The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions

These civilizations also invented forms of writing that became the precursors of modern scripts. The oldest writing systems in Mesopotamia date from the use of pictographs around 3500 BCE and then the great breakthrough to cuneiform around 2500 BCE. Hieroglyphics in the Nile River valley date from around 3100 BCE, possibly influenced by Sumerian wr

In the future, both the primary and secondary sector shares will continue to decline as jobs continue to shift toward services. In the United States, the shift from primary to tertiary employment is much further along. U.S. primary-sector employment is now a mere 2 percent of the total, with industry (construction and manufacturing) accounting for

The challenge of globalization from the earliest days of humanity has been the lack of consensus. Our species, exquisitely evolved for cooperation within our clan, is equally primed for conflict with the “other.” In a world that has the ability to “end all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life,” as President John F. Kennedy eloquently

Perhaps the first major horse-based society in Eurasia was the Yamnaya people, hypothesized to have emerged as an admixture of hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. Their territory was the northern Caucasus between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea (known as the Pontic-Caspian Steppe).

The extinction of the wild horse was a devastating blow for the Amerindian populations.7 It meant that Native Americans would not have the vast benefits of horses for transport and animal traction for the following ten thousand years. The next time the native populations encountered the horse was with the arrival of European conquerors on horseback

Globalization signifies the interlinkages of diverse societies across large geographical areas. These interlinkages are technological, economic, institutional, cultural, and geopolitical. They include interactions of societies across the world through trade, finance, enterprise, migration, culture, empire, and war.

As the sixteenth century progressed, Britain gained mastery over naval design, building fast and maneuverable galleons that could threaten Spain’s warships. The decisive showdown came in 1588, when the Spanish monarch decided to invade Britain to put down the upstart nation. The effort failed disastrously, with Britain’s defeat of the Spanish armad

I outlined three enormous challenges for the Digital Age: rising inequality, massive environmental degradation, and the risks arising from major geopolitical change. These daunting challenges could overload our political institutions and provoke a devastating conflict. Such has been the pattern of the past. Surely the prime task of our age is to re

World War II sounded the death knell of European empires. A process of European colonization that began in the early 1500s rapidly unraveled after 1945. The European powers were exhausted by war, heavily indebted, and without the legitimacy in the colonies to maintain their rule. Local independence movements either convinced the imperial power to w