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Unit 1 Overview: What Is Big History?

Unit 1 Overview: What Is Big History?

What is Big History? Rachel Hansen will be your guide as you travel through the Universe’s 13.8-billion-year history, or what we like to call Big History.

Key Ideas

As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.

Key Ideas

Think about the following questions as you watch the video


  1. 01:00 What is the purpose of an origin story?
  2. 03:07 What are thresholds of increasing complexity?
  3. 05:14 How does learning about the scientific principles of our Universe fit into a history class?
  4. 05:39 What is scale switching?
  5. 06:16 What are the claim testers and why are they important in this course?
  6. 07:52 Why should we study more than just “recorded history”—all the stuff that came after writing was invented?