The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000 Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection By: Tamim Ansary

Author: Tamim Ansary
Narrated by: Tamim Ansary

From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age

Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative.

Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories – to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs.

Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.

11M	01 - Introduction.mp3
628K	02 - PART I Tools, Language, and Environment.mp3
9.6M	03 - Chapter 1 The Physical Stage.mp3
7.1M	04 - Chapter 2 History Begins with Language.mp3
17M	05 - Chapter 3 Civilization Begins with Geography.mp3
12M	06 - Chapter 4Trade Weaves the Networks.mp3
25M	07 - Chapter 5 The Birth of Belief Systems.mp3
916K	08 - PART II One Planet, Many Worlds.mp3
13M	09 - Chapter 6 Money, Math, Messaging, Management, and Might.mp3
22M	10 - Chapter 7 Megaempires Take the Stage.mp3
18M	11 - Chapter 8 The Lands in Between.mp3
36M	12 - Chapter 9 When Worlds Overlap.mp3
30M	13 - Chapter 10 World Historical Monads.mp3
980K	14 - PART III The Table Tilts.mp3
11M	15 - Chapter 11 Out of the North.mp3
13M	16 - Chapter 12 Europe on the Rise.mp3
8.3M	17 - Chapter 13 The Nomads’ Last Roar.mp3
25M	18 - Chapter 14 Europe and the Long Crusades.mp3
32M	19 - Chapter 15 The Restoration Narrative.mp3
11M	20 - Chapter 16 The Progress Narrative.mp3
868K	21 - PART IV History’s Hinge.mp3
9.8M	22 - Chapter 17 That Columbus Moment.mp3
16M	23 - Chapter 18 Chain Reactions.mp3
8.4M	24 - Chapter 19 After Columbus The World.mp3
13M	25 - Chapter 20 The Center Does Not Hold.mp3
11M	26 - Chapter 21 Middle World Enmeshed.mp3
4.9M	27 - Chapter 22 Ripple Effects.mp3
876K	28 - PART V Enter the Machine.mp3
13M	29 - Chapter 23 The Invention Explosion.mp3
17M	30 - Chapter 24 Our Machines, Ourselves.mp3
12M	31 - Chapter 25 Social Constellations in the Machine Age.mp3
13M	32 - Chapter 26 Empires and Nation-States.mp3
8.4M	33 - Chapter 27 A World at War.mp3
988K	34 - PART VI The Singularity Has Three Sides.mp3
15M	35 - Chapter 28 Beyond the Nation-State.mp3
12M	36 - Chapter 29 Digital Era.mp3
9.8M	37 - Chapter 30 The Environment.mp3
15M	38 - Chapter 31 The Big Picture.mp3
2.3M	Maps.pdf
4.0K	The Invention of Yesterday - Tamim Ansary - 2019.txt
44K	The Invention of Yesterday.jpg
475M	total