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In just over 300 pages, ''The Human Web'' summarizes the history of humankind, from the first steps our ancestors took on the African savanna some 4 million years ago to the beginning of the 21st century. The authors, father and son McNeill, use as a framework the ever expanding networks of human interaction, networks of exchange of information, of cooperation and competition.

The advantage of describing all of humanity's history and of using these framework is that it allows them to describe long-range tendencies and broader contexts that history books that focus on a shorter period often can't provide. One example of something that I used to think of as isolated events but that the McNeills describe as a continuing, centuries-long phenomenon: The influence of steppe raiders. I used to think that the Huns who contributed to the fall of the Roman empire in the 5th century and the Mongol army that ravaged Europe 8 centuries later were unconnected, but ''The Human Web'' argues that Attila the Hun and Genghis Kahn were just examples of a centuries long influence, and often dominance, of steppe raiders on human development in Europe and Asia. Until the 17th century, these steppe raiders had military strategic advantages over the civilizations of the Eurasia. As a result, especially in Mesopotamia and India, many, if not most, civilized governments of Eurasia descended from steppe conquerors. The strategic advantage of the steppe raiders disappeared when city dwellers started to mass produce firearms.

Because of the focus on the development and growth of human webs of cooperation and competition, humanity itself becomes the agent of change in this book, rather than individual change agents. One consequence is that very few names are mentioned in this book: If you are looking for a ''Who is who'' of human history, this is not the book for you.

In broad strokes, the history of the humanity goes from low diversity to high diversity and then back to less diversity. This process of growth and then decrease of diversity starts with the arrival of Homo Sapiens around 200.000 years ago. Obviously, the web was then very small, and diversity was low. This started to change when the Homo Sapiens started to spread out over the world, some 60.000 years ago. New local webs formed, often with weak links to other webs. Consequently, diversity increased: different geographical, biological and climate-related challenges forced humans to adapt to local circumstances, which resulted in different cultures, languages, technologies. Around 5500 years ago, the first cities, and a little later, the first empires appeared, which resulted in bigger, tighter webs. At one stage, bigger and bigger webs started to absorb smaller webs. The sharing of information, from technologies to best practises to religion in these bigger webs started to reduce diversity. This decrease of diversity intensified over the last couple of centuries, especially after the unification of the 2 main webs, the Old World web of Eurasia and the web of the Americas, when Columbus discovered the New World in 1492. Accelerated globalization, first between 1870 and 1914, later in the second half of the 20th century, resulted in a further decrease of diversity.

One area where this decrease of diversity is manifesting itself clearly is in the disappearance of languages (see also : The extensive and chronic decline of languages seems to have originated in the 15th century, as the age of European expansion dawned. At least 15,000 languages were spoken at the beginning of that century. Since then, some 4,000 to 9,000 tongues have disappeared as a result of wars, genocide, legal bans, and assimilation ... Millennia of human experience are wrapped up in the planet's many languages, and this linguistic diversity may be as essential to our cultural health as biological diversity is to our physical health. No language is an exact map of any other; each is, in a sense, its own world. By allowing so many of these worlds to slip away, we may be forfeiting a lot more than just words.)

Other long-term tendencies that ''The Human Web'' highlights are the impact humans have on their environment and the ever increasing inequality throughout human history.

Human impact on nature started with the first use of fire to control the environment and the killing off of large land animals, and, as the McNeills don't fail to point out, continues today with, among others, the emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. Their book was published in 2003. It is sad to realize not much progress on climate change issues has been made since then.

Also still relevant are McNeills' remarks about rising inequality and it's dangers, described 10 years before Piketty and other contemporary prophets of inequality became household names.

Some of the broad strokes of history in this book can also be found elsewhere. For instance, the McNeills give similar explanations for the dominant position Eurasian cultures had obtained by the 15th century as Jared Diamond did in his ''Guns, Germs and Steel'': The earliest differences arose due to geographical and climatological circumstances and coincidences, and these differences tended to favour Eurasia. In large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, tropical diseases prevented the development of higher civilizations, and in the Americas, all agricultural work had to be done by human labour, simply because there were no big animals that could be domesticated to do the work. In Eurasia, its greater size, large amount of domesticable species, colder winters that killed off many tropical diseases and a more capacious communications web embracing its much larger population resulted in an accelerating rate of invention and change in the Old World. America's later start and weaker communications would have disastrous consequences after 1492 (described in more detail in Charles Mann's great books 1491 and 1493).

''The Human Web'' also dedicates attention to the curious fact that several crucial inventions happened multiple times at different locations in human history. An eloquent example is domestication of plants and animals, which happened 7 times between 11.000 and 4.000 years ago at different places in the world. The McNeills note that ''parallel pressures led to parallel solutions'' (pag 7). These parallel solutions were necessary because the relatively localized webs were not yet sufficiently connected and information such as best practices about agriculture could not easily be transferred (and in the case of the Americas, could not be transferred at all). However, by the late 18th century, a global human web spanned the world. As a result, ''the steam engine did not have to be invented 7 times'' (pag 7).

A great book if you are looking for a broad overview of human history and the long-term and long-range tendencies that have determined the development of human civilization. Although more focused on broad developments than anecdotal details, interesting small facts are not absent from the book. Who knew that camels were crucial for the expansion of Islam in the 7the century? A great starting point for further thinking and reading.