This course is an introductory survey of world history. It will offer a historical overview of major processes and interactions in the development of human society since the emergence in Africa of Homo sapiens, or modern humans, some 200,000 years ago. The course should enable students to treat world history as an approach to the past that addresses large-scale patterns as well as local narratives, and though which they can pursue their interest in various types of knowledge.The course is intended for undergraduate students in all majors. For this wide range of students, the course not only provides background on globalization today, but reveals the contrasting processes of large-scale social interaction which take place rapidly (such as technology) as compared with those that take place slowly (such as social values). For majors in History, the course will provide an initial step in the interactive and interdisciplinary study of the past that they will explore in more detail at advanced undergraduate levels. For those considering a career in teaching, this course provides strong background for the world-history curriculum that is now taught in most secondary schools.

This course studies history from a distance, covering tens of thousands of years and touching upon all the locations that humans have ever inhabited. Its focus is on finding patterns and comparisons rather than memorizing facts about names and places. By the end of the course, students should be able to identify and understand long-term and large-scale dynamics of complex change in the past. Themes of the course include connections between groups of people, the movements of people, goods, ideas and non-human species, and human exploitation of the earth and its inhabitants. 

This resource is a pacing guide for a course in Global Studies that includes nine units. Each unit contains information on its historical content, written content, time frame, and skills or projects related to the unit material. 

The 1935 edition published by R. T. Gunther was based on only three or four local manuscripts, and as such is defective in many places. Missing phrases, or mis-copies or mis-read phrases at times makes that text unintelligible.

This edition is based on the collation of a significant number of manuscripts (over 80, and eventually, it is hoped, all manuscript copies). What is now being published here is the text of the Prologue and of the first sixteen chapters (Version 1.1).

The edition is available in five PDF files:

Part I: Introduction contains the preface and introductory material, including manuscript information;

Part II: Critical Edition contains the Latin text and diagrams, the critical apparatus and a facing English translation;

Part III: Latin Text contains the Latin text and diagrams, without the apparatus criticus, but maintaining the line numbers of the critical edition;

Part IV: English Text contains the English text and diagrams, for those who are interested in consulting only the translation.

Appendix I: Catalogue of Stars contains information about the all the stars mentioned in the text.

Over time these texts will be updated and expanded, when the remaining manuscript copies are collated, and when the editing of further sections have been completed. However, it is not expected that the present version will change – the rest of the manuscripts will expand the apparatus criticus but are unlikely to modify the text itself.

The editor is interested in the receiving comments on the text, and further insights into its interpretation, from others. He is willing to incorporate such additions into future versions for the benefit of others who would consult this edition in the future. Comments can be sent to thomson@chass.utoronto.ca.

Permission is given for scholars to print out (and bind) any or all of these texts for non-commercial uses: research, study, criticism and citation. Commercial reproduction of all or part of the texts is not permitted without the prior consent of the copyright owner.

This subject introduces the history of science from antiquity to the present. Students consider the impact of philosophy, art, magic, social structure, and folk knowledge on the development of what has come to be called “science” in the Western tradition, including those fields today designated as physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, astronomy and the mind sciences. Topics include concepts of matter, nature, motion, body, heavens, and mind as these have been shaped over the course of history. Students read original works by Aristotle, Vesalius, Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, among others.