The Conquest of the World: Effects of History’s Interpretation on the Present
Niccolo Caldararo grew up in Castro Valley of California, where his maternal family had a farm. He attended public schools and graduated from the University of California Berkeley and San Francisco State University with a B.A. and M.A. in anthropology before taking his Ph.D. in developmental psychology. After graduation, he was hired at the California Academy of Science as a research assistant to care for its anthropology and archaeology collections. His position at the California Academy of Sciences allowed him to study a wide variety of animals and fossils. Caldararo continued his museum career at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. His museum work was punctuated by reports of laboratory work in various scientific journals. Since 1995, he has taught at SFSU and the City College of San Francisco. Caldararo has written 117 articles, several book chapters, a dozen field ethnographies, and eight books, including The Future of Leisure and Retirement: Pension Schemes, Community Support, and Contemporary Consequences for the Next Generation (Academica Press, 2021).
The Conquest of the World examines the history of human exploitation of the Earth from the rise of social complexity and the harnessing of human and animal energy to control the environment. The innovation of food production placed humans in a very small club of animals, including social insects, who are able to project their needs over time and to appropriate the bodies and efforts of other beings. The main focus is on how humans have gained and organized an increasing amount of the Earth, and how a small population of humans, concentrated in the Middle East and Europe, came to dominate the landmass, oceans, wealth, and energy of all populations over the past 2,000 years. Niccolo Caldararo recounts how this conquest occurred in a short period of time and was facilitated by technology and war, progressive ideology, slavery and religion.
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