Simple History

History is a really complicated affair, something that I don't like boiling down into simple bits, for the purpose of catering to people's disinterest. The complexities are where it gets interesting, when a number of factors are taken into events to lead to an outcome, and how that event becomes a factor in another outcome, etc. That being said, simple histories can be fun, when presented in an interesting way, and make you look at things interesting. Something that I came across earlier today is The History of Evil, in 5 minutes and 40 seconds. Very stark, minimalist animation, which looks fantastic, with a neat way of illustrating human history through the concept of evil:

Animation isn't the only way for this to happen, either. There's a book that I'm really trying to find, called A Little History of the World by E. H. Gombrich.

The book was written in 1935, and was first published in 1950. The book follows human history from cavemen to the first world war in a very simple, yet elegant fashion, incorporating just about all the major events. The book was written in a matter of weeks, and was later banned by the Nazies (the author lived in Germany). It's another example of where history can be simplified.