PART 1: THE DIVERGENT SPECIES: THE BEGINNINGS OF DIVERSITY, CA. 160,000 TO 3,000 YEARS AGO
1. Of Ice and Mud: From Africa to the World, from Foraging to Farming
2. The Great River Valleys: Accelerating Change and Developing States
3. The Multiplication of Civilizations: Ambition and Instability
PART 2: THE AGE OF EMPIRES, FROM 1,000 B.C.E. TO 200 C.E.
4. Rebuilding the World: Recoveries, New Initiatives, and Their Limits
5. The Great Schools: New Thinking in the Age of Sages
6. The Great Empires: Cultural Exchange in Big States
PART 3: FITFUL TRANSITIONS, FROM THE THIRD CENTURY TO THE TENTH CENTURY
7. Post-imperial Worlds: Problems of Empires in Eurasia and Africa
8. The Rise of World Religions: Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism
9. Remaking the World: Innovation and Renewal of Environmental Frontiers in the Late First Millennium
PART 4: CONTACTS AND CONFLICTS, 1000 C.E. TO 1200 C.E.
10. Contending with Isolation: Initiatives in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
11. The Nomadic Frontiers: The Islamic World, Byzantium, and China
PART 5: THE CRUCIBLE: THE EURASIAN CRISES OF THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES
12. The World the Mongols Made: Trans-Eurasian Links
13. The Revenge of Nature: Plague and Cold in the Fourteenth Century
14. Expanding Worlds: Recovery in the Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries