What drove me to write 'Time Travel: To the Edge of History'
Preface from my book 'Time Travel: To the Edge of History' explains the compelling reasons of why this book was written. A book which many have termed as the most important book of the decade.
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Preface:
What interests me the most is knowledge, knowing things unknown, connecting information and the huge satisfaction I get when data from two different walks of life come from a common past, and establish a correlation.
Interestingly, the internet can give us all the answers, but the best questions can only come from one thing – curiosity!!!
The more you know, the more curious you become, as it keeps feeding on itself. My drive to write this book was to cultivate and satisfy the sense of curiosity amongst my fellow beings and especially our next generation.
The branch of curiosity which I have discussed in this book is Human History and how it has evolved in many years.
Now, you may have read or seen many other bodies of work which have covered this in detail, however, most of them were either too scholastic or childlike. I wanted to bring forward knowledge which acts as the catalyst for a lifelong habit of learning, as well as satisfy many people like me who love to learn something new, in every chapter and every paragraph.
Since the time I have been writing this book, I have been on a journey, not just to new destinations, but also in time, exploring many unknown stories as well as trivia. Knowing more about where we came from and what triggered the world we are in today.
At times, I have travelled to the future as well, thinking where we will go, based on where we came from.
Sourabh De
If I were to dedicate this book to something inanimate and abstract, it would be ‘curiosity.’ It drove me to the path of exploring and understanding the past, present and future of human beings as a race. We as a race.
The rigmarole of corporate life and the process of seeing a young teenage daughter grow, convinced me that curiosity about human evolution, archeology, travel, and history are key aspects if we want to know ourselves better. Perhaps, it was time to drive a hard stake to bring everything together. Our generation, and the one following, needs to connect the dots more than ever.
Thus, I began a yearlong process of researching and revising my old travel notes and books, comics, atlas, and scholarly articles. I wanted to put down everything I grew up knowing from friends, mentors, dreams, and my travels.
Early on in the process, I realized that if we want to better understand the human species (or ‘specie’, singular form, used interchangeably in the book), we need to know more about this 4.8 billion years old big, wet stone sphere called earth, and its several timelines and phenomenon, which are essential for a better grasp on the topic of evolution, astronomy, archeology, and human genetics.
Classical knowledge gathered over 30 years and new research had to be crunched in one book. It would be a way to share the stories of human evolution, triumph, tribulations, customs, vanities, ghosts, conspiracies, and foods with everyone who cares about us as a species.
A year and a half later, what came out from this labor of love, set in the backdrop of the emergent Covid-19 pandemic, were 11 chapters, with 2 main characters embarking on an epic, once in a lifetime fictional journey across 20 cities, halfway through the world, covering 3 million years of human history in 30 action packed days.
On every page, hundreds of intertwined thought-provoking realizations, anecdotes, facts, aha moments and conversations from ground zero.
• The surreal feeling that the modern human beings (Homo sapiens) have been the only human species on earth since the last 10,000 years. What made us the supreme creature?
• Stories about dog and Lucy, the chimpanzee. How are we and cult of Beatles connected with Lucy?
• Was it fire, wheel, or printing press that turned us into an invincible machine?
• How did it feel to roast meat around a million-year-old community hearth, make a bed and drive a wheeled wagon, sew your own clothes for the first time?
• While Egyptians considered the human brain a useless organ, Harappans were rearing chicken as food for the first time.
• What do the great civilizations teach us to do and not do? Would we ever find Alexander’s tomb?
As the stories and anecdotes unfolded, there were more tantalizing facts coming out. Facts that could change our understanding of human evolution. But for that, we need to ask the right questions, dig up the past, look up at the Milky way and look inside for answers.
By the 11th Chapter, we start connecting the dots and pose the next questions. Those should fire the imagination in the parents, young professionals, and middle-aged corporate guys about history and world knowledge.
The readers of this book should act as evangelists to spread the message ahead. This book could be our sharpest weapon and the biggest reason to pack our bags and embark on a similar journey of our own.
My aspiration is that it becomes ‘The ONE History, Travel, Global knowledge book,’ that one ever needs to have, along with the great work by the likes of David Reich, Graham Hancock, Neil Shubin, HG Wells, Discovery of India, Satyajit Ray, Yuval Noah Harari.
The book also aims to bring in a few quiet changes and awareness towards history and the environment around us. In some ways, it should generate enough interest to impact policy decisions towards a much-needed emphasis on further supporting ‘Archeology’ as a discipline. The ideal outcome should be increased focus on excavating and researching more of the sites and getting closer to our past.
History should be a part of our general day to day conversations and not limited to academic circles only. We should have many more UNESCO heritage sites all over the world, and each one of us should know about them and how humans relate to them.
The day I received a response from the office of Prof. Yuval Noah Harari, permitting me to use his name as a fictional character in the book, I was convinced that the story I am putting up, indeed needs to be told.
Hope we read this book together, travel, look our ancestors in the eyes, share a meal and slice of their life, meet fellow Homo sapiens, and come home with a renewed sense of pride and warmth for the race we are and the place we are in.
*************************************************
Preface:
What interests me the most is knowledge, knowing things unknown, connecting information and the huge satisfaction I get when data from two different walks of life come from a common past, and establish a correlation.
Interestingly, the internet can give us all the answers, but the best questions can only come from one thing – curiosity!!!
The more you know, the more curious you become, as it keeps feeding on itself. My drive to write this book was to cultivate and satisfy the sense of curiosity amongst my fellow beings and especially our next generation.
The branch of curiosity which I have discussed in this book is Human History and how it has evolved in many years.
Now, you may have read or seen many other bodies of work which have covered this in detail, however, most of them were either too scholastic or childlike. I wanted to bring forward knowledge which acts as the catalyst for a lifelong habit of learning, as well as satisfy many people like me who love to learn something new, in every chapter and every paragraph.
Since the time I have been writing this book, I have been on a journey, not just to new destinations, but also in time, exploring many unknown stories as well as trivia. Knowing more about where we came from and what triggered the world we are in today.
At times, I have travelled to the future as well, thinking where we will go, based on where we came from.
Sourabh De
If I were to dedicate this book to something inanimate and abstract, it would be ‘curiosity.’ It drove me to the path of exploring and understanding the past, present and future of human beings as a race. We as a race.
The rigmarole of corporate life and the process of seeing a young teenage daughter grow, convinced me that curiosity about human evolution, archeology, travel, and history are key aspects if we want to know ourselves better. Perhaps, it was time to drive a hard stake to bring everything together. Our generation, and the one following, needs to connect the dots more than ever.
Thus, I began a yearlong process of researching and revising my old travel notes and books, comics, atlas, and scholarly articles. I wanted to put down everything I grew up knowing from friends, mentors, dreams, and my travels.
Early on in the process, I realized that if we want to better understand the human species (or ‘specie’, singular form, used interchangeably in the book), we need to know more about this 4.8 billion years old big, wet stone sphere called earth, and its several timelines and phenomenon, which are essential for a better grasp on the topic of evolution, astronomy, archeology, and human genetics.
Classical knowledge gathered over 30 years and new research had to be crunched in one book. It would be a way to share the stories of human evolution, triumph, tribulations, customs, vanities, ghosts, conspiracies, and foods with everyone who cares about us as a species.
A year and a half later, what came out from this labor of love, set in the backdrop of the emergent Covid-19 pandemic, were 11 chapters, with 2 main characters embarking on an epic, once in a lifetime fictional journey across 20 cities, halfway through the world, covering 3 million years of human history in 30 action packed days.
On every page, hundreds of intertwined thought-provoking realizations, anecdotes, facts, aha moments and conversations from ground zero.
• The surreal feeling that the modern human beings (Homo sapiens) have been the only human species on earth since the last 10,000 years. What made us the supreme creature?
• Stories about dog and Lucy, the chimpanzee. How are we and cult of Beatles connected with Lucy?
• Was it fire, wheel, or printing press that turned us into an invincible machine?
• How did it feel to roast meat around a million-year-old community hearth, make a bed and drive a wheeled wagon, sew your own clothes for the first time?
• While Egyptians considered the human brain a useless organ, Harappans were rearing chicken as food for the first time.
• What do the great civilizations teach us to do and not do? Would we ever find Alexander’s tomb?
As the stories and anecdotes unfolded, there were more tantalizing facts coming out. Facts that could change our understanding of human evolution. But for that, we need to ask the right questions, dig up the past, look up at the Milky way and look inside for answers.
By the 11th Chapter, we start connecting the dots and pose the next questions. Those should fire the imagination in the parents, young professionals, and middle-aged corporate guys about history and world knowledge.
The readers of this book should act as evangelists to spread the message ahead. This book could be our sharpest weapon and the biggest reason to pack our bags and embark on a similar journey of our own.
My aspiration is that it becomes ‘The ONE History, Travel, Global knowledge book,’ that one ever needs to have, along with the great work by the likes of David Reich, Graham Hancock, Neil Shubin, HG Wells, Discovery of India, Satyajit Ray, Yuval Noah Harari.
The book also aims to bring in a few quiet changes and awareness towards history and the environment around us. In some ways, it should generate enough interest to impact policy decisions towards a much-needed emphasis on further supporting ‘Archeology’ as a discipline. The ideal outcome should be increased focus on excavating and researching more of the sites and getting closer to our past.
History should be a part of our general day to day conversations and not limited to academic circles only. We should have many more UNESCO heritage sites all over the world, and each one of us should know about them and how humans relate to them.
The day I received a response from the office of Prof. Yuval Noah Harari, permitting me to use his name as a fictional character in the book, I was convinced that the story I am putting up, indeed needs to be told.
Hope we read this book together, travel, look our ancestors in the eyes, share a meal and slice of their life, meet fellow Homo sapiens, and come home with a renewed sense of pride and warmth for the race we are and the place we are in.
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