The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
David Graeber
A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and 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. more
692 pages, Hardcover
First published Farrar, Straus and Giroux
4.2
Rating
17842
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2729
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David Graeber
85 books 4110 followers
David Rolfe Graeber was an American anthropologist and anarchist.On June 15, 2007, Graeber accepted the offer of a lectureship in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he held the title of Reader in Social Anthropology.
Prior to that position, he was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his term there ended in June 2007.
Graeber had a history of social and political activism, including his role in protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City (2002) and membership in the labor union Industrial Workers of the World. He was an core participant in the Occupy Movement.
He passed away in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Graeber’s final and most ambitious (collaborative) gift to us is only the beginning…Preamble:. The beginning of a storm of debates. Indeed, this is the 3rd time I've had to update this review due to comradely feedback as I shift my reading context: 1) A momentary rupture of the Status quo: --I started with a celebratory review to honour Graeber's last major project and to review it from a mainstream (i. e. not politically radical/academically critical) readership context given its NYT best-seller reach. more
Rekindling Historical ImaginationDavid Graeber and David Wengrow are super-heroes in the scholarship of human development, the equivalent, perhaps, of a Howard Zinn for world history. In The Dawn of Everything they expose the culturally biased pseudo-histories of the likes of Fukuyama, Diamond, and Pinker, not to mention the influential fictions of Hobbes and Rousseau on which they are based. These and many others are little more than literate rumour-mongers, closet racists, and tellers of tedious time-worn tales lacking evidence or logic. That David Graeber died almost immediately upon completion of this original and provocative work is a tragedy. There are so many more idols that need toppling; so many better historical questions to ask. more
This is something of a remarkable book. I’d learnt one of the authors had died, and having read two other of his books, and thought they were two of the best books I’ve read in quite a long time, I was very disappointed there would be no more. This couldn’t really have been too much ‘more’. It is stunningly good and has changed my understanding of early human societies. Marx and Engels begin the Manifesto by saying, ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle’. more
David Wengrow and the late David Graeber have chosen to venture into the pitched battlefield that is the telling and retelling of the origins of human civilization. Their tome (700+ pages or 24+ hours of audio) is ostensibly provocative though discursive and predicated on a questionable methodology (a more expansive, inclusive, and wide-eyed reading of primary sources on or from primitive human groups and their related artifacts) with the grandiose title The Dawn of Everything. They position their work as a more solemn, serious, and nuanced alternative to popular works by public intellectuals like Steven Pinker, Yuval Noah Harari, and Jared Diamond. The Davids assert these works are simplistic myth-making efforts that erroneously reify a Rosseauan or Hobbesian perspective on human nature (and thus are fatalistic about social organization) married to a teleological view of human progress. Although never explicitly acknowledged in the work, the authors have anarchic political sympathies and thus share the perspective that human nature is quite a bit more flexible and good natured (in the right conditions) than a mainstream read of the salient evidence from their discipline (anthropology) and related field like evolutionarily-oriented disciplines and sociology broadly would be. more
If you plan on reading this book, buckle up kids. Because the authors here are going to completely overturn the very premise of all your history lessons. It was quite a blow to me frankly, given that most feminist studies begin with associations between the origins of private property, patriarchy and monogamy. And this book clearly shows that such an association is extremely reductive, because the notion of private property is as old as that of sacredness. The authors seem to be of the opinion that the obsession with property rights as the basis of society is a peculiarly western phenomenon. more
Social theory is largely a game of make-believe in which we pretend, just for the sake of argument, that there’s just one thing going on… This is a difficult book to review. Not only is it long and extremely ambitious, it is also a beguiling mixture of strengths and weaknesses that are difficult to untangle. To begin with, this book is not, as its title promises, a history of humanity; and considering that the book only examines the past 10,000 years, it is also not about the dawn of humanity, much less everything. Really, this book has a far more focused purpose: to dismantle the standard narrative of how humans went from hunter-gatherers to urban-dwelling agriculturalists. The standard narrative—as found in many popular books, from Steven Pinker to Jared Diamond to Yuval Noah Harari—goes something like this: In the beginning, humans were all hunter-gatherers, living in small groups, taking only what they needed from their environments. more
Okay—first I’ll try to say something nice about this book. I truly enjoyed reading about Kandiaronk. And about the evidence that North American Indian ideas about individual liberty and autonomy spread to and deeply affected settlers in the New World--perhaps changing the entire course of world history. But I pretty well hated the entire book. Because the authors are dressing up fanciful ideas as plausible, evidence-backed ideas. more
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. more
Rating 2. 5 stars. I'm still not quite sure what to think about this book. The first two hundred pages annoyed me immensely because of the ultra-polemical and even downright arrogant tone. Graeber and Wengrow target quite famous predecessors like Jared Diamond, Yuval Harari, and Steven Pinker and they boldly claim to offer a completely new look at world history. more
Well, that was large. Basically a new take on how our distant ancestors lived and organised themselves, and at the assumptions we make. In particular, the vague idea that human history has been an inevitable progression towards our modern pinnacle of sophistication, hunter gatherer > village > absolute rule > organised state > democracy, or something like that. The book spends a lot of time, like a lot, debunking other authors (wow do they not like Jared Diamond) and Rousseau in particular for his idea of the noble savage and the inevitability of land ownership concepts leading to where we are, which may be more compelling for those who have read Rousseau. It's got a lot of really interesting stuff when it gets going, about the vastly different ways societies have organised themselves (it's not always just a king, and those kings have not always had the power you might think), and the nature of freedom and the state in particular. more
For 350 years, it has been common knowledge that Man went from bands of hunter-gatherers, to pastoralists, to farming, to industry. In parallel, Man lived in families, in tribes, in villages and then in cities, as technology improved. Technology, the third parallel, took us from the stone age through the bronze age and the iron age to the industrial revolution. All neat, tidy and clearly separable. David Graeber and David Wengrow claim there is no evidence for this. more
The thematic through line is how did agriculture lead homo sapiens away from egalitarian social arrangements to inequitable kingdoms or empires and then to nation states — or did it. The authors cite the rich complexity of recent research which the archaeological community as a whole has — paradoxically — yet to embrace. There are hundreds of a-ha moments in this book. Perhaps the biggest one for me was a result of something called the "indigenous critique. " That is, the valuation of European society, institutions, and mores by well-known indigenous Americans, the foremost example being Kandiaronk of the Wendats. more
Fuck. First of all, this was another Mark Fisher moment for me aka I only found out about one of the authors, David Graeber, just after he died last year and upon stumbling his latest/final book. Then also realizing that I must have come across him - organizer and intellectual leader of the activist left on both sides of the Atlantic, credited, among other things, with helping launch the Occupy movement - a hundred times in my bubble but somehow didn't. Anyhow. Fuck 2. more
Five stars for information…two stars for readability. This book lays out some fascinating new findings on the origins of humanity and civilization. I was taught in school that hunter-gatherers led short brutal lives; then, humanity’s ascent to agriculture, cities, and governments was a deliverance from darkness and ignorance. Well, this book pretty much turns this whole model on its head. Because Europeans wrote down their history in books and ancient civilizations didn’t, the 18th & 19th century scholars conveniently conjectured a self-aggrandizing story of our ancestors. more
I cannot recall the last time I was so disappointed by a book that seemed to promise so much. First of all, and very importantly, this work is BLOATED and desperately calls out for a good editor who would likely be able to slash at least 1/3 or more of its current bulk without losing anything of importance. The "arguments" contained are repetitious and often circular, and I hardly think it deserves the title "A New History of Humanity. "Yes, we are learning -- and clearly have much yet to learn -- about our distant ancestors, human and prehuman hominids, and yes, they were far more accomplished in using the things of their world and time than we once thought. There is intriguing evidence that their social structures -- including governance patterns -- were much more wide-ranging than we once believed. more
Author David Graeber is an anarchist anthropologist (AA). That has to be dorkiest/coolest profession of all time. ⚠️WEIRD TANGENT/RANT ALERT ⚠️ The only way to amp up that (anarchist/anthropologist) résumé would be to add dungeon master to it somewhere. By dungeon master I mean the dungeons and dragons (D&D) kind not the bondage and dominance, sadism and masochism (BDSM) kind. Although, real talk, there actually is a big crossover between the D&D crowd and the BDSM crowd. more
We are projects of collective self-creation. What if we approached human history that way. What if we treat people, from the beginning, as imaginative, intelligent, playful creatures who deserve to be understood as such. What if, instead of telling a story about how our species fell from some idyllic state of equality, we ask how we came to be trapped in such tight conceptual shackles that we can no longer even imagine the possibility of reinventing ourselves. With the grandiose subtitle of “A New History of Humanity”, I was certainly expecting a lot from David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything; and in retrospect, I may have been expecting too much, and too much of something different altogether. more
Having read Sapiens and Guns, Germs and Steel, or various nature writers, I am familiar with the assumptions that have tended to crop up in Big History. And then, forming inklings that something just didn't connect, I enjoyed the sweep of their logic and arguments. I shook my head with vague consternation at what seemed to be insurmountable ideology. This book, brilliantly elucidated, written for the general reader (ie well written) lays out in so many ways my issues with Big History books. The authors clearly and pragmatically disentangle myths around prehistory and popular philosophical understanding of human nature, the past and all that combines in social theory dealing with history. more
I'm still plodding through this, but I wanted to jot things down as I go. Do you know what makes for bad science. Bad science is when you begin with an answer and work backwards. Good science is asking questions and seeking answers. These guys began with an answer. more
Argh, this book trapped me. Somehow it showed on a few must read lists…by people who did not read the whole thing. Dawn pushes back against the conventional evolving civilization models. From nomadic foragers to agricultural uptake to the creation of vast metropolis’ and States. Their point is that history is far more conflicted and complicated. more
This unique book combines the skill of historical thinking and anthropology. Definitely not what I thought I was going to read; it ended up being much more than that. There are some echoes of the work of Diamond here, but on a different scale and perspective. It is a great look at the long view of history and how we have come to understand ourselves. The idea of inequality is at the heart of the book, and makes the case that our view of humanity is quite inaccurate. more
The State Has No Origin This work sits within the same category as another book; Humankind, by Rutger Bregman (released not that long ago). I say this as its clear that across both books, all three authors have taken the mantle (probably unassumingly) of becoming individuals opening doors to previously settled questions relating to gigantic topics regarding human history and behaviour. I would almost categorise them as 'Gateway' texts; which have the potential to pave the way for further works yet to come. With this said, the scale of such an undertaking absolutely shows within this book. At times, this is a dense read, sparing no detail in analysing the various societies under the microscope of the authors. more
Graeber and Wengrow take a lot of hay on their fork in this book, so it is impossible to cover all the issues they touch on. At the heart of their claim is that our way of looking at early human history—especially the transition from hunter-gatherers to agriculturists and eventually cities and states—is fundamentally wrong: we underestimate the level of complexity these early societies could cope with without resorting to authoritarianism. My brief assessment is that their criticisms certainly make sense on some points (especially since it is not entirely new), but they fail to formulate a credible alternative (see my discussion in my general account on GR, here). In this review I zoom in on some of their statements. Let me start with a few theses that I strongly disagree with simply because they rest on quicksand. more
Nothing is inevitable. This is a prodigious and ambitious take on how societies actually form and the authors tear apart all the assumptions about our current sociological arrangement by looking to the neolithic past. The main point of this book is that the current social structure, one in which almost every human being is a subject to state authority, is not the culmination of an inevitable series of events. Meaning, the current social arrangement is not the consequence of natural sociological evolution. The myth has to do with the dichotomy between Rousseau and Hobbes and the modern day quest for equality. more
The authors know there is no central overriding authoritative narrative explaining the past through fabricated “just so stories” and our understanding of our beginnings is often tainted by pernicious teleology. Charles Mann, an author cited in this book for falsely describing pre-Columbus South America in terms of Kingdoms because he could only think in terms of his own world-view. Mann wrote the Wall Street Journal book review for Homo Sapiens and it was clear he had no idea what it meant since Mann was only capable of seeing the world linearly as a series of progressions and with the end point already known since history had led to him and according to him history must always have a narrative about the narrative which justifies that end point. These authors will make the point that the word “state” would have not been in the vocabulary of the early conquistadors and that way of thinking about the world would have been an anachronism. These authors understand that Mann’s way is fraught with errors. more
This tome contains an extensive compilation of current knowledge of archaeology, sociology, and ethnology of prehistory and ancient history time periods. As the book's narrative presents this information taken from many different parts of the earth, particular attention is given to the exceptions to the prevailing understanding—shown below—of the path followed toward the development of civilization:hunter/gatherer (egalitarian)—>agriculture—>cities—>kings (inequality)Contrary to perceptions that the above was the inevitable arc of human history, this book maintains that there were many exceptions and a wide variety of paths taken (i. e. it's complicated). No Age of Innocence: Prehistoric people were already smart; their world was already old, with long histories now lost to us. more
For those scientists stuck in the status quo, this book is for you. I thought that its thickness hinted at a stodgy review of history and prehistory, but it was anything but. Its refreshing skepticism for getting caught in traditional thinking is kicked to the curb early on and then complemented with fresh reviews of innumerable examples of people that simply didn't fit the trajectory of typical historical thinking. And the examples. the fun of this book is learning about much social and cultural variety existing across the globe. more
Just impossibly irresponsible in terms of citing evidence - many statement of facts lacking citations, many citations that don't say what the authors say they do, many that are superficially correct but which are manipulated in the text. Call me a literalist or close-minded, fine. This is not a serious book. more
12th book of 2024. An intellectual tour-de-force that strives to overturn the current ideas and biases surrounding humanity's history. This was recommended to me by a bookseller who, in light of the recent findings about the bestselling Sapiens and its inaccuracies, said this was the book I was looking for instead. Graeber and Wengrow begin the book by wondering, Where did social inequality begin. They dismantle the Hobbes and Rosseau beliefs and from there, the book spirals outwards in a huge accumulation of social history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, archaeology and more. more