Q&A: David Christian, historian, 71

David Christian, pioneer of Big History, on why learning the scientific origin story is so important for students.

David Christian. Picture: Nick Cubbin

You pioneered the new, unifying field of Big History. What gave you the idea? I found myself thinking that what we needed to be teaching, as well as national histories, was the history of humanity. That was not taught anywhere in the world, as far as I know. I realised it would have to begin with the appearance of the first humans, which would take you back to the origins of life, and to do that properly I began thinking you’d have to teach a history of the whole universe.

That was in the late 1980s, early in your long tenure at Sydney’s Macquarie University. Is it true you were shaping up to be an expert on vodka? Yes, in 1990 I published a book on Russia’s vodka trade in the 19th-century. I realised that 30-40 per cent of government revenue came from sales of vodka. It paid for the army that made Russia a superpower.

Your new book tells a “modern origin story”. What does that mean? In most societies there have been stories that bring together the best knowledge of that society, distilled and taught to young people — think Dreamtime stories, or the stories of the great religions. Now the first truly global origin story is emerging from science, constructed from the colossal amount of information generated in the past few centuries.

Your TED Talk “The history of our world in 18 minutes” has been viewed more than eight million times. Can a science-based origin story give the same emotional satisfaction as a religious one? I don’t see why not. We all know that good science can be awe-inspiring. With the very wide angle lens of Big History, you can see we live at an astonishing moment in the history not just of humanity, but of planet Earth. Like it or not, humans are beginning to manage the entire planet. We have to learn to do it well, and learn very fast indeed.

Bill Gates teamed up with you to offer a free Big History syllabus to high schools. What’s the take-up been like? At the moment the syllabus is only in English. It’s being used by 1200 schools worldwide, mostly in the US and Australia. The Big History Institute at Macquarie University is creating a second syllabus that we hope to take into other languages.

Big History spans 13.7 billion years. Does it make the individual feel insignificant? All origin stories have this paradoxical quality — they can make you feel tiny and insignificant, but also make you feel that you’re part of something huge and majestic. And once you know what your place is, you have a much better idea what your role is.

And the fact we come from the debris of stars? It means we’re very much part of the universe. We have a well-tested story about how supernovae created new elements, how those elements combined to form complex chemicals and how, where you get the right environment such as the early Earth, those chemicals can combine to form living organisms.

Big History tries to broaden the tribal focus of history but isn’t nationalism as strong as ever? Absolutely, but that doesn’t stop me thinking we desperately need to teach young people they have a heritage as human beings. All the big problems today — climate change, nuclear weapons, the decline in biodiversity — are going to have to be solved not by individual nations but by collaboration between humans.

Origin Story: A Big History of Everything (Allen Lane, $35)