A gorgeously illustrated and wholly comprehensive timeline of the earth's entire history that explains how everything is interconnected.

As comprehensive as the subtitle suggests, What on Earth Happened is a primer for Planet Earth, a giant narrative leap across time and space, one seismic change at a time. Combining the history of earth science and the history of human civilization, What on Earth Happened covers how the earth was formed, how life began, the way the ecosystem works, how species evolved, the rise of man, migration, the development of tools, language, agriculture, art, transportation, architecture, cities, religion, government, global conflicts, and medicine. In short, it shows how everything—from the mountains and flowers and the birds and the bees to the Iraq war and the oil under the Arctic—is all wonderfully, complexly interconnected.

Entertaining and accessible—and gorgeously illustrated with specially commissioned graphs, charts and maps—What on Earth Happened connects the dots of the past to tell a coherent, comprehensive, and compelling story about our very own third rock from the sun.