The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Origin myths the world over have a basic psychological effect: regardless of their scientific validity, they have the sly power of justifying existing states of affairs, while simultaneously contouring a perception of what the world might look like in the future. Modern capitalist society has built itself upon two variants of one such myth. As one story goes, life as primitive hunter-gatherers was ‘nasty, brutish and short’ until the invention of the state allowed us to flourish. The other story says that in their childlike state of nature, humans were happy and free, and that it was only with the advent of civilisation that ‘they all ran headlong to their chains’. These are two variants of the same myth because they both posit an unilinear historical trajectory, one that begins from simple egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands and ends with increasing social complexity and hierarchy. They also nurture a similar fatalistic perspective on the future: whether we go with Hobbes (the first) or Rousseau (the second), we are left with the idea that the most we can do to change our current predicament is, at best, a bit of modest political tinkering. Hierarchy and inequality are the inevitable price to pay for having truly come of age. Both versions of the myth picture the human past as a primordial soup of small bands of hunter-gatherers, lacking in vision and critical thought, and where nothing much happened until we embarked on the process that, with the advent of agriculture and the birth of cities, culminated in the modern Enlightenment.What makes Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything an instant classic is its comprehensive scientific demolition of this myth – what they call ‘the Myth of the Stupid Savage’. Not a shred of archaeological evidence tells us that the picture of the human past is remotely close to what the foundational myth suggests. Instead, what the available evidence shows is that the trajectory of human history has been a good deal more diverse and exciting and less boring than we tend to assume because, in an important sense, it has never been a trajectory. We never permanently lived in tiny hunter-gatherer bands. We also were never permanently egalitarian. If there is a defining trait of our prehistorical condition it is its bewildering capacity of shifting, almost constantly, across a diverse array of social systems of all kinds of political, economic, and religious nature. Graeber and Wengrow’s suggestion is that the only way to explain this kaleidoscopic variety of social forms is to assume that our ancestors were not actually that stupid, but were instead self-conscious political actors, capable of fashioning their own social arrangements depending on circumstances. More often than not, people would choose to switch seasonally between socio-political identities as to avoid the perils of lasting authoritarian power. And so, rather than asking ‘Why did inequality arise?’ the most interesting question to pose about human history becomes ‘Why did we get stuck with it?’ This is only one of many kindred claims advanced in this astounding new book.The book draws much of its value from its eclectic approach. David Wengrow is a professor of comparative archaeology at UCL. He is well-known for his work on early cultural and political transformations in Africa and Eurasia. David Graeber, who died suddenly in September 2020, was a professor of anthropology at LSE, widely regarded as the most brilliant of his generation. Together, they explore a suite of recent archaeological findings that prove anomalous to the standard narrative (for instance, the existence of ancient large-scale egalitarian cities), but that, until now, had only been privy to a handful of experts who never quite unravelled the implications. Archaeological discoveries are therein appraised from anthropological eyes. The result is a sweeping tour into the past that hops from continent to continent and from one social sphere to another to tell stories that, depending on the reader’s familiarity with the archaeological record, might come as revelations.We learn, for instance, that the uniformity in material culture across Eurasia in the Upper Palaeolithic meant that people lived in a large-scale imagined community spanning continents, putting to rest the idea that ‘primitives’ only spent their time in isolated bands. Counter-intuitively, the scale of single societies decreased over the course of human history as populations grew larger. From monumental sites such as Göbekli Tepe in Turkey or Hopewell in Ohio, we learn that people would seasonally come together from distant lands in what appear to have been large centres of cultural interactions for recreation and the exchange of knowledge. Journeying great distances while expecting to be welcomed into an extended community was a typical feature of our ancestors’ lives.The book then pivots to agriculture. The received view has it that the birth of agriculture meant the more or less automatic emergence of stratified societies. Yet, this assumption runs into problems once we consider a phenomenon like ‘play farming’ across Amazonia, where acephalous societies like the Nambikwara, though familiar with techniques of plant domestication, consciously decided not to make agriculture the basis for their economy and to opt for a more relaxed approach that switched flexibly between foraging and cultivation. (Agriculture generally emerged in the absence of easier alternatives.) Further, we learn that some of the first agricultural societies of the Middle East formed themselves as egalitarian and peaceful responses to the predatory foragers of the surrounding hills. It was mostly women, here, that propelled the growth of agricultural science. We also learn that complex works of irrigation in some such places were executed communally without chiefs, and even where structures of hierarchy existed, these works were accomplished despite authority, not because of it. The gradual spread of agriculture across the globe was far less unilinear than anyone had previously guessed.In what’s perhaps the best chapter of the book, the authors move on to examine cities. Nowadays, large-scale egalitarian cities, the mere idea of it, smacks of utopianism; but Graeber and Wengrow argue that it shouldn’t when we start thinking of cities as the coalescence, in a single physical space, of already existing extended imagined communities with their own egalitarian ethos and norms – first happening seasonally, then more stationarily, as conscious experiments in urban form. Sites like Çatalhöyük in southern Anatolia and many others offer incontrovertible evidence of the past existence of such cities, where no sign of authoritarian rule can be found. (Generally, when these are found, they stand out in the form of palaces, temples, fortification, etc.) Other ancient cities like Cahokia in Mississippi or Shimao in China exhibit evidence of a temporal succession of different political orders, sometimes moving from authoritarian to egalitarian, which leaves the possibility of urban revolutions as a likely explanation for the change.The final chapters focus on the ‘state’. Or better, on how misleading it is to define societies like the Inka or the Aztecs as ‘incipient states’ because these were far more diverse than what this straitjacket term would make us think. From the Olmec and the Chavin societies in Mesoamerica to the Shilluk of South Sudan, The Dawn of Everything offers a taste of the variety of authoritarian structures throughout history. By the end of the book, we encounter the archaeological gem that is Minoan Crete – a ‘beautiful irritant for archaeology’ – where all evidence points to the existence of an ancient system of female political rule, most likely a theocracy run by a college of priestesses.There is much more. The leitmotif running through the chapters is that if we want to make sense of all these phenomena, we are obliged to put human collective intentionality back into the picture of human history, as a genuine explanatory variable. To assume, that is, that our ancestors were imaginative beings who were eminently capable of self-consciously creating their social arrangements. The authors by no means discount the importance of ecological determinants. Rather, they see their effort as moving the dial to a more sensible position within the agency–determinism continuum, which usually only takes one extreme. The key upshot is that this newfound view of our past equips us with an expanded sense of possibilities as to what we might do with ourselves in the future. Fatalistic sentiments about human nature melt away upon turning the pages.Staying true to Ostrom’s law – ‘whatever works in practice must work in theory’ – Graeber and Wengrow set out a new framework for interpreting the social reality brought to light by empirical findings. Firstly, they urge us to abandon terms like ‘simple’ or ‘complex’ societies, let alone the ‘origin of the state’ or ‘origin of social complexity’. These terms already presuppose the kind of teleological thinking challenged in the book. The same goes for ‘modes of production’: whether a society relies on farming or fishing is a poor criterion for classification because it tells us almost nothing about its social dynamics. Secondly, they lay out some new descriptive categories of their own. They show, for instance, that social domination can be broken down into three elements – control of violence, control of knowledge, and charismatic power – and that permutations of these elements yield consistent patterns throughout history. While the modern nation state embodies all three, most hierarchical societies of the past had only one or two, and this allowed for the people who lived under them degrees of freedom that are barely imaginable for us today.Graeber and Wengrow reflect at length on this last point. More than a work on the history of inequality, The Dawn of Everything is a treatise on human freedom. In parsing the anthropological record, they identify three types of freedom – freedom to abandon one’s community (knowing one will be welcomed in faraway lands), freedom to reshuffle the political system (often seasonally), and freedom to disobey authorities without consequences – that appear to have been simply assumed by our ancestors but are now largely lost (obviously, their conclusion is a far cry from Rousseau’s: there is nothing inevitable about this loss!). This analysis flips the question one should really be asking about the historical development of hierarchy: “The real puzzle is not when chiefs first appeared”, they suggest, “but rather when it was no longer possible to simply laugh them out of court.”So much of what makes this book fascinating is the alien nature of what we encounter within, at least to contemporary eyes. Potlaches, headhunting and skull portraits, stranger kings, revolutions, shamanic art, vision quests… The Dawn of Everything reads like a work of sci-fi, except that what turns out to be fictional is our received view of human history. The writing is often funny, sometimes hilarious. At the same time, because hardly a paragraph goes by without bequeathing insight, this is a book that needs to be patiently taken in. It sits in a different class to all the other volumes on world history we are accustomed to reading.The Dawn of Everything intellectually dwarfs the likes of Pinker, Diamond, or Fukuyama (and Harari too). Whenever non-specialists try their hands at human history, they inevitably end up reproducing the same old myths we have grown up with. Consider Steven Pinker: for all his talk about scientific progress, his books might as well have been written at the times of Hobbes, in the 17th century, when none of the evidence unearthed recently was available. Graeber and Wengrow casually expose these popular authors’ startling incompetence at handling the anthropological record. Only a solid command of the latter – namely, of the full documented range of human possibilities – affords a credible interpretative lens over the distant past. For it supplies the researcher with a refined sense of the rhythms of human history.One of the experiences of delving into this book, at least in my case, was a gradual recognition of being in the presence of an intellectual oddity, something difficult to situate within the current landscape of social theory. By embracing once again the ‘grand narrative’, the book makes a clean break with post-structuralist and post-humanist trends widespread in contemporary academia. We know that Graeber, at least, liked to think himself as a ‘pre-humanist’, actively expecting to see humanity realise its full potential. One can certainly see this work as a contribution in that direction. One can also see The Dawn of Everything as belonging to the tradition of the Enlightenment (except that one of the other major claims in the book is that Enlightenment thought developed largely in response to indigenous intellectuals’ critiques of European society of the time). As for how it squares with current archaeological and anthropological theory, the book is of such a real sweep that I don’t think it admits easy comparisons.If comparisons must be made, they should be made with works of similar calibre in other fields, most credibly, I venture, with the works of Galileo or Darwin. Graeber and Wengrow do to human history what the first two did to astronomy and biology respectively. The book produces a similar decentring effect: in dethroning our self-appointed position at the pinnacle of social evolution, it deals a blow to the teleological thinking that so insidiously shape our understanding of history. With the exception that while works such as Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems and On the Origin of Species hinted at the relative insignificance of humans in the face of the cosmos, The Dawn of Everything explores all the possibilities we have to act within it. And if Galileo and Darwin stirred turmoil of their own, this will do even more so for precisely this reason. Ultimately, a society that accepts the story presented here as its official origin story – a story that is taught in its schools, that seeps into its public consciousness – will have to be radically different than the society we are currently living in.

I borrowed a copy from a friend, read it and was so impressed that I bought one for myself, and have bought others to give to friends. This book is very well written, clear and interesting, and as a history book it is as important as Guns, Germs and Steel, IMHO. (The authors won't thank me for the comparison; they disagree with Jared Diamond on several points.)If you haven't read it, you've got a treat in store.

An immense work, both in scope and breadth of thinking. Yet, it is readable, when taken in not too large doses. It helps that the authors adopted an attractive 18th century chapter heading style, which gives a clear agenda for each (short) chapter, for example: ‘How the Myth that Foragers Live in a State of Infantile Simplicity is Kept Alive Today (or, Informal Fallacies)’.The authors draw on a vast range of anthropological and historical research, aiming radically to re-write our negative views of ancient hunter-gatherer life: for instance, compared with hunter-gathering, agriculture brought dullness; the superseded hunter-gatherers were more innovative and extremely skilled; sedentary agriculture did not just suddenly take over, but existed alongside and as part of hunter-gatherer societies for thousands of years; the strict social hierarchies which ancient history focuses on (eg the Roman Empire, the Pharaonic Egyptians, the Han Chinese Empires, the Inca Empire, etc) were the exceptions, not the rule; thus, humankind might not have adopted such oppressive hierarchies; technology has relatively little motivating impact on the direction of social change; sacrifice of freedom for the sake of 'something always out of reach' is the shadow lurking behind our ‘advanced’ urban lives; women have suffered unduly from city-based civilisations; and so on. The authors argue that the problem is that, in looking for the deep past, historians have ‘scoured the ancient world for embryonic versions of our modern nation states’ and thus have ignored other, very different kinds of power and social organisation.The exciting implication is that humanity’s future does not necessarily have to be as controlled and restrictive as the world in which we live. The truth at the philosophic heart of this work is that human beings are inherently social, nurturing and care-giving – more than being domineering predators, though both aspects co-exist.That doughty Enlightenment American, Benjamin Franklin, observed in a letter to a friend that ‘When an Indian child has been brought up among us… yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them there is no persuading him ever to return… [and] when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoner by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness… yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first opportunity of escaping into the Woods, from which there is no reclaiming them.’This says it all.There are many other themes, and diverse peregrinations down intellectual tracks. For example, we learn much about the pre-Columban societies of California, both slave-owning and non.The authors, intent on staking radical claims, make some poorly evidenced and unconvincing claims about aspects of human society and its evolution, and do little to explain why resistance to homogenising oppressive regimes has been so weak, for thousands of years. Also, the narrative can ramble, with many a cul de sac overly explored. However, in general, this is a thoroughly stimulating and rewarding smorgasbord of learning and fresh thinking.

Disfruté mucho la lectura, me he planteado varias preguntas y encontré respuestas posibles para explicar lo que he visto, teorizado y experimentado. Obtuve una perspectiva nueva sobre discusiones antiguas y sobre todo que pude conectar asoectos de la lectura con otros autores y temas.

"The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" by David Graeber and David Wengrow is an intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking masterpiece that challenges traditional narratives of human history. In this captivating book, the authors embark on a bold quest to reshape our understanding of human societies and their evolution.Graeber and Wengrow weave together an impressive tapestry of ideas, drawing upon archaeology, anthropology, and social sciences, to present a fresh perspective on the origins of human civilization. They steer away from the conventional linear progression of history and delve into the diverse, intricate webs of cultures that emerged across the world. The book eloquently dismantles notions of hierarchical development, exposing the biases that have long shaped historical accounts.One of the most captivating aspects of "The Dawn of Everything" is its skillful blend of scholarly rigor and accessible language. The authors adeptly convey complex concepts without compromising on academic depth, making the book suitable for both scholars and curious readers with no prior background in anthropology.The book skillfully challenges long-held assumptions about human nature and collective organization. The authors emphasize that the diversity of past human societies defies easy categorization, and they invite readers to embrace a more inclusive and nuanced perspective on human existence. This refreshing approach to history prompts us to reevaluate our contemporary societies and the structures that underpin them.Throughout the narrative, the authors critically examine the role of power and hierarchy in shaping human societies. They invite readers to contemplate the impact of ideology and the ways in which historical accounts have been shaped by prevailing ideologies. By shedding light on the interplay between power and knowledge, "The Dawn of Everything" encourages us to question the dominant narratives of today.Furthermore, Graeber and Wengrow skillfully dismantle the Eurocentric view of history, recognizing the contributions of non-Western cultures and civilizations that have often been marginalized in traditional accounts. This inclusive approach to history challenges readers to confront biases and embrace a more cosmopolitan outlook.While "The Dawn of Everything" presents a captivating reimagining of human history, it does not shy away from acknowledging the complexity of the topics it explores. At times, readers may find themselves grappling with intricate concepts and historical references. Nevertheless, the authors' commitment to clarity and their engaging storytelling ensure that readers are guided through these challenging territories.In conclusion, "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" is a monumental work that challenges our preconceptions about human history. Graeber and Wengrow eloquently advocate for a more inclusive, nuanced, and thoughtful understanding of our collective past. This book is a must-read for anyone eager to explore the rich tapestry of human civilization and gain a deeper appreciation for the complexities that have shaped our species. It is a compelling reminder that history is not a static entity but an ever-evolving narrative that deserves continuous reflection and revision.

Human history is much more surprising and broader in scope and much more relaxed than I had realized and studied over the last 65 years. Humanity is a creative power that unravels its story through building relationships as well as shelters, buildings and tombs. One can only look forward to further building as we find ways to grow in freedom, individually and collectively.I will read this book again....and soon.

This book will challenge the common assumptions about the course of civilization. Starting from the Neolithic era to the enlightenment era. Different places with different societies present different societal models. From democratic city states to the known kingdoms. From the so called agricultural revolution to other misconceptions of historians.

Kitabı araştırarak aldım. İlk bir kaç bölümü okudum, anlatıldığı gibi çok faydalı ve geliştirici görünüyor fakat puntosu çok küçük dolayısıyla bu durum okunmasını çok zorlaştırıyor. Daha büyük puntolu bulabilirseniz onu alın.