BATAAN PENINSULA STATE UNIVERSITY

City of Balanga 2100

Bataan PHILIPPINES

EIGHT FUNDAMENTAL THRESHOLDS OF BIG HISTORY: AN OVERVIEW

Topic Outcome:
At the end of this unit, the students are expected to:
1. Understand the main idea of Big History.
2. Define thresholds of increasing complexity, origin stories, and scale.
3. Understand that Big History is a modern, science-based origin story that draws on many different types of
knowledge.
4. Understand how you fit into the Big History narrative, using the concept of “thresholds” to frame your past,
present, and future as well as the history of the Universe.
5. Learn to use timelines as a way to compare the scale of personal and historic events.
6. Explain the basics of the Big Bang theory and the primary evidence that supports this theory.
7. Explain why planets are more complex than stars.

What Is History?

History is an attempt to understand both our insignificance and our significance. To study history is to better
understand the world and your place in it. You, and the other humans with whom you share this world, are the
culmination of the human story. History (derived from Ancient Greek ἱστορία (historía) 'inquiry; knowledge acquired by
investigation') is the systematic study and documentation of human activity. The time period of events before
the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as
the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek
knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and
ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries.

History is also an academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past
events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event,
as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history as an end in itself, as
well as its usefulness to give perspective on the problems of the present.

What Is Big History?

Big History is an academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. Big History resists
specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary
approach based on combining numerous disciplines from science and the humanities, and explores human existence in
the context of this bigger picture. It integrates studies of the cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity using empirical evidence to
explore cause-and-effect relations

There’s a lot more to history than the human story. Let’s consider the world before humans. If you think of history as the
story of life on Earth, almost all of it played out before our species (Homo sapiens) showed up on the scene. After all,
we’ve been around only for the last 250,000 or so years—less than 0.01% of the history of life on Earth.
From the very beginning, we’ve had different stories that explain the origins of the Universe, our planet Earth, and life
itself. These origin stories, as they’re called, are as varied as the cultures that created them. At its heart, Big History is
simply another origin story. However, it differs from all other origin stories because it’s science based. Big History uses the
information we have available—the scientific evidence—to create an understanding of the Universe.

• Big History tells the story of the Universe from the Big Bang to the present, a time span of 13.8 billion years.
• Big History is the modern, scientific origin story, based on the best evidence that scientists and historians have
compiled to date. As new and better evidence is found, the story will need to be updated.
• Big History asks big questions. Among the questions that big historians tackle is: How was the Universe created?
Why does it work the way it does? Why are stars so big? Why are you and I so small?

Because the scale of Big History is so vast (remember, it covers the history of the Universe), it would be impossible for this
story to include everything. All historians have to make choices about what to include and what to leave out in the stories
they tell. So, what does the story of Big History focus on? Big Historians focus on eight turning points in the history of the
Universe, which we call thresholds. These are moments when the Universe became significantly more complex than it had
been previously

COMPLEXITY &THRESHOLDS

Thresholds
• Big History looks at the Universe as a series of moments called Thresholds. These moments are characterized by a
set of ingredients and a set of ‘Goldilocks Conditions’ that result in new forms of complexity. Big History tells the
story of the Universe by using these moments to describe Universal change.
• The use of thresholds is unique to Big History, but it provides a helpful means of analysis that can be applied to
more traditional historical contexts as well as other disciplines.

COMPLEXITY
Complexity is hard to define, but there are three characteristics that will help you identify it in this course. Complex things
tend to have:
- Diverse ingredients
- Precise arrangements
- Emergent properties
• When the right combination of ingredients are arranged in a precise way, together they have properties that the
individual ingredients did not.
• Complexity is rarer than simplicity in the Universe.
• When the Universe experiences a significant increase in complexity, we call it a threshold of increasing
complexity. In this course, we will focus on eight such thresholds.
Threshold 1: The Big Bang
Key Disciplines: Astrophysics and cosmology
Timespan: Roughly 13.8 –13.4 billion years ago

The first is the creation of the Universe, Threshold 1, about 13.7 billion years ago. That’s a subject normally discussed
within cosmology— the moment of the big bang, and the scientific evidence that allows us to piece together the ever-
evolving story of creation.
The Big Bang remains a mystery in many ways. We have a lot of evidence for what happened just after the event
but can only guess what existed before it, if anything, and what conditions made it possible. Even so, we know the Big
Bang is an important threshold because it created time, space, and the "building blocks" for everything in the known
Universe.

Modern science suggests that the Universe was created in a “big bang” about 13.8 billion years ago.
The Big Bang was a split second in which all matter and energy expanded at tremendous speed and became the Universe.
What was there before the Big Bang? It’s mind-bending to think about, but in some ways, there was no “before” the Big
Bang, because the Big Bang created not only space as we know it, but also time as we know it. The important thing to
know is that around 13.8 billion years ago, very suddenly, the Universe exploded into being. It’s also important to
recognize that although scientists know a lot about the Big Bang, there are still many questions about the details that are
being researched.

• Big History begins with the Big Bang, moment scientists are currently unable to describe with any degree of
certainty. The Universe appears to emerge from nothing, but scientists cannot describe the moments before the
Big Bang or the moment of the Big Bang itself. Major questions surround the origin of the Universe.
• As the universe cooled, the four fundamental forces in nature emerged: gravity, the strong force, the weak force
and the electromagnetic force. Protons and neutrons began to form.
 • While four fundamental forces were created by the Big Bang, gravity has played the most influential role in the
history of the Universe because it can operate over the largest scales.
• The nature of gravity helped define the future development of the Universe. If gravity had been stronger,
everything would have collapsed on itself. If gravity had been weaker, stars, planets, and other complex
combinations of matter could not have formed.
• The Big Bang set the history of the Universe in motion.

Threshold 2: The Stars Light Up

Threshold 3: New Chemical Elements

Key Disciplines: Physics, astronomy, and chemistry

Timespan: The first stars appeared about 13.6 billion years ago

The second is the creation of the first complex objects, stars. The first stars appeared more than 13 billion years ago, soon
after the creation of the Universe. They provide energy and raw materials for later forms of complexity.

After the Big Bang, the Universe expanded and cooled. It took some time (about 380,000 years), but eventually it
was cool enough for the simplest atoms, hydrogen and helium, to form. The early Universe consisted almost entirely of
hydrogen and helium for a very long time. After a few hundred million years, clouds of hydrogen and helium began to
collapse, and the increasing heat and pressure generated by collapse led to the creation of the first stars. Stars represent
the second threshold of increasing complexity in Big History. Not only are stars more complex than simple atoms, they’re
also able to create tremendous energy. Over time, gravity grouped stars into galaxies, which created further complexity in
the Universe.
Before stars existed, the Universe was relatively cool and uniform. The first stars formed within huge clouds of gas
that were the building blocks of galaxies, galaxy clusters, and superclusters. Stars were an important new form of
complexity because they introduced long-lasting "hot spots" where even more complex things could develop.

The Formation of Stars

As the Universe expanded and cooled, clouds of hydrogen and helium were drawn together by gravity. As these clouds
grew larger and denser, the temperature rose until it was finally hot enough for protons to overcome their repulsion to
one another and become joined by the strong nuclear force. Bam! A star is born. Sometimes small, sometime huge, these
stars can burn for millions if not billions of years. As stars began lighting up all over the Universe, they started to gather
together in groups we call galaxies. In turn, these galaxies drew together as well.

• Stars formed when clouds of hydrogen atoms were brought together by gravity.
• As the clouds became increasingly dense, temperature and pressure rose dramatically and the hydrogen atoms at
the center of each cloud began to fuse into helium atoms.
• This process, called fusion, released tremendous amounts of energy and balanced the pull of gravity, which was
trying to fuse the core of each cloud into an even denser mass.
• As the two forces (gravity and fusion) reached a balance in each cloud, a star was born.
• When a number of stars had been born, the force of gravity began attracting stars into groupings called galaxies.
Gravity also grouped galaxies into clusters and clusters into superclusters.

The Life of a Star

As stars burn, they’re fueled by a process that combines two hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, which gives off a
huge amount of energy. This process will continue at the center of every star until the star runs out of hydrogen. At this
stage, the star will start burning helium atoms, fusing them into atoms of carbon. Once the helium runs out, the star will
burn the carbon, creating neon. Over time, neon is burned, creating oxygen; oxygen is burned, creating silicon; and finally,
silicon is burned, creating iron. At this stage, the process can no longer continue and the star ends its main sequence.

The Death of a Star

How fast stars burn depends on their mass. The smaller stars burn fuel slowly and can last millions and millions of years.
Larger stars tend to burn faster and live for a shorter amount of time. The larger stars tend to expand greatly once they
burn through their fuel, and become red giants. Then, these stars collapse and explode into supernovae, reaching
incredibly high temperatures. These explosions are so hot that they are able to fuse together a massive variety of atoms

Threshold 3: New Chemical Elements

Threshold 3 is the creation inside dying stars of the chemical elements that allowed the creation of chemically complex
entities, including planets and you and me.

Stars made the Universe more complex, but the Universe still consisted primarily of hydrogen and helium. This
changed when the first generation of stars died. The death of a star can generate high temperatures and pressures like
those in the Big Bang, and this makes possible the creation of more complex atoms. A greater variety of atoms is critical to
making more complex things like planets and living things, so the death of stars is the third threshold of increasing
complexity in Big History.

The Chemical Elements

Hydrogen and helium are the most abundant elements in the Universe. They first appeared in the moments after the Big
Bang as the Universe cooled and some of the energy converted into matter. Because of the high temperatures at the
centers of large dying stars, more elements, such as carbon, oxygen, silicon, and iron, appeared. While important, these
are but a few of the elements needed for life as we know it. It’s only in the incredibly high temperatures of an exploding
star that we get much of the rest of the table of elements.

Why This Matters

All the elements found on Earth come from the life or death of a star. There is no other way to create large quantities of
elements. In a way, we’re all made of stars! Also, the fact that elements can’t be created by any other means explains why
there are limited quantities of many valuable elements here on Earth, and why we can’t simply “make more” when we
need them. We need to understand the nature of these elements and make good use of the limited supplies we have
here on Earth

What did stars give us?

• Hydrogen and helium formed in the early moments after the Big Bang. They are the simplest naturally occurring
elements and were formed in great quantities as the early Universe cooled.
• Much higher temperatures and pressures are required to create bigger, more complex elements. Dying stars are
the one place that provide the right conditions.
• When large stars die, they can achieve temperatures of 3 billion degrees, which is hot enough to create iron
atoms through fusion. The death of large stars can produce numerous heavy elements.
• The supernova death of a high-mass star generates many of the heavy elements in the periodic table and
disperses them into space.
• The formation of new chemical elements was only possible through the death of stars, and the creation of these
elements made a more complex Universe possible.
The life cycle of stars

Threshold 4: Earth and the Solar System

Key Disciplines: Physics, chemistry, and geology
Timespan: The Sun and Solar System formed about 4.5 billion years ago

The next threshold is the creation of our Earth. Here we look at the creation of solar systems. Now, these are objects that
are chemically significantly more complex than stars, creating a new level of complexity. Our Earth was created as a by-
product of the creation of our Sun and solar system about 4.5 billion years ago. This threshold also surveys the history of
our home planet—and we’re in the territory of geologists.

Our Sun is a star, and like all other stars, it was formed from the collapse of a huge cloud of gas and dust particles.
More than 99 percent of this material went to make up the Sun, but wisps of matter orbited around it at various
distances. Over time, the matter in each orbit was drawn together by gravity. The gravitational pull created violent
collisions into lumps of matter that eventually formed the planets. This process, which we call accretion, is how our Earth
was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago.

• Large clouds of dust and gas were created in the aftermath of the death of stars. These chemically complex areas
seeded the development of new generations of stars.
• The very first stars were made entirely of hydrogen and helium because those were the only elements that made
up the clouds that these stars formed out of. Once a few generations of stars had lived and died, star death had
created a greater variety of chemical elements, so these clouds were much more diverse.
• Planets formed from the small amount of material from these clouds that did not become part of the new star.
The complex cloud of chemicals formed by the death of later stars enabled much greater complexity than
hydrogen and helium alone
• The Earth and solar system formed about 4.5 billion years ago when the universe was already over 8 billion years
old, and many generations of stars had lived and died.

How did earth and the solar system form

• When our Sun formed out of a cloud of gas, it used over 99 percent of the matter in that cloud.
 • The leftover matter orbited the Sun. Collisions, gravity, and the rotation of the matter around the Sun caused it to
clump together.
• Earth and the other planets in our Solar System formed as a result.
• Because of the way matter was distributed, the planets that formed closest to the Sun (including Earth and Mars)
are rocky.
• Planets further from the Sun are gaseous.

How our solar system formed

• Planet formation is driven by accretion, a process by which larger objects grow even larger by using gravity to
attract smaller, nearby objects to them.
• There are two types of planets in the Solar System: rocky and gas. The rocky planets are closest to the Sun, and
they are composed mainly of rocks and metals. The gas planets are further from the Sun and are composed
mainly of gas and ice.
• Not all rocky planets are the same. All of the rocky planets were very hot when they formed but cooled over time.
Mercury and Mars cooled so much that they became solid. Venus may not be completely solid. The Earth did not
completely solidify. Some parts of the Earth are solidified (crust and inner core) and others are not (outer core
and mantle).
• Scientists currently believe that the Moon formed before the Earth had finished forming the layers it has today.
This process began when a large object collided with the young Earth. The Moon formed from some of the
material that was ejected into space after this collision and was captured in an orbit around the Earth by the
Earth’s gravitational attraction.
• The Moon has a huge impact on life on Earth. First, the collision that resulted in the formation of the Moon gave
the Earth its tilt, which is responsible for the seasons we experience. Although the Moon is smaller than the Earth,
its gravitational attraction on the Earth can be seen in the tides. The Moon’s gravitational attraction also helps
reduce the Earth’s wobble and slow its spin.

Threshold 5: Life
Key Discipline: Biology
Timespan: The first life forms appeared about 3.8 billion years ago

Threshold 5 is the creation and evolution of life on Earth. The first evidence of life comes from about 3.8 billion years ago
on this planet. Now, the creation of life is a threshold that may also have been crossed many times, billions of times
before in other parts of the Universe, but as yet we have no firm evidence that this is true. So far, we can only study life
on our one planet. This threshold also surveys the evolution of our ancestors, the hominines, from about 6 million years
ago.
The appearance if life on Earth marked a major arrival: organisms with the capacity to harness energy and
materials from their environments to adapt to changing conditions and reproduce themselves. This introduced a new
level of creativity, diversity, and complexity to the Universe.
• Life on Earth probably first appeared about 3.8 billion years ago, and consisted of single-celled bacteria. Bacteria
were the earliest forms of life.
• DNA, which is the blueprint for every living thing, emerged early on. Photosynthesis was also an early
development. Oxygen, a byproduct of photosynthesis, is “the most important waste product in the history of the
world.” Some bacteria learned to live on oxygen; for others it was toxic and led to death. In the end, oxygen
proved to be a more efficient way to produce energy, and allowed bigger, more complex life forms to appear.
• The Cambrian explosion, about 550 million years ago, was biology’s Big Bang, and resulted in a huge proliferation
of plants and animals. Amphibians moved from the sea to the land. They developed a new type of egg, one with a
hard shell that kept the contents from drying out, which allowed the eggs to be laid on land.
• Dinosaurs evolved about 250 million years ago, and dominated the Earth for over 150 million years. Our
ancestors, the early mammals, were very small—no bigger than cats—as long as the dinosaurs were around. The
dinosaur extinction made way for bigger mammals like us.
• Primates are mammals that evolved after the extinction of the dinosaurs. They possessed forward-facing eyes and
five-fingered, grasping hands. Our ancestors eventually left the trees and began walking on two legs, which
allowed them to carry things (including babies).

Mini-thresholds of life

• Life as we know it results from a long and complex process. This story, like the larger story of Big History, can be
told by focusing on critical turning points, or mini-thresholds, in that story.
• The appearance of photosynthesizing plants, representing a new way of generating energy, is the first mini-
threshold.
• The appearance of eukaryotes, organisms more complex than prokaryotes because their DNA is enclosed in a
nucleus and they have organelles, is the second.
• The appearance of multi-celled organisms, organisms whose cells perform specialized functions but share the
same DNA, is the third.
 • The appearance of brains allowed for the coordination of the activities of the many types of cells in a multi-celled
organism, and represents the fourth mini-threshold.
• The move of animals from the water to the land created new pressures for living things to adapt and evolve. This
represents the fifth mini-threshold.
• The appearance of mammals represents the sixth mini-threshold. The fact that they are warm blooded, have fur
or hair, and have placental birth, makes them different from other land species.

How did life begin and change?

• Life is incredibly diverse: scientists estimate that 5–30 million species exist today, and believe this is just a small
fraction of the living things that have existed during all of Earth’s history.
• Three Goldilocks Conditions needed to be satisfied for life to emerge: there needed to be a variety and
abundance of chemical elements, energy (not too much and not too little), and a water environment.
• Many scientists favor the theory that life originated close to the surface of the water. Others believe that life
originated deep in the ocean near volcanic vents. Scientists continue to search for evidence that shows where life
emerged.
• Life on Earth has evolved over a 3-billion-year period.

Threshold 6: Collective Learning

Key Disciplines: Anthropology and archaeology

Timespan: The first modern humans are thought to have evolved at least 250,000 years ago

By Threshold 6 we’re now just 250,000 years ago. We’ve now covered most of 13 billion years, and we’re reaching the
present moment. Threshold 6 is the creation of our species, Homo sapiens, about 250,000 years ago. It argues that we
have a capacity to adapt and to change that is unprecedented among other organisms on Earth. We also cover the
Paleolithic era of human history—the oldest, the longest, but also the least well-documented part of our history. The
Paleolithic era lasts until the appearance of agriculture, 10,000 to 11,000 years ago.

Threshold 7: Agriculture

Key Disciplines: Archaeology, anthropology, history

Timespan: Farming developed about 11,000 years ago

Threshold 7 is the emergence of agriculture and agricultural societies from about 11,000 years ago, and it introduces what
we can call the Agrarian era of human history, the second of three major eras of human history. Agriculture marked a
fundamental change in human history because it accelerated the pace of change. It allowed population growth—the
emergence of larger, denser, and eventually more complex societies, including the great agrarian civilizations, such as the
Roman Empire or the great empires of China.

Threshold 8: Modern Revolution

Key Discipline: History

Timespan: Civilizations expanded and world zones connected between 500 CE and 1750 CE

Finally, we come to Threshold 8, the “Modern Revolution.” This introduces the Modern era of human history. This section
covers the astonishing series of transformations that have created today’s unified, complex world in just three or four
centuries.