Template:Did you know nominations/Human history

Human history

(

• Back to T:TDYK
• Article history

)

• ... that the agricultural and industrial revolutions are key turning points in human history?

• Source:

• ALT1: ... that in early human history, humans migrated out of Africa and populated most of the Earth during the Last Ice Age? Source:
• ALT2: ... that for most of human history, children did not have access to public education? Source:
• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Betty Hanley
• Comment:

References

Sources

• Cajani, Luigi (2013). "Periodization". In Bentley, Jerry H. (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of World History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-968606-3.
• Christian, David (2008). This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity. Berkshire Publishing. ISBN 978-1-933782-04-1.
• Christian, David, ed. (2015). Introducing World History, to 10,000 BCE. The Cambridge World History. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139194662. ISBN 978-0-521-76333-2. Archived from the original on 26 January 2023. Retrieved 26 January 2023.
• Pollack, Henry (2010). A World Without Ice. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-101-52485-5.
• Scott, William; Vare, Paul (2020). Learning, Environment and Sustainable Development: A History of Ideas. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-20802-3. Archived from the original on 10 December 2023. Retrieved 3 May 2023.

Improved to Good Article status by Phlsph7 (talk) and Cerebellum (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 22 past nominations.

Phlsph7 (talk) 11:52, 11 August 2024 (UTC).

• Not a review, but two friendly comments. First, Agricultural revolution in ALT0 is a disambiguation page (I'm guessing it refers to the First agricultural revolution, which redirects to Neolithic Revolution). Second, if it's possible to make a hook about life expectancy and/or child mortality, that could be a very interesting hook indeed—I know I found John Green's video "Most People Have Never Been 20" interesting. TompaDompa (talk) 12:26, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for pointing this out, I fixed the link. A hook on changes to life expectancy could be interesting. I think the article only covers this in the sentence Advances in medical science led to a sharp increase in global life expectancy from about 31 years in 1900 to over 66 years in 2000.[552], which does not give us much to work with. Maybe:

  ALT3: ... that in modern human history, advances in medical science helped raise global life expectancy from about 31 years in 1900 to over 66 years in 2000.

  Phlsph7 (talk) 12:53, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

• I'm not a big fan of ALT2, which is rather anachronistic: for most of human history, children did not live in societies in which "public education" was a meaningful concept. Given the wide scope of this article, I think a hook that encompasses a broad timescale would make the most sense.

  Many societies didn't really have public education so children didn't have access to it. Maybe you are concerned about something like the following: some readers may misconstrue the statement as implying that these societies did have public education but just not for most children. This is not what the hook says but it could happen. This problem could be solved by talking about formal education instead of public education but the claim in our article is about public education so this may not be acceptable according to the DYK rules. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:09, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

ALT3 is not very well sourced. It cites page 1 of The Twentieth Century: A World History, which doesn't cite any sources for these figures, and a textbook on marketing for the "due to advances in medical science" part, which also doesn't cite a source for this claim. Neither source make it clear what specific measure of life expectancy they're using, but it's probably life expectancy at birth, which was largely a function of infant mortality in premodern societies and therefore the change involved more factors than just medical science (also improvements in public health, contraception, reduction of child poverty and malnourishment, etc). – Joe (talk) 11:24, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

ALT3 is not my favorite either but I think the sources fulfill our requirements even though they themselves do not cite other sources for these claims. The hook says "helped raise" to not imply that there were no other factors. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:09, 12 August 2024 (UTC)