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Readings: WW Prologue, Intro Part One, Chapter 1 

History is never one sided. As many people are already aware of, stories vary depending on who you hear it from as we often see in gossip and arguments in our modern lives. In that way, we can also hear different versions of a nations’ history depending on which region one may reside on, affecting our view of the world. 

While the mysteries of the cosmos and the universe remains to be incomprehensible to many, scholars and philosophers have used the yearly calendar (Jan 1st - Dec 31st) in order to depict it and make it more understandable. As we know, our world began with the Big Bang. However, while humans didn’t come to be until centuries after this event, this has sparked curiosity within the human race from religious beliefs to astrology stemming from the mysteries and wonders of the cosmos. For instance, one many may be familiar with are the gods and goddesses of greek mythology: Apollo, the god of music and the arts (also known as the Sun god) and his twin Artemis, goddess of the hunt (also known as the Moon goddess). 

Historians say the start of it all was, once again, the Big Bang 4.7 billion years ago. Something very interesting relating to that is the fact that the emergence of life didn’t appear until 600 million years after, and the decimation of 75% of life only 65 million years ago from today. So, based on this research experts have determined that taking into account how long ago the earth has taken shape, the homo species have only been around for about 3 minutes of the earth’s life or as they describe:”the last few minutes of December 31st”. The United States history? It only occured in the last few seconds.

During this brief time on earth, humans have accomplished extraordinary things. One of these being our ability to communicate using the dozens of different languages around the world. The creation of the human language not only allowed us to communicate effectively and efficiently with others, but also, to build and create things way beyond our limits. Some of the many things the text mentions are: ”...  from stone axes to lasers, from spears to nuclear weapons, from “talking drums” to the Internet, from grass huts to the pyramids of Egypt…” Unfortunately, although there are many creations that benefited our everyday lives, there are also many negatives that came with the invention of modern technology. With the discovery of coal, oil and other non renewable resources we have reaped the benefits of being able to easily accomplish various tasks without taking into account the damage being done to the earth and as a result of our selfish desires we have harmed our atmosphere and planet more than any other species on earth.