Nice, makro-history is interesting. Most of you probably know it, but regarding ancient history Noah Yuval Harari is a master writer, apiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a great book on this topic.
I think it does an excellent job of ancient, pre-historical humans -- the various branches of Homo and how they interrelate. He makes it clear that 'human' and 'Homo Sapien' and not absolute synonyms: Homo Sapiens are one kind of humans, the last surviving, but humans encompass all of the Homo genus that came before too. I liked that distinction and it changed the way I thought about humanity as a whole.
I think it gets significantly weaker once it moves past the pre-historical hunter-gatherer stage. Part of that is that the staggering complexity and variety of human civilisation post-agriculture means he has to condense, but I also feel like his real interest lies in pre-agricultural humans of all kinds.