quote:
In the early universe, gravity took hold of atoms and sculpted them into stars and galaxies. In the era described in this chapter, we will see how, by a sort of social gravity, cities and states were scultped from scattered communities of farmers. As farming populations gathered in larger and denser communities, interactions between different groups increased and the social pressure rose until, in a striking parallel with star formation, new structures suddenly appeared, together with a new level of complexity. Like stars, cities and states reorganize and energize the smaller objects within their gravitational field.
~
Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History By David Christian I love that book.
(I think because it has the words stars and galaxies in it) While I was reading, this particular paragraph brought back memories of my older sister and I, sneaking outside on a warm summer night in a weakly planned attempt at trying to sleep under the stars. We loved stargazing, and the thought of being able to fall asleep under all of that large, glittering expanse, seemed magical to us. We'd never been camping and had come to the realization that our parents would never take us (& they never did). So through some exchanged whispers in the living room that night, before we went to bed, we devised a plan where we'd sneak out that night with our sleeping bags and pillows and lay at the side of our house, in the soft grass. Doing just this, we made the discovery that our parents are light sleepers, and after only a few minutes, we'd been scolded and ordered back into our own boring beds. It was incredibly disappointing.
