This course takes on the broad sweep of human history from an anthropological perspective, highlighting the extraordinary social and cultural diversity of human experience. It delves into phenomena that showcase this diversity, such as hunter-gatherers’ seasonality, ‘play agriculture’ in Amazonia and Aboriginal Australia, egalitarian cities, urban revolutions in Mesoamerica, or stranger-kings across the Pacific. These case studies, analyzed through modern anthropological theory, unsettle popular unilinear narratives about human history while revealing the role of collective agency in shaping its course. In illuminating the past, the course will offer new ways of thinking about humanity’s future.