David Christian

David Christian
Topics	Big History
Projects	Big History Project
Known for	Founding Big History; Maps of Time; Big History Project
Occupation	Historian
Notable works	Maps of Time
Contributions	Popularizing Big History
Field	Big History
Wikidata	Q5232363

David Christian (born 1946) is an American-born historian who pioneered the interdisciplinary field of Big History – an approach that spans the entire 13.8-billion-year timeline from the Big Bang to the present. Educated at Oxford (B.A. 1968, D.Phil. 1974) and the University of Western Ontario (M.A. 1970), he began his career as a specialist in Russian and Soviet history. In the late 1980s he broadened his focus to world history, asking how the human saga fits into the larger cosmic story Christian’s 600-page textbook Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (2004) has been praised as “a remarkable work of synthesis,” uniting scientific and humanistic research into a coherent narrative In partnership with philanthropist Bill Gates, he helped launch the Big History Project – a free online curriculum for high schools worldwide – bringing this grand history to new audiences.

Early Life and Education

David Gilbert Christian was born on December 8, 1946, in New York City He attended Oxford University, earning a B.A. in Modern History in 1968 and returning for a D.Phil. in Russian history in 1974 Between those Oxford degrees, he studied at the University of Western Ontario (M.A. in 1970), where his thesis explored the early life of Vladimir Lenin His early scholarship remained focused on 19th-century Russia, but by the late 1970s Christian was already reading widely across the sciences. He later remarked that these wide-ranging studies inspired a radical question: could one tell the story of humanity and its surroundings using all the evidence from astronomy, geology, biology and archaeology, instead of confining history to written records?

Academic Career

In 1975 Christian joined the faculty of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, initially teaching courses in European and Russian history. He quickly gained tenure and became a senior lecturer by the early 1980s. During this time he won research fellowships and served on editorial boards, immersing himself in comparative world history. In 1989 he began offering his first Big History course at Macquarie This was a novel college course that reviewed the entire past, from the cosmic origin to recent centuries, emphasizing scientific findings about the universe and Earth before focusing on humans. When The Teaching Company (Great Courses) selected Big History to film for its lecture series, Christian recorded 48 half-hour lectures summarizing the material.

In 2001 Christian moved to the United States as a professor at San Diego State University. There he taught world history, environmental history, and Big History alongside courses in Russian and Eurasian history. This international experience helped turn Big History into a living curriculum at multiple universities. In 2009 he returned to Macquarie University, where he continued teaching Big History (alongside his traditional subjects) and mentored new scholars in the field. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 2020. Over his career he has also held visiting posts at the University of Vermont and Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He is a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and other scholarly societies, and was founding president of the International Big History Association.

Big History: Concept and Framework

Big History is the heart of Christian’s work. Officially coined around 1989, the term refers to the practice of “framing human history in terms of cosmic, geological, and biological history” Christian’s vision was to create a “modern origin story” that weaves together knowledge from physics, astronomy, geology, biology and anthropology. As he has explained, this origin story is “embedded within the colossal amount of knowledge” in modern scholarship – it is the “story that holds it all together” In practice, Big History treats the Big Bang and the formation of the universe as the deep starting point for any historical narrative. It then traces a series of threshold moments of increasing complexity: for example, the birth of stars (which forged chemical elements), the formation of planets, the emergence of life, and later the rise of human cognition and culture.

Christian often emphasizes that human affairs occupy just a narrow slice at the end of this continuum. In his classes, humans are barely mentioned until halfway through a 15-week semester The goal is not to marginalize people, he says, but to show how “human history fits into the larger scheme of natural history as a whole” By situating civilization against 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution, Big History offers perspective: for instance, it highlights how the recent human-driven Anthropocene (industrial and post-industrial era) is a sudden burst of change that would be invisible without this broad view.

Christian has written and spoken about Big History as an expression of consilience – a term coined by biologist E.O. Wilson for a unified understanding of knowledge. In his own words, Big History “aims at a universal understanding of history” and seeks to link the “rich materials generated by specialists” into one big-picture narrative Rather than replace traditional history, it depends on it: Big History tries to connect millions of “local maps” of specialized scholarship (archaeology, local chronicles, linguistic studies, etc.) into a single outline of the past The result is an overarching timeline in which human societies are understood as part of a much larger story of stars, Earth, life and mind.

Major Works and Publications

A major milestone in Christian’s career was the publication of Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (2004). This 600-page book was based on his course material and presents the entire Big History syllabus for a general audience. Reviewers lauded it as a “remarkable work of synthesis,” noting that it fills a gap for world-history teachers and curious readers The book won the World History Association’s prize in 2005. Over the next two decades Christian continued to expand his Big History writings. He coedited textbook volumes such as Big History: Between Nothing and Everything (McGraw-Hill, 2014), along with Cynthia Stokes Brown and Craig Benjamin, aimed at students. In 2018 he wrote Origin Story: A Big History of Everything, a popular book that distilled the field for general readers. That book frames Big History explicitly as a “modern origin story” that helps people see the meaning behind all their accumulated knowledge.

In 2022 Christian published Future Stories: What’s Next, which applies the Big History perspective to the future – essentially treating the projected human future as the next chapter (sometimes called “Threshold 9”) in the story of everything. Throughout these works he remains explicitly a historian, integrating scientific findings but also discussing culture, ideas and human agency (where it fits). Alongside Big History, he has continued to write on conventional topics; for example, he contributed to multi-author volumes on world history and has published on Russian history and Eurasian empires, reflecting his original training.

Teaching Innovations and the Big History Project

Christian is also known for innovative teaching. In 2004 he worked with The Teaching Company to create a 48-lecture DVD series “Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity.” This Great Courses series brought his vision to a large audience of lifelong learners. A 2011 TED Talk he gave – “The History of Our World in 18 Minutes” – became a viral hit, further popularizing Big History The talk, and others on radio and television, helped catch the eye of educators and funders.

Notably, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates became an early champion of Big History. After hearing Christian’s presentations, Gates contacted him with a proposal: together they would adapt the college course into a high school curriculum Gates offered to fund this effort out of his own pocket. The result was the Big History Project, launched in 2011 by Christian, Gates, and collaborators. This free online course is designed for 9th-grade students and is staffed by teachers and scholars. It debuted in just a few schools, but has since spread globally. By 2014 it was being offered to tens of thousands of students, with support from Gates, and even accepted for credit as an alternative to traditional world history in some US school systems Gates himself wrote on his blog that Christian’s college course “was originated by David Christian” and that their goal was simply “sharing the big picture” of history The Big History Project continues to influence how history and science are taught in schools, making Christian’s interdisciplinary approach available at the secondary level for the first time.

Influence and Recognition

David Christian’s work has had a broad impact on both scholarship and education. The field of Big History now has its own academic association (IBHA, which he helped found) and journal, and courses are taught at universities worldwide. Christian has been invited to speak in many countries and has over 300 public lectures to his credit He holds several honors: Maps of Time earned the World History Association’s Book Prize (2005) and he was named a Distinguished Professor at Macquarie (2014) His contributions to world history won him election to the Australian Academy of the Humanities and other scholarly societies.

His influence extends to the “big picture” discourse itself. As the Oxford historian Peter Jackson wrote, Christian “has set the stage for a new approach to history,” one that demands a high schooler’s or citizen’s appreciation of science as part of history Popularizers such as Wikipedia and Khan Academy feature Big History elements, and BBC/Netflix specials have been made on related concepts (though not all by Christian himself). In short, his integrative model has helped rekindle interest in grand narratives of human origins, as opposed to teaching history solely as a list of political events.

Critiques and Debates

Christian’s Big History approach has not been without controversy. Some scholars and commentators question whether it should be called “history” at all. Stanford education professor Sam Wineburg famously asked in a 2016 NPR feature, “Is it history?” He argued that history traditionally focuses on human decisions and cultural meaning, whereas Big History often foregrounds impersonal forces. As Wineburg put it, “History is about human beings; history is about the decisions that people make to change the course of our time.” He warned that the Big History curriculum risks becoming “less history and more…a kind of evolutionary biology or quantum physics” In other words, it tends to eschew the interpretation of archival texts and human stories in favor of scientific explanations, which some educators see as undermining the discipline of history.

Some commentators have critiqued Big History from a more ideological angle. Sociologist Frank Furedi, for example, described the movement as “the annihilation of human agency,” arguing that it downplays humanity’s unique role by treating people as just another cosmic phenomenon From another side, certain religious thinkers have objected that Big History’s secular origin story competes with theological creation narratives (though Christian himself often welcomes comparison of stories). Meanwhile, conventional historians sometimes debate whether Christian’s sweeping synthesis pays enough attention to social, political and cultural particularities. Critics note it can gloss over history’s “jagged edges” – the messy, contingent details – in its quest for universal patterns.

Christian acknowledges these debates. He argues that Big History does build on specialist research – it is “utterly dependent on the rich materials generated by specialists” – but tries to fit those into a unified picture He believes the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, giving learners powerful context for current global issues. Still, many see Big History as best used alongside, not instead of, traditional courses: a way to complement approaches to past rather than replace them.

Legacy and Prospect

As of 2025, David Christian remains an influential voice and a published author. The Big History he championed has become part of many world-history programs, and its impact on education will likely grow as modern challenges demand interdisciplinary thinking. Christian has recently turned his attention toward the future, reflecting on how humanity’s “power with collective learning” (another theme from Big History) might shape the 21st century. His latest book, Future Stories (2022), uses the Big History lens to explore possible trajectories of civilization. In building this global origin story, Christian has helped shape a new “map of time” that places humanity’s journey in a vast cosmic perspective – a legacy that will inform how future generations tell the story of everything on Earth.

Selected Works

Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (University of California Press, 2004) – A comprehensive Big History textbook (600+ pages) for general readers.
Big History: Between Nothing and Everything (McGraw-Hill, 2014) – World history textbook co-authored with Cynthia Stokes Brown and Craig Benjamin.
Origin Story: A Big History of Everything (Little, Brown, 2018) – Popular book linking scientific knowledge to a unified “origin story.”
Future Stories: What’s Next (Little, Brown Spark, 2022) – Exploration of humanity’s future framed by Big History.
A History of Russia, Central Asia, and Mongolia, Vol. I (Blackwell, 1995) – Survey of early Russian and Inner Asian history (Christian was co-editor).
Big History – The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity (The Teaching Company, 2004) – 48-lecture DVD series (Great Courses).

Timeline (selected):.

1946: Born in New York, USA
1968: B.A. (Modern History) from Oxford University
1970: M.A. (History) from University of Western Ontario
1974: D.Phil. (Russian History) from Oxford; dissertation on early 19th-century Russian Senate
1975: Appointed lecturer, Macquarie University (Sydney); later senior/associate professor there
1989: Began teaching Big History course at Macquarie
2001: Joined San Diego State University as professor (World/Big History).
2004: Released Big History lecture series (Great Courses).
2005: Maps of Time published; World History Association Book Prize.
2009: Returned to Macquarie (till retirement 2020).
2011: Gave a popular TED talk on Big History launched Big History Project for high schools.
2018: Published Origin Story.
2020: Retired as Professor Emeritus; continues research.
2022: Published Future Stories.

Sources: Academic profiles and interviews with David Christian Christian’s publications (e.g. Maps of Time) news coverage and essays on Big History Gates Foundation blog scholarly accounts of Big History These sources detail Christian’s career, ideas, and the development of Big History as a field.