I had no interest in literature, history, or philosophy in school, and to this day I only sporadically remember isolated places and events, and this book, which goes from the ancient apes of the South more than 4 million years ago to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, helped me connect the silos that were scattered in my mind. In the narrative style, the author does not describe certain important historical events in detail, but will be important events things cause, through, the results and impact of a thorough analysis, this narrative style is not wonderful, but very logical, so that I have a strong interest in human history, I would like to talk about the following topics to talk about my feelings.
In the food-gathering period/Paleolithic Age (about 3 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago), people combined into tribes of 20-50 people, men were responsible for hunting animals and providing meat, and women were responsible for gathering plants such as vegetables and fruits, etc., and men and women were equal because they contributed equally; their diets were varied and healthy, and the adults did their work by spending 15 hours a week, with no class, no fear of losing what they have, and no delusions of increasing their wealth.
During the Neolithic period (10,000 to 2,000 years before present), under population pressure, people were forced to abandon their food-gathering lives and settle down to domesticate plants and animals, becoming farmers who worked all day long, due to the reality that agriculture could support far more people than food-gathering. During this period, members of the tribe remained equal to each other, and food production was sufficient to meet each family's needs, with no incentive to produce surplus.
When the ancient civilization (3500-1000 BC) came, with the mastery of metallurgy, people invented metal tools such as plows to replace fragile stone tools, and used oxen to pull plows to continuously improve the efficiency of agricultural production, so that there was a surplus of food to feed new classes such as priests and officials, and the emergence of classes. And as the accumulation of wealth inevitably led to contests and wars, and expenditures such as building armies made it necessary for the state to continually extract taxes and rents from the peasantry, civilized peasants had to spend more time working than Stone Age cultivators. In addition to inequality in class-society relations, gender inequality also emerged; with the development of the plow and metallurgy, agriculture required people to cut down trees and plow with oxen, heavy work that was unsuitable for women, who therefore spent more time at home taking care of their children and husbands, and men gained a monopoly over agriculture and a new and eventually a monopoly on economic power, political power, and military power.
The author of this book summarizes class as a feature of ancient civilization to distinguish it from the Stone Age that preceded it. Initially, I was taken aback by this argument, and found it very ironic, because in my philosophy civilization means the rule of law and equality, while class means exploitation and injustice. But in retrospect, a closer analysis of the difference between ancient civilization and the Stone Age would reveal that perhaps class was the necessary foundation for the emergence of civilization, because without the coercion of class (the state) people would have stayed in the comfort of the Stone Age, which would have been a free and easy life, but would have meant that production would have been inefficient, and there would have been no surpluses to feed the philosophers, architects, painters, musicians, merchants, and other non-agriculturalists, and so forth. And there would be no continued human progress or development.
In the 16th century, under the great temptation of the spice trade, Portugal and Spain invested a lot of human and financial resources in exploring the sea routes and discovered the American continent.
In the 16th century, the Russians, tempted by sable furs, continued to move eastward at an alarming rate, eventually conquering vast Siberia, and in the middle of the 17th century the benefits derived from Siberian furs ranged from 7% to 30% of Russia's total income.
In the 19th century, in order to transport minerals such as diamond and agricultural products such as rubber for easy export, Europeans laid a network of railroads in Africa.
These investments and sacrifices were made not because of ideals of the heart, but because of the interests behind them, but they did promote human development, discovering new territories and facilitating the lives of local people. This reminds me of an example told by the economist Xue Zhaofeng. One year, due to the impact of hurricanes in the United States, there was a widespread blackout in the Mississippi region, and a businessman took out his savings, bought dozens of generators from Canada, and rented a few big trucks and shipped them back to Mississippi over thousands of kilometers. Upon arrival in Mississippi, the businessman sold the generators at double the market price, only to have the government believe they were profiteering at an extraordinary time and throw him in jail for price fraud. Let's look at this example and hypothetically, without the lure of profiteering and selling at market price, how would the businessman have risked rolling thousands of kilometers to do this? And if there were no such businessmen, the people would have to wait passively for the Government to come to their rescue and accept all the disadvantages of a power cut. So for businessmen who make national fortunes, we might want to think about what they mean positively for the supply side, rather than just looking at them through tinted glasses.
40,000 years ago, Homo sapiens appeared , and Homo sapiens adapted to their genes by changing their environment, rather than responding to their surroundings through genetic mutations. This was crucial, for example for a sudden shift in the environment to severe cold, other creatures might need to evolve through generations to grow thick fur to adapt, while Homo sapiens could combat it by making clothes. This allowed humans to leap to the top of the food chain far ahead of other species on the planet.
At the end of the 15th century, Columbus discovered the Americas, and in A Brief History of Humankind author Hurley argues that the discovery of the Americas was the defining event in the emancipation of Europeans. Because before this time, human beings believed that they had mastered all the knowledge, so they would not have the idea and motivation to pursue new knowledge, when the new America appeared, all the books, including the Bible, did not mention this strange territory, so they began to recognize the ignorance and break the pursuit of new knowledge.
In the 1860s, the Industrial Revolution led to a dramatic increase in productivity through the efficient use of human and natural resources, leading to a number of impacts: 1) a dramatic increase in global wealth, in the United Kingdom, for example, the capital increased from 500 million pounds in 1750 to 1.5 billion pounds in 1800, and 6 billion pounds in 1865; 2) an increase in population, with the population of Europe rising from 140 million in 1750 to 1.4 billion in 1865; and 3) an increase in the number of people living in the United States. 140 million in 1750 to 460 million in 1914; 3) urbanization, before the most densely populated cities were located in food-rich watershed areas such as the Nile Basin and the Yellow River Basin, etc., with the establishment of the factory system, a large number of people flocked to the new industrial centers, and in 1930, the urban population had already reached 415 million, accounting for 1/5 of the total population; 4) consumerism, before the 18th century Before the 18th century, the income of the masses was very meager, 3/4 of their income was used to buy food, and the rest had to buy other necessities. Whereas, a significant increase in productivity brought about an increase in national income, a portion of which flowed to the masses, and a domestic market developed.
In World War I, 1914-1917, the United States took over the leadership of capital and industry from Europe. In terms of capital, the pre-WWI European economy relied heavily on overseas investments that generated large profits, however one stop cost Britain, France, and Germany a great deal of foreign investment. In contrast, in 1914 the United States owed about $4 billion to European investors, and by 1919 the U.S. had become a creditor nation with $3.7 billion in lending. Industrially, many of Europe's industrial districts were devastated, while the lack of American factories grew rapidly, fueled by wartime demand.
1939-1945 World War II, so that the strength of Europe weakened, while the European colonies of the burst of democratism, the outbreak of a series of colonial revolutions, followed by the rapid loss of most of the colonies in Europe, in the 1944-1985, the total of **** 96 countries to win independence, accounting for the world's total population of 1 / 3.
Throughout the world's various countries dynasties But once they entered a state of war and military costs soared, or in the later stages of the dynasty, the bureaucracy swelled, and formal taxation was no longer an option. The monarchs then developed various means other than formal taxation, and the people rebelled under the oppression, and the old dynasty collapsed and a new one was created under the internal and external troubles.
16th Century: Spain and Portugal build wealth through maritime trade
17th Century: Holland builds wealth through maritime trade
18th Century: Britain and France gain wealth through exports in overseas colonies
19th Century: Britain, France, and other European countries create wealth through the Industrial Revolution by boosting productivity
20th Century: The United States, spurred on by World War I, developed industry rapidly and bucked Europe in the economic and industrial fields; Russia boosted its economy and military power through the Five-Year Plans
21st Century: the United States was firmly established as the dominant power in finance (money), technology, and the military
To summarize the factors that have made countries strong from the 16th Century to the present day, they are trade, science and technology, colonization, and the Industrial Revolution (science and technology), War, military, in the era of peace we put aside war, military and colonies, the rest is trade, technology and finance which are the ways. Taking China's development strategy as an example, the Belt and Road policy proposed in 13 years promotes multilateral trade and enhances its financial status through RMB settlement; the 20-year investment of 47 trillion yuan in new infrastructure is giving a boost to seven technological areas, namely, the construction of 5G base stations, extra-high voltage, intercity high-speed railroads and urban rail transit, charging piles for new-energy vehicles, big data centers, artificial intelligence, and the industrial Internet.
The disturbing thing is that as of today - May 5, 2020 - the global population has reached 7.5 billion. China plus India account for more than 1/3 of the total population, and compared to the developed world, the expanding population in the less developed regions is more desperate for a blessed life with more cars, more refrigerators, and so on. All of these take more energy to produce and operate, and put an ever-increasing strain on the planet. Equally disturbing is the existence of the nuclear bomb, which has touched the hearts of countless people with every regional friction.
But there are also many things to look forward to, such as the continuous improvement of human vision and cognition; the continuous development of technology to improve productivity; the communication revolution that allows all inventions and advances to be quickly synchronized to all of humanity, greatly accelerating global progress; and the continuous progress of medicine that allows humans to have the ability to resist diseases such as the plague.
Unsettling and anticipated, this is what we face today and in the future.