UsHumans.net: Front Matter
The Story of Us Humans,
From Atoms to Today's Civilization
Robert Dalling
For my parents, family, friends, and community and the comprehensible fortune of being a certain collection of molecules, with certain ways, for a few decades.
Part One
How and when the universe and the Earth began
Scientists measure everything from motion to society, even love
Newton's motion equation, and the gravitational force
The electric force and light waves
Chapter 3
How and when the Universe began
Measuring the distance, speed, and chemical composition of stars
Gravitational formation of stars and planets
How and when atoms first formed
Star formation and stellar fusion
Chapter 4
How and when the Earth began, and the affects of its moving continents on life
Initial formation of the Earth
Moving tectonic plates and the factors that affect climate
Liquids and gasses in the development of life on Earth
Part Two
The nature of a human
Electrical binding in atoms is the physical basis of the molecules of life
DNA naturally duplicates itself
DNA naturally builds and operates entire individuals
Science, living matter, and religion
The sequence of life forms that have evolved on the Earth
Chapter 6
The emergence of humans
The transition to the human variety of ape
Food packet size determines social size
Behaviors associated with mating
Chapter 8
Primate social systems, and the origins of our emotions, morals, and language
Social system of nonprimate mammals
Complex social systems promote bigger brains, sympathy, empathy, and self-awareness
The social systems of common chimpanzees and Bonobos
What do these primate social systems tell us about ourselves?
Matrilineages, patrilineages, and cross-cousin marriages
Scientific studies of language ability in apes
Origin and purpose of our feelings and emotions
Origin and purpose of our morals
Chapter 9
The gatherer-hunter way of life: the Kalapalo Indians of central Brazil
Part Three
Origin and development of religion, government and civilization
Chapter 10
The religion of gatherer-hunter peoples: the power in the bush
Deities and the power in the bush
Chapter 11
Human Political Forms: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states
Ranked and socially stratified society
Chapter 12
The origin of farming, cities, and civilization
Plant and animal domestication
Farming villages and irrigation
King and queen, palace, and government
Invention of war: by the leader, for the leader
Our modern religions of moral behaviors
Some views of the people of the Hindu faith
Some views of those of us humans who are Christian
Some views of those of us humans who are Buddhists
People who are humanists celebrate humanity
Chapter 14
Our civilization, from ancient to modern
Astronomy, mathematics, and reading tea-leaves
The Ancient Greeks present our first explanations of nature not given in terms of deities
Confucian respect for helpful elders binds families, society, and government
Emperor, administration, and a bureaucratic system based on merit
Religious festivals, deities, and the ancestor cult
Bathing, cosmetics, and clothing
Servants, laborers, and peddlers
State monopolies, taxes, and currency
Old age, death, and inheritance
Holidays, entertainment, and clothing
The feudal and manorial system, the Baron’s revolt and Magna Carta, and the peasant’s revolt
Growing wool industry expands trade
Europeans inherit knowledge expanded in Islamic lands
Our ideas for specific liberties resulting from specific injustices
Worth of individuals over states
Government by and for the people
Balancing the spread powers of government
Constitution of the United States
Numerous travelers talk of other cultures
Social affects of factory life
Colonial beginnings and immigrants from the world
Rapid westward expansion of twenty miles per year
Social and economic classes and enslaved people
Food, food-storing, and cooking
Families bartered goods at the General Store
Agricultural and social events
Mutually beneficial exchange of help among community members
Mining, ore processing, and blacksmithing
Lead, tin, pewter, copper, brass and silver working
English mechanics were sought to build the first U.S. factories
Debate of benefits and drawbacks of industrialization
Debate over the role of government in any coming industrialization
Production techniques mixed as industrialization requires power and decades to mature
No employees exist for the first factories
Corporations for pooling business funds
Lowell mills operated by northeastern girls, then immigrants
Factory clothing replaces homemade
Handmade shoes and instruments
Varieties of products fill our homes
The South chooses to remain agricultural
Many of us factory workers struggle to earn money for bread and rent
Interrelated elements of the economy
Exchanges and occupations change
Peddlers, freight haulers, and entertainers
Canals transport people and goods between east and west
Cities and industry grow and spread Westward
Industrialization, urbanization, and commercialization
Labor strikes of the 1880s and 1890s
The role of government and courts in industrialization
When a nation chooses to industrialize today
Movies, sports, and other entertainment
Part Four
Today's society, business, and government
Chapter 17
The computer and its uses
Chapter 18
Today's global business
Global corporations from Europe, Japan, and the U.S.
Global manufacturing blurs imports and exports
Political power of global corporations
Global corporations and governing one's national economy
Global corporations search the world for the cheapest labor
Products of global corporations sold mostly to people within the richest nations
Entertainment, book, news, and record businesses
Electrically measuring customer and voter emotions
Monitoring and analyzing each customer's purchases
Today's worldwide migration of 75 million job-seekers per year
Franchises and preferential agreements between corporations
Global products but not global culture
Globalization is not yet global
Governing global corporations with independent, sovereign nations
Reasons for a people to change their political leadership
Authoritarian governments of Eastern Europe from 1945-1989
Taiwan's conversion from authoritarian to democratic government
African government before, during, and after independence
Guiding principles for U.S. foreign policy
A global, democratic assembly of democratic nations
Chapter 20
How Washington shares power today
Branches of government in the U.S.
Political power and legislation through consensus-building, exchanges, and pressure
The president can set the agenda
Abuse of presidential power and legislative reactions
Congress and its recent further spreading of power, and the power of congressional staff
Role of television and marketing in politics
Campaign marketing, and the talents needed to campaign compared with those needed to govern
Lobbies, political action committees, and issue marketing
Chapter 21
Today's big-city way of life for two boys in Chicago
Chapter 22
The science of government through measurements of the success of government's efforts
Some specific social health indicators
Rates of child neglect and abuse
Putting the indicators to work measuring the success of our efforts to govern
National and global surveys of social-health indicators
Social and economic indicators in the daily news
Importance of social-health indicators
Well-being and the quality of life in the past
Appendix
Sample Goal and Happiness Survey
Acknowledgments
A special thanks to the students of the Maine School of Science and Mathematics for improving the text. I want to thank Megan Gill for creating the artwork of the cover. Humans enjoy making and experiencing art; it’s one of the things we do.
Ralph Linton's 1932 description of the global diffusion of techniques and inventions is quoted below. What has taken me five hundred pages to say, Dr. Linton accomplished in about five hundred words. I thank John Azer of Normandale Community College for bringing Dr. Linton's article to my attention.
This book consists of nothing but summaries of other books written by experts describing their own fields (their books are listed in the chapter sources). Each of these books provides a portion of our story and is simply combined here to give a glimpse of the whole at once. Reading this book is an incomplete shortcut to reading fifty or so of the books that these specialists have written.
The facts presented in this book have been taken directly from these other books. I have not created any of the understandings presented here, I simply serve the role of the reporter–except that this book is a less accurate summary of the material presented by these experts. As I remove the technical terms from the writings of these experts, I am also removing the precise meaning of their statements. The authors have very clearly presented their fields of study. I apologize to them now for not presenting their understandings as well, or as accurately, as they had earlier expressed them. I decided that it would not be appropriate in this book to quote the page numbers from which each fact has been taken because every sentence here would then have such a reference. I have instead acknowledged sources within the text of the paragraphs. It is hoped that the reader will become interested in reading some of their books in order to gain a more complete understanding of the story of all of us humans.
I insert occasional paragraphs to emphasize the human aspect of these facts. Whenever I have done this, I have tried to make it obvious that the statement contains my own interpretation. I am sure those summarized specialists will not want anyone thinking that they had made such a silly statement. In such cases, I often state that the sentence contains my own guess about a possible detail of life by using the phrase "I can guess." The reader is encouraged to make further studies to increase the details of the existing facts. At best, my wrong guesses may serve the purpose of spurring further discussion. The discussion needs your investigations and contributions, too.
In addition, these authors have shown that they are wiser than I am by sticking to their own field. They know that persons who write about subjects not within their own specialty always make fools of themselves. But it is also true that nonspecialists have no career to risk and are free to rush into areas that the specialist avoids. This means that I am more free to state silly guesses, hoping to spur debate among the readers.
You might like to visit www.UsHumans.net to download the latest internet version of this text.
Robert Dalling,
March 2006
Copyright © 2006 Robert Dalling, www.UsHumans.net