Little Big Histories

While Big History is best known for its sweeping “history of everything” approach, this is by no means the only way in which it can be applied. The “Little Big History” approach involves taking any historical topic, and expanding the scope of evidence to be considered in both time and scale. When did it first emerge? How did it first emerge? Can we see the same patterns or trends occurring in other species or on different scales? As just a few examples, a study of the history of food would benefit from an examination of why all homo sapiens (regardless of culture or period) desire sweetness, but other tastes vary widely. Is it also significant that basic tool-use in chimpanzees has been observed to extract honey?  Studies of the history of Rome seldom note that the city is located in the middle of the Italian peninsula’s largest deposits of volcanic tuffs (which provide excellent building material and magnificently fertile soil). How did this come to pass? Is it significant for the rise to influence of this small settlement of the banks of the River Tiber? A study of continental plate movement needs to be included leading to the formation of the Alps, which even the Romans observed to have been “once raised high by nature as a rampart to Italy.” (Cicero De Provinciis Consularibus). The great grasslands of the world cover roughly 25% of this planet’s landmass, but the African savannah, North American prairie, Eurasia steppe, Argentine Pampas, etc. emerged only very recently (from a geological perspective). Surely it is significant that the staple crop of almost every major civilization has been a grass seed, whether corn, or wheat, or rice, or millet. Almost every major domestic animal used by humans first evolved as a specialist grass consumer.