Prologue, Intro to Part 1 and Ch 1 first peoples.

Reading the prologue of ways of the world really allowed me to feel like I understood the author's intentions in writing this book.  The author discusses the earth's timeline in one calendar year and it blows my mind how the Existence of the United States would rank just in the last few seconds of December 31st.  This means that in the grand scale of the universe, our nation has barely existed.  Also, I really do appreciate how the author describes a more globalized history.  I think it is important that we learn how we all originated and how we all got to where we are today from a species perspective.  As we get into the part one section I am astounded by the fact that before homo sapiens there were 30 other homininae species.  It is interesting that the paleolithic period is covered so little in our education and yet it makes up 95% of the time homo sapiens have existed on the earth. As we get into the Agricultural era when man kind finally learns to domesticate plants and animals and force the land the form to our will, I start to think how all of a sudden did mankind learn agriculture after so many years of hunting and gathering.  This simple idea of saving, planting and growing specific seeds to cultivate and breeding docile animals for food created such a rapid change in technology which ultimately led the world to where it is today.  In the first part of chapter one, the first peoples; we learn that all homo sapiens originated in Africa and at one point began to migrate into the rest of the world.  First migrations moved from the middle east to Eurasia to Australia to the Americas and lastly boats were used to inhabit the Pacific.  Once the earth had been fully inhabited by mankind tools and technologies were created to survive the many climates that exist on earth.