses and other primitive land plants abundant; some arthropods may have invaded land
	Devonian		395	Acadian mountain building Fishes abundant; first amphibians; many land arthropods; first horse-tails, ferns, liverworts
	Carboniferous	Mississippian	345	Huge forests of primitive plants; great coal age, reduction of carbon dioxide and rise in atmospheric oxygen Age of amphibians
	Carboniferous	Pennsylvanian	310	Hercynian-Appalachian mountain building Reptiles appear
	Permian		280	Ice age in South America, Africa, Australia, India and Antarctica Extinction of many Paleozoic organisms such as trilobites; amphibians decrease in influence
MESOZOIC [Age of Reptiles]	Triassic		230	Beginning of major continental drift; world-wide red beds Forests of conifers and cycads; Age of Reptiles begins: reptiles abundant and varied; first mammals
	Jurassic		180	Age of Ammonites; mild world climate; first birds
	Cretaceous		135	Age of Chalk [planktonic foraminifera;] extinction of dinosaurs and many other Mesozoic organisms; flowering plants appear
CENOZOIC [Age of Mammals]	Tertiary	Paleocene	67	Alpine mountain building world-wide and continuing through the Tertiary period Mammals abundant; first primates; flowering plants abundant
		Eocene	58
		Oligocene	36
		Miocene	25	Evolution of grasses and modern type mammals and birds
		Pliocene Earliest hominids	7	Increasing mountain glaciation Freezing of Antarctic begins 3 – 4 million years ago; 20 to 90 thousand year Milankovitch [Yugoslav scientist who worked out the mathematics of their prediction] cycles of glaciation and mild climate results in buildup of Antarctic ice since less ice melts than was formed each cycle, in drier climate and lower ocean levels Earliest known human [hominid] fossils 4 million years ago from the Omo River in Ethiopia; for purposes of demarcation, Man is defined as the primate that habitually makes and uses tools. The earliest hominids are collectively known as Australopithecines but there is speculation though no clear evidence that the earliest Australopithecines were associated with tools
	Quaternary [Except for the Holocene, the dates are not known to be exact; and there is difficulty with correlation of glacial periods to the north and periods of intense rain in the tropical and subtropical belts]	Pleistocene	2	Great Ice Age, time of Stone Age man; growth of major deserts
		Villafranchian or Early Pleistocene Earliest fossil evidence of hominids	2 [2,000,000]	The earliest evidence that at least some Australopithecines were human in character comes form Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika: where fossils dated at 1,750,000 years old are associated with crude stone tools made for chopping. The Australopithecines form two major groups: Australopithecus –smaller and more delicate– and Paranthropus, larger, heavier boned, roughly the size of a gorilla. It has been speculated that Australopithecus was more modern and evolved, and provided the tools to Paranthropus who may have furnished part of Australopithecus’ diet The advance and retreat of glaciers pushes climate belts toward and away from the equator; drier conditions lead to thinning of sub-tropical belts and desertification; buildup of mountains due less erosion; and successive glaciations scoured deeper and deeper valleys; and consequent saltation along all the great rivers where numerous fossils ranging from ancestral horse to mammoth of the period are found The regular use and making of tools provides relative adaptive advantages but also increases importance of adaptation to the behavioral environment especially the flexible thumb and upright posture for the use of tools
		Early Middle Pleistocene	0.6 [600,000]	Günz [Nebraskan in America] and Mindel [Kansan] Glaciations, First Interglacial period Paranthropus dies out but may have interbred with Australopithecus; thus the latter or both are at the root of Modern Man Hominids spread from tropical Africa, north to North Africa and Europe, east across southern Asia as far as China. The earlier fossils belong to the evolutionary stage Pithecanthropus, intermediate between Australopithecus and Paranthropus; they were successful hunters especially of deer, used fire, ate their dead; much is known about their skeletal remains but little about their tools which were primitive choppers and flakes
		Late Middle Pleistocene	0.275 [275,000]	Second Interglacial and Riss [Illinoian] Glaciation Many human artifacts but few fossils from this period have been found – the Steinhem [Germany] and Swanscombe [England] skulls; brain size was comparable to that of modern man and show a combination of modern and primitive characteristics; use of primitive tools coexist with the Biphase tradition – chipped on both faces, spread throughout Africa, western and southern Europe, southern Asia as far as India, resulting in refinement of hand axes, new tool forms and techniques and an aesthetic element: this later technology required an opposable thumb but this does not mean that the different traditions were those of fundamentally different kinds of men Most uniquely human behavioral patterns were probably established by the end of this period if not earlier including: language and transmission of culture, permanent association of males and females in small food-getting and child-rearing units co-evolving with year round availability of the female