The Dawn of Everything
The renowned activist and public intellectual David Graeber teams up with the professor of comparative archaeology David Wengrow to deliver a trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time?
Stats for nerds
111recommend
270mentions
167people
2020–2026years
64% recommend30% neutral6% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Yes! In the book The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It covers a lot of other things, especially pre-history, but the part about native American influence on the enlightenment they have a lot of sources for. At least I was convinced.
Be aware that the book is a bit academically written and that they want to cover every base in each sentence instead of writing clearly to the point. So sometimes it is extremely interesting and sometimes frustrating and boring.
- You would like the book "Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber.
It does a lot to talk about modern anthropological studies that corrected a lot of misconceptions about early humans. Really fascinating book, basically postulates that humans have always been imaginative social creatures that were routinely well travelled; and the idea that early humans weren't also politically or culturally advance is wrong. In fact some societies were purposely designed to ensure things like hierarchy wouldn't exist for example; these societies persisted for thousands of years.
Really interesting book.
- You would absolutely love the book Dawn of Everything.
Humans are way more creative at social cohesion when you remove oligarchs and authoritarians.
- I highly recommend the book Dawn of Everything by David Wengrow and David Graeber. Incredibly well researched looking at the latest scientific findings from anthropology and archeology.
- His book, and Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything as well as some miscellaneous books on Mesopotamia. The Dawn of Everything does a great job challenging some popular ideas around state formation as well.
- Great works on this subject, to my mind refuting your nebulous thesis, include Debt by Graeber, Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow, and Mutual Aid by Kropotkin.
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