Posted: December 5th, 2016

Why? What accounts for the transformation of human life that occurred in the century or so before 1945?

For thousands of years, most people in the world were ruled by hereditary kings, aristocrats, chiefs, and emperors. They mostly made their living through farming and rarely traveled very far from their rural villages. Culture and technology changed slowly, if at all. But by 1945, very few people lived that way. Why? What accounts for the transformation of human life that occurred in the century or so before 1945?