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Book of the Year
AMAZING …Children will love it – and adults too!’Jacqueline Wilson
This spectacular image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope shows a part of the Carina Nebula where new stars are born.
13.6 billion years ago
The Milky Way forms.
Timeline
4.6 billion years ago
The solar system forms.
13.8 billion years ago
The Big Bang
4.5 billion years ago Earth and Theia collide, forming the Moon.
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13.8 billion–450 million years ago
The beginning of the universe, life and everything
3.2 billion years ago
Plate tectonics begin shuffling continents around the planet.
4 billion years ago
Early microscopic life appears in the seas.
2.5 billion years ago
Cyanobacteria are making oxygen, changing the Earth’s atmosphere.
540 million years ago
The Cambrian Explosion
creature with the jaws and flattened teeth of meat-eating dinosaurs. It had clawed fingers, and its legs showed it must have been a fast runner. The puzzle of where birds came from had at last been solved. Feathers first appeared on some dinosaurs. They probably helped keep their bodies warm. Then later, some feathers evolved into the kind that helps birds fly. Many scientists think that all theropods (smart, fast dinosaurs including Velociraptor and T. rex) had feathers, especially when they were young. So what’s the difference between birds and dinosaurs? Well, not much.
Actually dinosaurs are alive and well in the world we live in today. But don’t panic. Only the kind with the sort of wings that can allow flight are still alive. It’s just that we call them birds!
While dinosaurs ruled the land, two other types of animals dominated the ocean and skies. Giant sharks, underwater crocodile ancestors and nightmarish long-necked marine reptiles prowled the seas gobbling up squid and fish. And in the skies, flying reptiles called pterosaurs swooped and glided, including giants Quetzalcoatlus and Hatzegopteryx, with wingpans over 12 metres. That’s as wide as a small aeroplane!
Sinornithosaurus millenii (above) was a bird-like dinosaur with feathers on the back of its head, body and arms that lived in what is now China. If you look closely at the image, you can see the fossilised feathers. Hatzegopteryx thambema (right) is known from just two fossils found in Romania. Based on their size, scientists think this creature might even have been bigger than Quetzalcoatlus.
252 million–5 million years ago
hold a hot metal rod against the shell or bone until it cracked. You would interpret the length and direction of the cracks to reveal the gods’ answers to questions. Sometimes you would write down your interpretation on the same bit of shell or bone.
Archaeologists have found more than 200,000 pieces of turtle shell and ox bone. About a quarter have questions and answers written on them. They are called oracle bones. Experts have found it easy to read some of these inscriptions because they match up pretty closely to modern Chinese writing.
One of the Shang kings, Wu Ding, asked the oracle bones about all parts of his life. He wanted to know the weather, whether he would win upcoming battles, whether he should give certain commands and even the cause of his toothaches.
We’ve seen how important cotton was to Norte Chico and how much silk mattered to the culture of China. The Olmec in what is now Mexico invented a material that was central to their way of life, too. The name Olmec means ‘rubber people’, and they got this name because they figured out how to make rubber by mixing rubber tree sap (called latex) with sap from morning glory vines.
If you mix equal parts of those liquids, you get a very flexible substance. Shape it fast before it dries, and you have a great bouncy ball. Spread it on cloth, and you get a waterproof poncho. You can also mix 75% latex and 25% morning glory sap and get a very long-lasting, sturdy material, a little like plastic, that can be shaped into waterproof containers.
The Olmec are famous for more than rubber. Like the Egyptians and Sumerians, they were great at counting and maths. They were possibly the first people in the Americas, and one of the first in the world, to use a symbol for zero as a place holder, to show a number’s value. They also sculpted what we now call colossal heads. These were huge portraits carved into boulders. Some were taller than a basketball player and
Rubber is extracted from the rubber tree by using a tool to scrape off a section of bark. Sap then drips out and is collected in a bucket, often tied to the tree.
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Author: Christopher Lloyd
Illustrator: Andy Forshaw
Ages: 10+ years
Price: £22.00
Format: Hardback Extent: 384 pages
Trim size: 248 x 184 mm
Pub date: 3rd August 2023
ISBN: 978-1-8046607-5-1
Selling points
• This fun-to-read romp through all time and around the world with the incredible storyteller Christopher Lloyd is newly revised and updated!
• With 32 additional pages
• 2018 edition sold 40K copies
• About 75 new photos and illustrations
• Refreshed design
• Revised and updated edition revisions include increased coverage of South America, Africa and Australia, a shift from a European perspective to a global one, a full update to take into account new discoveries, and the addition of events that have taken place since the first edition was published.
The most remarkable true stories of all time and around the world brought vividly to life – from the Big Bang right up to the present day. Embark on a journey across millennia and around the world, from the latest understanding of the origins of the universe, to the birth of the Earth, the age of dinosaurs, ancient civilisations, wars, technology, global struggles for freedom and equality, pandemics – and much more. Eye-catching illustrations and photographs throughout join with the engaging narrative to bring the world’s most remarkable true stories to life. This new edition is revised for fuller global coverage and updated with the latest research, as well as with new events.
Author
Christopher Lloyd began his career as a journalist with the Sunday Times newspaper and now divides his time between writing books and delivering lectures and workshops to schools, literary festivals and a wide range of other venues around the world. He lives in Tonbridge, Kent, with his wife and two adorable terriers.
Illustrator
Andy Forshaw graduated in graphic design and illustration from London’s Central Saint Martins college. Since 2010, Andy has created more than 5,000 illustrations for children’s books. When not illustrating, Andy can be found exploring the countryside on his bike. He lives in London.
ISBN 978-1-80466-075-1
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