This Fleeting World

xviii Introduction
unfamiliar terrain you need a map and a compass. So This Fleeting World
offers a sort of navigational kit. It tries to do what a world map does when
you study geography: It provides a large outline so you can keep a sense
of the larger landscape as you study the details. Or perhaps you can think
of it as a journey by plane over country you have already crossed on foot.
From the plane you will not see many details, but you will get a clearer
sense of the landscape. Individual objects may be blurred, but you will see
the relationships between them more easily.
No survey this brief can do more than sketch some of the main lines
of development of our remarkable species, and it is probable that different
historians would have drawn the lines in different ways. Nevertheless, as
world history has evolved during the last fifty years or so, some consensus
has emerged on the crucial turning points in human history. The three
main chapters of This Fleeting World are intended to distill something of
that consensus. Brevity has its drawbacks, of course, but it also has its
advantages. Above all, it should be possible to read this survey in one or
two sittings, a short enough period to remember the beginning of the story
as you reach the end!
The preface to this book suggests ways of using This Fleeting World in
teaching. Preceding the main text is a “prequel” that describes everything
that preceded the appearance of our species, beginning with the origins
of the Universe 13.7 billion years ago. At the end, the appendix discusses
the complex issue of periodization: the decisions we make as we divide the
past into manageable chunks. This discussion may be useful for advanced
students who want to think about how we choose what parts of the past
to consider and which to leave out.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank several world history colleagues for criticisms or suggestions
about early drafts of this essay. They include my fellow editors on the
Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History: William McNeill, Jerry Bentley,
Karen Christensen, David Levinson, John McNeill, Heidi Roupp, and Judith
Zinsser. I particularly want to thank William McNeill, who for several
decades has lent his immense authority as a scholar and writer to the task
of writing about the past on very large scales. I also want to thank Ross
Dunn, Terry Burke, and the wonderful World History for Us All team for the
intense, complex, and difficult—but profoundly interesting—discussions
we had as we worked on the WHFUA website. These discussions helped