8 ms·

Highly recommend THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnofeverything https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnof

by 5cott0 4y ago

Highly recommend THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnofeverything https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnofeveryt...

tombh 4y ago
Me too. It's essentially a polemic of the common idea that modernity "fell" from Eden, or more conventionally, "fell" from Rousseau's State of Nature. Gobekli Tepi is used as one of many examples of how nowadays the evidence is stacked against the idea of agriculture being an inevitable and necessary step on the road to civilisation and all its concomitant ills. Rather the picture is far less linear, indeed it would seem that many societies both knew and had the ability to farm, but actively chose not to. I haven't finished it yet, but personally it's bringing "modernity" down a peg or 10. It seems that all the possible forms of social organisation that we can imagine, and more, have already been experimented with, multiple times even. What's unique about our version, isn't so much its innovation, but merely its scale. And if we consider this current scale as, encompassing-all-the-lands-we-know-of, then that too has already been and, crucially, gone. What if there have already been societies that, not only witnessed that ultimate jeopardy of the complete collapse of their all-encompassing civilisation, but also went beyond and innovated a post-civilisation society? In some ways that would make them more "modern" than us.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  One question that has been bugging me for years : Homo sapiens is 300k-350k years old. We'we known 3-4 interglacials... how can we be sure the previous ones didn't have civilizations ? (Because we didn't get out of Africa before roughly the middle of the last glacial ?)
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    We have tools that don't require us to find sites that may have been destroyed. For one, genetic studies constrain human population levels assuming any descendants were related to either living people or sampled remains. That constrains population levels quite a bit. Moreover, we can roughly track human habitation on landscapes by how much fire they used as well as changes in flora and fauna. Recent results have even demonstrated direct detection of ancient humans from environmental DNA they left behind in skin cells and such, but that's quite new. All of these different lines of evidence greatly constrain the types of 'civilizations' that were possible to highly localized ones with small populations, or that were completely and utterly wiped out with no surviving material culture, technology, or descendants. That's to say it's not impossible, but highly unlikely. Any explanations all those lines would have to be parsimonious and no one's brought forth good evidence for such a narrative.
  - KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
    Basically it comes down to lack of archeological evidence. We have lots of cave paintings (and many other things) from 50-100k years ago and they depict a caveman lifestyle not civilization. We also find tons of tools and fossils such dating back to 200k years ago and there's no evidence of civilization there too. Rather the evidence is pretty clear on how primitive those people were.
    - kqr 4y ago
      Note that advanced, wide-ranging social relationships (i.e. civilisation) do not leave obvious archaeological traces. We only think it does because we conflate civilisation with technologies of violence and bureaucracy, and those indeed leave clear archaeological traces.
      - astrange 4y ago
        They leave genetic traces, and we’re fairly sure about the migration patterns of all people currently alive on Earth through those. All of us are very closely related as far as species go, so there must have been a serious population bottleneck at one point. We’re all more similar to each other than two chimpanzees.
        amanaplanacanal 4y ago
        > All of us are very closely related as far as species go, so there must have been a serious population bottleneck at one point. We’re all more similar to each other than two chimpanzees. Is this true of Africans as well? I would expect there to be much more variety in humanity's original homeland than in the rest of the world.
        BlueTemplar 4y ago
        Why ? Isn't it typically the animals that get disconnected from the rest that are then able to diverge ?
  - armenarmen 4y ago
    I figured (related to previous poster) that the lack of evidence of domesticated animals was a decent indicator that there were no big civs in the past interglacials
  - tremon 4y ago
    First, define civilization. It's pretty much common sense that human tribes had their own sets of customs and rules, even back then. Is that enough to have "civilization"? Is getting out of Africa a prerequisite to have "civilization"? At one point in our history, humans developed language and could tell each other stories about major events in their lives. If developing an oral legacy is your definition of having "civilation", your question is unanswerable because there's no way we can prove conclusively which ancient humans had those capabilities and which didn't. At some later point, we developed writing. Mural inscriptions and stone tablets are the first examples we have of humanity's communicative abilities. Is using the written word enough to have "civilization"? Taking the other extreme, it's pretty much assumed that until the European exploration phase in the 15th-16th century, humans lived within their own local/continental society. Is being in contact with people on the other side of the globe a prerequisite to have "civilization"?
    - BlueTemplar 4y ago
      Good point. I guess somewhere between building monuments (but do mural inscriptions/drawings count ??) and building cities ?
    - Razengan 4y ago
      > First, define civilization. A layer of systems built by organisms atop their natural biology, where new members of an species are inducted into those systems by “choice” and not biological requirements. Example: Bees and termites build nests, but that’s part of their natural biology: They can’t practically survive without it. Humans “choose” to build houses, but a human infant could survive and grow to adulthood without one, albeit with less convenience.
- erikpukinskis 4y ago
  This debate is raging right now. Is it better in North America to eat domesticated cattle, which basically destroy any chance at a healthy ecology, or just go shoot a bison when you need food? The bison can support a mature ecology. And basically, if you have capitalism/individual property rights then the answer HAS to be cattle, plus a lot of fossil fuel inputs. But at the systemic level is it better? It’s probably worse. So does that mean we’re just waiting on culture to invent the right social structures so we can return to hunting?
  - ido 4y ago
    You can also switch to a vegetarian or vegan diet, or eat only less ecologically intensive meat such as chicken (and eat less of it).
superultra 4y ago
It’s so good. So glad someone mentioned this. It feels like one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time. I wish HBO would adapt it into a fictional series, as a way to ignite our imagination about our ancestors.
pvg 4y ago
An interesting review in NYRB https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/12/16/david-graeber-digging-for-utopia/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/12/16/david-graeber-di... and the NYRB-standard exchange of letters https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/01/13/the-roots-of-inequality-an-exchange/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/01/13/the-roots-of-ine...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Zigurd 4y ago
It's an excellent "reset" on pop science anthropology. Some of which, like that Rousseau and Hobbes oversimplified to support their philosophies should be fairly obvious as anthropological evidence mounts. Similarly, that hunter-gatherer and farmer are points on a spectrum. We have choices about how we organize civilization. Neither Rousseau nor Hobbes depicted destiny, just choices.

by 5cott0 4y ago

Highly recommend THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnofeverything https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnofeveryt...

tombh 4y ago

Me too. It's essentially a polemic of the common idea that modernity "fell" from Eden, or more conventionally, "fell" from Rousseau's State of Nature. Gobekli Tepi is used as one of many examples of how nowadays the evidence is stacked against the idea of agriculture being an inevitable and necessary step on the road to civilisation and all its concomitant ills. Rather the picture is far less linear, indeed it would seem that many societies both knew and had the ability to farm, but actively chose not to. I haven't finished it yet, but personally it's bringing "modernity" down a peg or 10. It seems that all the possible forms of social organisation that we can imagine, and more, have already been experimented with, multiple times even. What's unique about our version, isn't so much its innovation, but merely its scale. And if we consider this current scale as, encompassing-all-the-lands-we-know-of, then that too has already been and, crucially, gone. What if there have already been societies that, not only witnessed that ultimate jeopardy of the complete collapse of their all-encompassing civilisation, but also went beyond and innovated a post-civilisation society? In some ways that would make them more "modern" than us.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
One question that has been bugging me for years : Homo sapiens is 300k-350k years old. We'we known 3-4 interglacials... how can we be sure the previous ones didn't have civilizations ? (Because we didn't get out of Africa before roughly the middle of the last glacial ?)
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  We have tools that don't require us to find sites that may have been destroyed. For one, genetic studies constrain human population levels assuming any descendants were related to either living people or sampled remains. That constrains population levels quite a bit. Moreover, we can roughly track human habitation on landscapes by how much fire they used as well as changes in flora and fauna. Recent results have even demonstrated direct detection of ancient humans from environmental DNA they left behind in skin cells and such, but that's quite new. All of these different lines of evidence greatly constrain the types of 'civilizations' that were possible to highly localized ones with small populations, or that were completely and utterly wiped out with no surviving material culture, technology, or descendants. That's to say it's not impossible, but highly unlikely. Any explanations all those lines would have to be parsimonious and no one's brought forth good evidence for such a narrative.
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
  Basically it comes down to lack of archeological evidence. We have lots of cave paintings (and many other things) from 50-100k years ago and they depict a caveman lifestyle not civilization. We also find tons of tools and fossils such dating back to 200k years ago and there's no evidence of civilization there too. Rather the evidence is pretty clear on how primitive those people were.
  - kqr 4y ago
    Note that advanced, wide-ranging social relationships (i.e. civilisation) do not leave obvious archaeological traces. We only think it does because we conflate civilisation with technologies of violence and bureaucracy, and those indeed leave clear archaeological traces.
    - astrange 4y ago
      They leave genetic traces, and we’re fairly sure about the migration patterns of all people currently alive on Earth through those. All of us are very closely related as far as species go, so there must have been a serious population bottleneck at one point. We’re all more similar to each other than two chimpanzees.
      - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
        > All of us are very closely related as far as species go, so there must have been a serious population bottleneck at one point. We’re all more similar to each other than two chimpanzees. Is this true of Africans as well? I would expect there to be much more variety in humanity's original homeland than in the rest of the world.
        BlueTemplar 4y ago
        Why ? Isn't it typically the animals that get disconnected from the rest that are then able to diverge ?
- armenarmen 4y ago
  I figured (related to previous poster) that the lack of evidence of domesticated animals was a decent indicator that there were no big civs in the past interglacials
- tremon 4y ago
  First, define civilization. It's pretty much common sense that human tribes had their own sets of customs and rules, even back then. Is that enough to have "civilization"? Is getting out of Africa a prerequisite to have "civilization"? At one point in our history, humans developed language and could tell each other stories about major events in their lives. If developing an oral legacy is your definition of having "civilation", your question is unanswerable because there's no way we can prove conclusively which ancient humans had those capabilities and which didn't. At some later point, we developed writing. Mural inscriptions and stone tablets are the first examples we have of humanity's communicative abilities. Is using the written word enough to have "civilization"? Taking the other extreme, it's pretty much assumed that until the European exploration phase in the 15th-16th century, humans lived within their own local/continental society. Is being in contact with people on the other side of the globe a prerequisite to have "civilization"?
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    Good point. I guess somewhere between building monuments (but do mural inscriptions/drawings count ??) and building cities ?
  - Razengan 4y ago
    > First, define civilization. A layer of systems built by organisms atop their natural biology, where new members of an species are inducted into those systems by “choice” and not biological requirements. Example: Bees and termites build nests, but that’s part of their natural biology: They can’t practically survive without it. Humans “choose” to build houses, but a human infant could survive and grow to adulthood without one, albeit with less convenience.
erikpukinskis 4y ago
This debate is raging right now. Is it better in North America to eat domesticated cattle, which basically destroy any chance at a healthy ecology, or just go shoot a bison when you need food? The bison can support a mature ecology. And basically, if you have capitalism/individual property rights then the answer HAS to be cattle, plus a lot of fossil fuel inputs. But at the systemic level is it better? It’s probably worse. So does that mean we’re just waiting on culture to invent the right social structures so we can return to hunting?
- ido 4y ago
  You can also switch to a vegetarian or vegan diet, or eat only less ecologically intensive meat such as chicken (and eat less of it).

superultra 4y ago

It’s so good. So glad someone mentioned this. It feels like one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time. I wish HBO would adapt it into a fictional series, as a way to ignite our imagination about our ancestors.

pvg 4y ago

An interesting review in NYRB https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/12/16/david-graeber-digging-for-utopia/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/12/16/david-graeber-di... and the NYRB-standard exchange of letters https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/01/13/the-roots-of-inequality-an-exchange/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/01/13/the-roots-of-ine...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Zigurd 4y ago

It's an excellent "reset" on pop science anthropology. Some of which, like that Rousseau and Hobbes oversimplified to support their philosophies should be fairly obvious as anthropological evidence mounts. Similarly, that hunter-gatherer and farmer are points on a spectrum. We have choices about how we organize civilization. Neither Rousseau nor Hobbes depicted destiny, just choices.