This breakthrough scientific masterwork - and INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - reveals the underlying forces that have shaped human history and will secure our future... The stunning advances that have transformed human experience in recent centuries are no accident of history - they are the result of universal and timeless forces, operating since the dawn of our species. Drawing on a lifetime's scientific investigation, Oded Galor's ground-breaking new vision overturns a host of long-held assumptions to reveal the deeper causes that have shaped the journey of humanity: Education rather than industrialisation Family size and gender equality as much as inventions and technology Geography and diversity rather than wars, disease and famine