A drought lasts for decades, a disease rips through a city, a civilization collapses. When we finally uncover the ruins, we ask: what happened? Apocalypse begins by traveling deep into the past, to when Homo sapiens went from being one of many to the only human species on the planet—the apocalypse of extinction that in some ways started it all. We’ll watch global sea levels rise with devastating speed, and natural disasters shape the landscape in new ways. You’ve heard of some of the apocalypses that come next: the end of Old Kingdom Egypt, the collapse of the Classic Maya, the Black Death. The good news is: We’ve been here before. History is long, and people have already confronted just about every apocalypse we’re facing today. But these days, archaeologists are getting better at seeing stories of survival, transformation, and even progress hidden within those histories of collapse and destruction. Apocalypse offers a new way of understanding human history, reframing it as a series o