The song History is Everything by the Bare Naked Ladies part of which is used as the theme song for the successful Warner Brothers' American Sit-Com The Big Bang Theory staring Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar. But as there are a lot of geeky scientific references in the lyrics here is the guide for anyone who doesn't get some or all of the meaning.

For reference while the first few lines run in a chronological order later verses jump backwards and forwards through history. The song exercises poetic licence and isn't a linear representation of history since the Big Bang (note that other theories for the existence of the Universe also exist).

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,

In the beginning¹ all the matter that currently exists in the universe occupied a area of space no more than a couple of millimetres across. Applying the rules of conservation of energy and matter all of this matter confined in such a small place left it in a hot (millions of degrees by any measurement) and extremely dense (extremely heavy for all the size of it) state. The term for what our Universe was at this point is hot dense matter.

Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait...

According to cosmologists, based on the size of the Universe, relative speeds of separation, and deceleration of that speed of separation, the big bang would have had to occur 12-14 billions years ago. This was the point when the critical mass of the hot dense matter reached the point of explosion and all that matter started to hurl out from that central point at incredibly high velocity.

The Earth began to cool,

The wait in the song is but a beat. However Kelvin calculated that the fully molten matter than forms our earth only started the cooling process to form the third planet sized lump of solid matter around our sun 24 million years ago. So therefore while the Bare Naked Ladies took just one beat to express the period of time it actually equated to nearly 13,976,000,000 years.

The allotrophs began to drool,

Allotrophs are organisms that get their energy directly from other organisms. The first allotrophs would have been the predecessors of all vertebrates. These would have been the stepping off point from basic organisms such as plant live which lived off various minerals to organisms that gained second hand nutrients from other organisms.

There is evidence that arthopods fed of the first plants within 20 million years of their appearance. The first organism to feed on another organism would have appeared within the Middle-Late Mississippian age about 330 million years ago.

Neanderthals developed tools,

Neaderthal traits first started to appeared about 600,000–350,000 years ago. But the full characteristics only emerged about 130,000 years ago but disappeared in Asia about 50,000 and Europe 30,000 years ago.

Their first stone tools were discovered in 1829 in Engis, Belgium and then again in 1848 at Forbes' Quarry Gibralta. Both these discoveries were before the excavation in 1858 at the Neander Valley in Erkrath near Düsseldorf, Germany from which the species of Human took its name.

We built a wall (we built the pyramids),

The first walls built by us (mankind) would have been wattle and daub walls in the first permanent man-made structures. These were basically may of straw and earth. The straw adding strength to the mud that then was allowed to dry. It was the start of settlement in arable lands when farming starting to take over.

However, there are two more famous walls which mankind has build that are more worthy of this song.

In the 7th Century B.C. the Great Wall of China was first built to keep out the Mongol hoardes when China was still a collection of divergent tribal peoples. From the 6th Century B.C. until the 16th Century A.D. it was maitained as a defensive tool in the Chinese armoury. However, as it was a discontinuous series of defences the Mongols were at various able able to go around the wall at the breaches. The most famous building of the was was from 220-200 B.C. by the first Emperor of an United China Qin Shi Huang. However, much of what is seen total was build during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The myth is that it is the only manmade object to be visible in space however at it's widest it is only 10 metres (30 feet) wide which would make it unrecognisable from orbit. However, the inability to see it from space deosn't make the 3,460 km (2,145 mile) long structure in such a mountainous region any less impressive a feat of engineering.

The other famous wall built by man began being constructed on 13 August 1961 until it was breached and torn down in a popular regime change on 9 November 1989. It was constructed by the German Democratic Republic² to surround the Federal German Republic's portion of Berlin (West Berlin). Like the Great Wall of China it was a barrier but proved more one to keep its own people in that the others out over time.

The pyramids in Egypt are of course the only surviving example of the seven wonders of the ancient world. There are 118 of them known in Egypt built from 2670 BCE to 664 BCE. The most famous are the six Pyramids which are part of the Giza necropolis on the outskirts of Cairo, due to their ease of access from the capital.

But the Egyptians were not alone in adopting the pyramid-like structure. The Mesopotamians in what is now Greece were the first to used dried bricks in a similar structure, a ziggurat. Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, Akkadians and Assyrians also build ziggurats before the first pyramids in Egypt.

Elsewhere the Nubians (in Sudan), the Igbo (in Nigeria), in Tenerife, Spain, China, Mexico, Peru, India and Indonesia have all used pyramid or ziggurat type structures. So it seems common for man to have build pyramids.

Math³, science, history, unravelling the mysteries,

That all started with the big bang!

The first three things that are related to that can be said to have start with the Big Bang can be defined thus:

• Mathematics - a science (or group of related sciences) dealing with the logic of quantity and shape and arrangement
• Science - The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena
• History - A usually chronological record of events, as of the life or development of a people or institution, often including an explanation of or commentary on those events

"Since the dawn of man" is really not that long,

The Dawn of Man is actually a very geeky in joke to sci-fi fans who are invariably drawn to The Big Bang Theory TV show. The Dawn of Man is the opening time stamp that appears on the screen at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's iconic (and wordless) opening sequence to 2001: A Space Odessey.

As for the genus Homo from which man Homo Sapien Sapien has descended it it believed to have evolved from Australopithecines into Homo Hablis the first of the group of mammals that we know have that we could consider the dawn of man. It my be even later if we consider that Homo Sapiens have only been around about 250,000 years. As this is the only surviving Homo genus (ie us) this may well be considered to be the true dawn of man. Either way Homo Hablis appeared 13,997,600,000 years after the Big Bang and Homo Sapiens 13,999,750,000.

As every galaxy was formed in less time than it takes to sing this song.

Well the length of the time that the Bare Naked Ladies take to sing this song is 1 minute and 45 seconds. In that time an estimated 100 billion galaxies with between 10 million (10,000,000) and one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) stars in each would have been created, spirally out from the focal point of the big bang.

A fraction of a second and the elements were made.

According to chemistry there are 117 elements. Of these 94 which occur naturally on earth and 80 of which have stable isotopes. Of course that is only earth based science and the bits of space that have come into out awareness. We have yet to discover an element in a space bound component that is different from what we know from our own existence, therefore it has been assumed that we are aware of what the common building blocks are. There are of course new elements (mainly radioactive ones) being created, many of these new ones however are not long lasting or stable.

The bipeds stood up straight,

A biped is a creature whose nature of locomotion is by its two rear legs. The first known biped is bolosaurid Eudibamus, fossils of which have been dated to 290 million. It had strong, long rear limbs and shorter weaker fore limbs the classic indication of bipedilism. However, the Eudibamus was extinct before the Dinosaurs roamed the face of the earth, belonging to the Permian period from approximately 299-251 million years ago.

The dinosaurs all met their fate,

The dinosaurs existed between the late Trassic Period to the end of the Cretaceous Period approximately 230-65 million years ago. Following on the the first bipeds many of the 1000 plus species were bipedal. As for their fate there are several theories as to why suddenly 65 million years ago the dinosaurs plus many other species suddenly became extinct.

Impact Event - The most popular theory for the end of the dinosaurs is a cataclysmic asteroid collision. The impact of this crater is believe to be at the point of the Chicxulub crater in the vicinity of he Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. This crater is about 180 km across and suggests that a 5-15 km object hit the earth here.

While the fossil record cannot determine how quickly this extinction came about if it did happen from the impact it would probably have been rather swift on account of two contributory factors. An initial rapid increase in heat due to the impact itself, and then a rapid cooling as the result of the debris throw up from the impact deflecting radiation heat from the sun.

They tried to leap but they were late

There are thought to have been two great evolutionary leaps in history. Both are considered to have happened when there was an abundance of oxygen on the earth and life forms increased to a maximum size about a million times bigger than what had gone before.

The first leap happened about 1.6 billion years ago. From bacteria being the largest creature on the face of earth to a eukaryotes. They were probably still single cell organism but were different having an inner structure of innards and oyher cellular structures that were dedicated to specific structures in the respiratory system.

The second leap happened only 600 million years ago when again the ramp up was to a million times the size. This was the leap to multicellular creatures.

There was no leap at the time of the dinosaurs, also they didn't leap out of the way of the cataclysmic event. Nor did Dr. Sam Beckett perform a Quantum Leap to come and save them.

And they all died (they froze their asses off)

The oceans and pangea

See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya

Set in motion by the same big bang!

It all started with the big BANG!

It's expanding ever outward but one day

It will cause the stars to go the other way,

Collapsing ever inward, we won't be here, it wont be hurt

Our best and brightest figure that it'll make an even bigger bang!

Australopithecus would really have been sick of us

Debating out while here they're catching deer (we're catching viruses)

Religion or astronomy, Encarta, Deuteronomy

It all started with the big bang!

Music and mythology, Einstein and astrology

It all started with the big bang!

It all started with the big BANG!