Aztec priests sacrifice thousands of men, women and children a year. Up to 20,000 in one of their most important ceremonies. ibid.
Corn: six thousand years ago early farmers in the Americas turn a weed into a cereal that produces more calories per acre than any other – with almost twice as many genes as a human being. ibid.
Constantinople is under siege by the Ottoman Turks. ibid.
Christian Constantinople becomes Islamic Istanbul. ibid.
Spanish sailors discover land: leading them an Italian – Christopher Columbus. ibid.
The people of the Americas have no immunity to a deadly threat – disease. ibid.
Montezuma’s treasuries are filled with gold. ibid.
1579: a new age of piracy … Francis Drake. Mankind: The Story of All of Us VIII: Treasure
Enough to pay off England’s entire national debt and fund its government for a year. ibid.
Silver becomes the key to mankind’s prosperity. ibid.
Amsterdam 1639: the rarest bulbs are selling for one hundred times their weight in gold. ibid.
Holland is gripped by tulip mania. ibid.
Pilgrims – they arrive in the New World in search of religious freedoms. ibid.
In New England fifty pioneers prepare to fight for their lives. ibid.
A crop they have never seen before – corn. ibid.
10% of all Americans today are descended from these first fifty pioneers. ibid.
A new crop changing mankind’s taste – sugar. ibid.
A new commodity – human beings. ibid.
Almost a fifth of the population of the Americas can trace their roots back to Africa. ibid.
A new age of science and commerce … Pioneers push into the unknown. Mankind: The Story of All of Us IX: Pioneers
1692 Salem Massachusetts: a community in meltdown. ibid.
A new age of commerce: fur, sugar, coffee, tea and tobacco. ibid.
The birth of the electric world – light-bulbs, television, air conditioning, computers, every aspect of human life transformed. ibid.
A new kind of nation is formed: government for the people by the people – democracy. Mankind: The Story of All of Us X: Revolutions
In Haiti former slaves cast off their chains. ibid.
The Industrial Revolution … The key to the modern world – the machine. ibid.
By 1950 England has 4,000 factories. Factories build our world. ibid.
Coal, Steam and a new sensation – Speed. ibid.
The number of city dwellers triples … The industrial mega-city is chaotic. ibid.
London Cholera: the London Broad Street pump is the killer. ibid.
The industrial age makes Great Britain the richest nation on Earth. ibid.
Britain dominates global trade. ibid.
Britain v China: a war fought over the most lucrative commodity on the planet. ibid.
America’s four million slaves gain their freedom: the Union wins the Civil War. ibid.
We are Innovators. Inventors. We transformed the resources of our planet into new powers. Mankind conquers Nature. But as Life accelerates, new perils and our greatest triumphs. On an unforgiving planet. One species learns to harness its bounty. To survive thrive and conquer. This is our story. The story of all of us. Mankind: The Story of All of Us XI
Richmond Virginia April 1865: the climax of the American Civil War. Union troops close in the Confederate capital. ibid.
600,000 Americans dead. More than in World Wars I and II combined. ibid.
Four out of five factories are in the North. ibid.
For two hundred years cut off from the rest of the world ... The Samurai have ruled Japan for six hundred years. A warrior class that lives and dies by the sword. ibid.
Mitsubishi becomes the world's largest corporation. ibid.
Titanic 14th April 1912 RMS Titanic bound for New York. Mankind puts its faith in technology. ibid.
The new international distress signal: SOS ... 2.28 a.m. Titanic, the unsinkable ship sinks. ibid.
We have the power to obliterate our species. Or change it for ever. ibid.
We rise above Nature. Tame the frontiers of our planet. Now we harness the force of the universe, claiming powers that could destroy us. Mankind: The Story of All of Us XII
Alaska: The Alcan Highway complete, part of a 16,000 mile road – the world’s longest drivable route, running the length of the Americas: the Pan American highway. ibid.
The atom bomb: code name Little Boy. Target: Hiroshima, Japan ... The bomb kills more than 60,000 instantly. ibid.
But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
‘I love mankind,’ he said, ‘but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.’ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamzov
Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
Compassion is the chief law of human existence. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. Edgar Allan Poe
What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told – and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs’. The reason is that beliefs guide behaviour which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behaviour may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question. Michael Crichton, The Lost World
The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What’s left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars. Bertolt Brecht
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. Richard P Feynman
The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy, we can all sense a mysterious connection to each other. Meryl Streep
Humanity is a disease, a cancer on the body of the world. Scott Westerfeld, Pretties
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Martin Luther King
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbour. Eric Hoffer
Humanity is a parade of fools, and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton. Dean Koontz, Brother Odd