‘A Global History of Humanity’: a high school textbook to change the world

Abstract

This paper aims at presenting the forthcoming school textbook ‘A Global History of Humanity’ that spans from 70.000 BCE till the 21st century and narrates a global history of our world assuming a non-Eurocentric and non-nationalist perspective. The textbook covers the history of humanity through three volumes, combining a chronological and a thematic approach. Each volume is divided into three chronological chapters. Each chapter presents the four themes in which the textbook is structured: humans change nature; humans on the move; social organization and inequality; worldviews. The last part of this paper ties the long history of humanity narrated through the textbook to today’s central questions, discussing the conditions in which we find ourselves today and the challenges we are facing in the coming years.