14 ms·

The Dawn of Everything challenges a mainstream telling of prehistory

115 points by hackandthink 4y ago

jawon 4y ago
I'm about halfway through and it's fascinating. I love a "here is how the dominant paradigm is an over-simplification of reality" story and I also love pre-literary history so I'm finding a lot to enjoy.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  I like the overarching argument and continue to recommend the book to people, but it's worth noting that the book really struggles with its factual basis. The authors aren't experts in most of the examples they discuss and their lack of familiarity really shows. But yes, they definitely take an interesting stance that's worth reading in its own right.
  - college_physics 4y ago
    In a sense the fundamental takeaway is: not only history, but also prehistory has been "written" by the subsequent "winners" (interpreting scarce evidence to fit a desired narrative). It seems very plausible yet it would be really satisfactory if we could piece a more complete picture of these long gone eras
    - orwin 4y ago
      Hence critical theory. That's why we don't automagically assume "that particular indoeuropean tomb is probably from a male warrior chief" nowadays, and actually do some interdisciplinary research, because we used to assume a lot in the early 20th. And sometimes the "male chief" have female bones. And the "warrior" lance point was probably the rest of a priest baton. But most archeology we learn come from schoolbooks that are built on those old, often pretty much falsely interpretted discoveries, and pretty much all good research you have to read academia (or look at serious archeology youtube channels, some exists !)
      - thuridas 4y ago
        Other assumption is that every small statue is a religious idol with ritualistic meaning.
      - monetus 4y ago
        Have any YouTube recommendations?
        nobody9999 4y ago
        >Have any YouTube recommendations? Yes. Don't use YouTube. Or if you feel you must, download (via yt-dlp[0] or similar) videos and watch them offline. [0] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
        monetus 4y ago
        Totally, I agree; huzzah for yt-dlp and appropriate data retention. Still though - if I want to consume relatively digestable archaeological video content, where do I go?
        nobody9999 4y ago
        >Totally, I agree; huzzah for yt-dlp and appropriate data retention. Still though - if I want to consume relatively digestable archaeological video content, where do I go? A fair point. Given the current online media ecosystem, I don't have a good answer for you. :( From a longer-term perspective, high-speed symmetric consumer internet links can enable decent, distributed/decentralized content without rapacious scumbags like Alphabet. But it remains to be seen how long that might take to happen. Until then, (fortunately) there's yt-dlp and its ilk. Sorry, wish I could make a better suggestion.
      - gotoeleven 4y ago
        So is the crux of 'critical theory' to not make generalizations? How does critical theory propose to understand general patterns and trends? Ancient tribal societies were (almost?) always led by male warrior chiefs. Critical theory apparently says to focus on the rare exceptions, but won't that just give you an unrealistic view of history? Inasmuch as critical theory actually causes us to not "assume 'that particular indoeuropean tomb is probably from a male warrior chief'" doesn't that do us a disservice? The tomb __probably__ did belong to a male warrior chief.
- jonahbenton 4y ago
  Same. I had read most of it ahead of a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, a state with a strong indigenous presence and a lot of within 3000 years human archeological sites. Although Graeber was writing about a much earlier period, having read the work made it much, much easier for me to build a sociological mental model (wrong, sure, but interesting) to appreciate the sites and artifacts we saw.
  - kspacewalk2 4y ago
    What is the value of that model if it's wrong? Just make up your own "paradigm" to fit your 21st century political views, throw in a disdainful mention of "neoliberal" something or other, straw-man centuries worth of history writing you skimmed over in college, and Bob's your uncle.
    - jonahbenton 4y ago
      Ha. All models are wrong. Some are useful. More to the point, I really like a quote from the Rupert Murdoch character on "Succession"- "The future is real. The past is...all made up." Even the most carefully documented histories are more or less fiction. Those fictions are retold over the years as old narratives are discredited, and new ones emerge that fit known evidence and are realigned to the gestalt and updated mental models of the time. The history I had included nothing about pre-historical peoples and their societies which of course existed in spectacular complexity but about which there was really no narrative starting point. Graeber's book creates that. Just like the history of trade I learned focused on ideas like barter being the basis for economic engagements (rather than credit), a juvenile fiction that Graeber addressed in Debt. What Graeber did in both works was create a vividly imagined holistic and narratively compelling fiction- with some factual bases- that serves as a useful and improved mental model for non-specialists. Useful even if it is wrong. Cheers.
- Natsu 4y ago
  It's kinda light on evidence for some things, which isn't great when we're talking about someone they describe as an "activist" challenging mainstream history. For example, it just drops assertions like "The authors also show that the earliest cities in Ukraine and Mesopotamia of the 4th millennium BCE were egalitarian and organised without the presence of kings, temples or royal palaces." But why are we to believe these societies were "egalitarian"? I mean, the usual understanding of that means a lot more than just living somewhere without a king or a temple. I can imagine a lot of ways for a city without any of these as such to be far less than what most people think of as "egalitarian" and they really need to flesh this idea out a lot more by going over why we should think that and to what degree, because there's a big gap between the modern understanding of the word "egalitarian" and the evidence provided. Maybe the book does better, if so I'd like to hear that part, but the article is a bit scant here, which is bad when the only thing it is clear on is that this was written by an activist with political motivations.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    > But why are we to believe these societies were "egalitarian"? I haven't read this book, but my understanding is this is usually ascertained from looking at burial grounds, and building remains. Lack of distinction between high status and low status burials is indicative of a society with less stratification. Lack of specialized ceremonial and ruling buildings another. In the case of the Cucuteni-Tripolye civilization & associated cultures in Ukraine & the Danube, though, my understanding is that there really aren't many graveyards or human remains because they didn't bury their dead, at least not in graveyards. Not until the Yamnaya culture (Indo-Europeans) intruded/conquered/took-over/became-dominant later on. So, I dunno. But in that culture the lack of palatial buildings and so on does imply the lack of a kingship system. Plus they didn't build walls around their settlements, and there's few artifacts that imply weaponry until much later.
  - eightysixfour 4y ago
    > It's kinda light on evidence for some things, which isn't great when we're talking about someone they describe as an "activist" challenging mainstream history. I agree. I find it interesting that Graeber makes the same mistake he admonished so many others for - the interpretation of small amounts of historical data through their specific lens with minimal evidence - however, since his perspective is unique compared to much of the mainstream his view feels novel, interesting, and ultimately should open reader’s minds to the idea that their view of the past is exceptionally biased by the paradigm we live in today. There are alternate paradigms, and the same evidence can be interpreted entirely differently to challenge many preconceptions.
- User23 4y ago
  All history is post-literary by definition. To go back further is to visit myths and legends. Some of which are even perhaps something like true.
  - ChainOfFools 4y ago
    And the material record of course, it is the availability of access to written records that divides the historian from the archaeologist.
    - User23 4y ago
      One of my favorite works of fantasy is the Malazan Book of the Fallen which was written by an archeologist and it very much shows. I doubt there’s another series in which the word “potsherds” appears more frequently.
college_physics 4y ago
Hmm, i don't see how the vitriolic and largely unsubstantiated attack on Harari (where does he even remotely suggest that neoliberal capitalism is the pinnacle of civilisation?!) does the work of Graeber any favor.
- richk449 4y ago
  In addition to being unsubstantiated, the criticisms of Harari completely mischaracterize his position. The overriding point of the chapter on agriculture in Sapiens is that farming was a huge step back for humans compared to the hunter gatherer lifestyle. I suspect the the authors of this piece really object to Harari’s framing of agriculture as a step on the path of “human progress”. It would have been more honest to stick to a purely moral and ideological critique in that case, instead of misrepresenting his factual points.
  - goatlover 4y ago
    Right, the argument for agriculture is that it's a basis for making city states and empires possible, whatever moral value one assigns to that.
    - readthenotes1 4y ago
      I read The Columbia History of the World. Well, the first 50 pages. It explained that agriculture allowed people to live in cities, and that for agriculture to work, people had to avoid eating their seeds in the long winter. Or, as it got lodged in my mind -- Delayed gratification is the root of civilization. -- Which saying has been impressively valuable in my life
    - joak 4y ago
      This is the main topic of James C. Scott's Against the Grain. James C. Scott and David Graeber are both anthropologists and anarchists. David Graeber might have a lot good mind opening ideas but overall I was less convinced by his narrative.
marojejian 4y ago
Having read the book:Pro:It's a great question and mission.I'm sympathetic to their general critiques and main points e.g.: - prehistoric human were just as smart and creative as us - there's a ton to learn from them. - there is not enough evidence to accept an inevitable path to a state with ever growing power. - prehistoric people tried a bunch of different societal types we can hardly conceive of. - We should strive to be as experimental and playful. - There is interesting new evidence in there (e.g. about potentially non-authoritarian per-historic societies) Con: - Evidence / word ratio very low - Authors have a HUGE Ax to grind. even if I like some portion of that axe, I can't afford to trust them, they are more biased than the folks they attack (not that I like Yuval Harari so much either...) - Poor reasoning processes: 1)X is conceivable 2) Y might be evidence of X, 3) (Much later) As we demonstrated: X is True - Super repetitive So net, I'd say read a few reviews (e.g. Tides of History) and skip the actual book, and hope we can find some better avatars for this mission. Go listen to some Mike Duncan podcasts.
- college_physics 4y ago
  > prehistoric human were just as smart and creative as us This. The educational system, willingly or just incompetently manages to instill a sense that human intelligence somehow grows monotonically with historical time. Maybe thats because it is conflating it with knowledge accumulation and never bothering to make a clear distinction. In fact its very plausible that 30000 years ago some homo sapiens had a discussion around a campfire that was as intelligent as your average HN thread :-)
  - goatlover 4y ago
    Not individual human intelligence as in capability, but certainly in terms of culture, the knowledge has grown exponentially since then. 30,000 years ago people weren't sitting around the campfire talking about deep learning models, quantum mechanics, or how long the ancestors of Native Americans lived in Beringia.
  - kqr 4y ago
    I agree with your sentiment, but I think you're under-emphasing the power granted our reasoning ability from knowledge (theoretical concepts) and writing (seekable communication). Part of what I know about basic statistics I got from an old book. I would not be able to draw on those concepts and present a coherent argument if my experience and communicative tools were limited to what they would have been 30,000 years ago. That said, they may have had very intelligent and nuanced discussions about specific topics, like immediately human experiences such as illness, politics, fashion, love, etc.
entropicgravity 4y ago
As this article points out, most the best environments for humans in the deep past would have been along seashores. These seashores are now about 100 metres below current sea level, so much of the information we need to characterize how those people's lived is beyond reach or accessible only at great cost and effort. For me the biggest mystery is how and when did language progress because this is what allowed a group of humans to effectively operate as a pseudo single organism. The ability throw stones accurately and with force would also have been critical in defense. Probably even before (pre)humans learned to make sophisticated stone tools.
- unity1001 4y ago
  > For me the biggest mystery is how and when did language progress because this is what allowed a group of humans to effectively operate as a pseudo single organism Language evolves very early in species. Pigs are known to have ~150 words. And the 'dialects' differ from herd to herd. The words probably start from the expression of or reaction to natural states, desires, situations and motives, and then develop in complexity as the species evolve and its activities become more varied. We also see primates and chimpanzees act in certain, superstitious ways - throwing things into a certain cave/hole in certain days of a season, arranging objects in certain ways without any utility being present etc. These are thought to be the predecessors of religious beliefs that evolve in later stages of the evolution of a species. At this point its important to note that species learn from each other as well - some orangutans in some regions apparently have learned how to fish using spears by watching humans, and they are now doing it themselves. This would mean many primate species likely have learned from each other and exchanged many things, concluding that the evolution of human species was not something that is clear-cut, neat and certain like how the late 19th century science told it in a way that is uncomfortably too close to the Christian dogmatism and certainty. Its more likely that different species of primates including human ancestors have been using tools, fire and different technologies and practices by learning them from each other by seeing or through actual interaction/coexisting, and the spread of technolog was not instant like how its being implied in our existing perspective. Instead even among the same species of human ancestors its likely that different groups had differing levels of tool use, language use and other practices, whereas other groups have either did not adopt those, were slow to adopt those or outright could have rejected those. So great variety in the levels of technology among the human ancestors' societies should have been possible. And many more things, really, because our perspective of human history still has not broken out of the late 19th century mold...
goatlover 4y ago
Not sure I trust a book which has activism against the current economic system as a goal. From the sound of it, the book does have some interesting ideas about prehistory that might turn out to be at least partially correct. But then to turn that around and use it as an attack on modern society stops being historical and becomes polemical.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  I don't believe the book is or is meant as "an attack on modern society".
  - goatlover 4y ago
    Meaning a critique of capitalism/neoliberalism and hierarchical societies as an inevitable outcome of civilization progressing. So basically, there's other ways to arrange societies, both politically and economically, because pre-historic people did that, and our current global civilization is just one way, that came about because things went a certain way (contingent), but they could have gone other ways. Therefore, we should reconsider the current setup in favor of alternative models.
    - jrochkind1 4y ago
      So the altenrnative is the idea that capitalism and hieararchical societies is an inevitable outcome of civilizzation progressing, and there are no other ways to arrange societies? While this is still a popular idea in society at large, I don't think this is in fact an idea supported by mainstream archeology/anthropology/history/whatever other fields would comment on this. It's not in fact a big outrageous thing for the authors to be challenging this, it's very normal mainstream scholarly consensus. If anything, I think they are getting too much credit for being responsible for something groundbreaking in that basic challenge. But I agree with your summary of their basic thesis/organizing narrative approach right there. I think it's curious that you first summarized that as an "attack on modern society" though. You feel that to suggest the way society(ies) are organized now was not teleologically foreordained and could have gone other ways -- is to attack modern society? I think almost anyone writing an account meant to be popularly accessible like this one has __some_ narrative agenda, a point of view on the overall big points or organizing principles. To compare to Harari... yeah, it would be hard to argue that he has less of agenda, or sticks more to facts over his preferred narrative or ideology.
wolverine876 4y ago
Does anyone know about an expert, non-partisan (whatever the parties are in the field of pre-history) review of Dawn of Everything? Someone who can summarize the strengths and weaknesses, claims and critiques, etc.?
- jimwhite42 4y ago
  This is a good review, on the What is Politics channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJIHWk_M398&list=PLU4FEuj4v9eBWP22ujafheoEejbQhPAdl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJIHWk_M398&list=PLU4FEuj4v9... But it isn't a summary, it goes into a lot of detailed critique. I think each video description links to a bibliography and transcript too.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Thanks. What is the reviewer's background, if anyone knows?
    - jimwhite42 4y ago
      Not sure exactly, he's done some level of anthropology, but isn't currently an academic as far as I can tell, not sure if he used to be one. His channel is about politics from an anthropology angle.
- marojejian 4y ago
  I think this episode of Tides of History includes effectively a good review: https://art19.com/shows/tides-of-history/episodes/cb335af3-eab3-4e45-98d5-d8ecc5b4faef https://art19.com/shows/tides-of-history/episodes/cb335af3-e... Wyman evaluates it with both sympathy and criticism.
317070 4y ago
My review: the main story and ideas of the book are great, and the many small stories of the book are great too. I have read many of Graeber's books, and it is full of novel ideas. But, the book could have used a bit more editing. As the arc is coming to an end, many new examples are hastily introduced that don't seem to lead anywhere. The book has a great first half, but the second half is lacking. I feel like it has all the raw material of a masterpiece, but it is missing the polishing, possibly due to Graeber's unfortunate early passing. There is an often heard comment that they provide too few data. I find that of little importance. I value novel perspectives on history a lot more. I kind of agree with Graeber that the focus on data succombs to paradox that if you focus on what you can measure, you will automatically look at history with today's eyes, as today is metric-focused.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  One of the authors dying during editing can reasonably be expected to have some effect.
  - jml7c5 4y ago
    There's no need for italics; the parent post already acknowledges Graeber's death.
- sdenton4 4y ago
  My understanding was that they published a pile of papers to establish the skeleton of the narrative before it made it into the book. David Wengrow's publication history has a number of papers which rhyme with things in the book, like this one: https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/publication/1519520/1 https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/publication/1519520/1 --- History also has a strong bias towards the status quo. If a new theory is proposed which explains the available evidence with equal ability, the pre-existing idea will typically remain the accepted version of the story. The net effect is that we're prone to get stuck with versions of history originally proposed by phrenologists and worse... When common sense fills in the blanks in the story, you might get stuck with some very bad version of common sense, completely alien to the historical people it's being applied to. We really should approach history with a bit of the spirit of Rashomon. When we look at it with a too narrow lens, we wind up underestimating the breadth of what's possible.
charlescearl 4y ago
All history has a political agenda. “Non-partisan” itself serves to further the legitimacy of Western academia, itself born in service to colonial and neo-colonial projects. The work of Sylvia Wynter, Ngugi wa Thiong o, Edward Said, Walter Rodney among many others are probably good jumping off points.
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  Nah. That's just the story the partisans like to construct to make the task of straw-manning competing narratives of history easier. Everyone has some combination of biases, but there are plenty of historians who don't have a political agenda, and they tend to be the good ones, the ones who spend time researching and synthesizing an informed and informative viewpoint, rather than trying to push their ideology though the back door, treating the reader like an idiot who doesn't notice. The latter is a hallmark of both left wing and right wing politicisation of history, equally.
huitzitziltzin 4y ago
Every time I read a review of this book when it came out, the review author would say something like “wow! great! So exciting, EXCEPT in this area *where I am an expert*, the authors got X, Y and Z badly wrong.” There were reviews like that when it came out from people in a bunch of disciplines, certainly in anthropology and prehistory included. Graeber’s prior book about Debt has been widely criticized in my own field. As a result I haven’t felt like it was worth the time to invest in this one even though the topic and the idea seem extremely interesting. It seems like the authors have an axe to grind and a story to tell and whatever evidence they find against it is either ignored or misinterpreted.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- drewcoo 4y ago
  Isn't that always the case for any synthesis, let alone a cross-disciplinary one? I felt this book was in need of an editor much more than it was of missing information.
intrasight 4y ago
A heavy dose of political language mixed with questionable science. What rot.
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  i guess back in those pre-resource-accumulation days, they managed to kill all the charming psycopaths before they became tyrants. Maybe it was the teenage mothers and high infant mortality rate that did it?
kodachrome64 4y ago
I'm about halfway through this book. While it's full of fascinating ideas and information, it's badly in need of an editor. To me, it often reads more like a stream of consciousness than a structured essay. Also, I'm not particularly well-versed in the subject matter, but even I can recognize some of the massive logical jumps that they make based on the evidence that they present. Had this simply been a book to exhibit new ways of understanding and exploring the merits of prehistoric societies, perhaps it would be more fitting of its title "The Dawn of Everything." I could see this working better in a format more like Charles Mann's 1491. Instead, it attempts to tackle a number of broader questions about modern society while slinging mud at every author in the last five hundred years that's touched upon them. Overall, my impression so far is that Graeber and Wengrow bit off more than they could chew. I want to keep reading for the information they present, but it's been a struggle to stay focused.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Totally agree with you here. I've got 25 pages left to read. It has taken me longer to read than any book in recent memory. It's not badly written, but particularly at the end it looses focus, and consequently I have too. I hope to finish it by the end of the month, but I've been saying that for more than 7 months.
  - gmassman 4y ago
    Yep, I started the audio book back in August and just finished it earlier this week... 5 months may be a long time but it's probably shorter than the reign of most chieftains. Honestly I really disliked the audiobook. The reader was dreadfully drab, even with his impeccable English. Also the book ended up costing me $60 ($15 / mo Audible subscription), even I technically got to listen for free. Most expensive history lesson I've ever paid for.
moron4hire 4y ago
I keep confusing this book with "The Dawn of The New Everything" by Jaron Lanier. When people started to talk about it on Twitter, I got excited that Lanier's excellent book was having a mini resurgence. Made for an awkward argument with a friend because we had vastly different opinions on the quality of "this" book, until I admitted "maybe I'm just a Lanier fan", to which he replied "who's Lanier?"
pc2g4d 4y ago
The Christian often sees the Devil around every corner. The socialist sees capitalism. The capitalist sees socialism. Something like that.... Being so fashionable to bash on capitalism these days, I can't help suspecting that it is an opposing ideology, rather than truth or facts, driving the bus. Interesting to consider pre-Athens democracy. I'm not so sure Gobekli Tepe overthrows the idea of an agricultural revolution. It just changes its texture. We are, after all, all agriculturalists now. And 3000 years is _not_ a long time for an anthropological "revolution"!
Aunche 4y ago
> Noble savage myth The noble savage is a trope represents the innate goodness of humanity when free from the corrupting influence of civilization. If anything, it's Graeber propagating the noble savage myth. Societies that are smaller have have less stuff are obviously going to have less material inequality. That doesn't mean that they lacked hierarchies and selfishness.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  We need not pretend Graeber advanced any notion that hierarchies have never existed in undocumented populations. His point is that they were often lacking in circumstances historians routinely assume, and vociferously insist, hierarchy must have been unavoidable.
  - Aunche 4y ago
    Not sure who are the historians who are "vociferously insisting" that something is impossible any more than Graeber does.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      Graeber cites example after example, from throughout history and prehistory, of complex societies that displayed no evidence of permanent, pervasive hierarchical organization. It is very common for historians to insist none of that is possible, or just silently assume it without thought.
- drewcoo 4y ago
  > Societies that are smaller have have less stuff are obviously going to have less material inequality. As stuff approaches zero, material inequality approaches zero. In gilded ages like today, stealing from the poor and giving to the rich works better when there are more poor people from which to harvest wealth.
didntreadarticl 4y ago
Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael) wrote about this sort of thing in a non-scientific sort of way. More from a philosophy standpoint. But anyway one point he makes that really stuck with me, is that in a hunter gatherer society, you might get a tribe leader or chief or something. But if you dont like what they're doing, you can just leave and be a hunter gatherer somewhere else. No one is depending on any centralised place for food. So you can get complex social structures if thats what everyone wants, but hierarchies are difficult to maintain by force. People will just quit if they dont like it. Whereas in an agricultural society, you get specialisation of skills which helps towards the sort of thing we now think of as 'progress' but you can also have hierarchies enforced by force because someone or some subgroup ends up in charge of the food and can lock it away, and peoples option to just leave and go and fend for themselves is less feasible and so they get stuck being subjects of some ruler. TLDR: You dont have to think of hunter gatherer societies as simple or backward. But they are less likely to have deep hierarchies and specialisation
- fckgnad 4y ago
  No I don't think this is true. Hierarchies are heavily part of human behavior. The concept of leaders and rank is so ingrained in behavior it's hard to think it didn't exist even in hunter and gatherer societies. Right now we have enough wealth such that everyone can live comfortably. But a lot of people still fight tooth and nail in the rat race all for what? For wealth partly but mostly for Rank. The higher your rank the better it's a huge driving force emotionally... especially for men. Desire for high rank is an inborn biological instinct. This is confirmed in psychology across all cultures. All men are emotionally more satisfied the higher their rank. For women it's also a huge driving force for mate selection. Women marry up. They have a strong desire to marry the highest ranking man. I would imagine in hunter and gather societies rank is maintained by two things. Brute force and social proof. Bigger men have more brute force to maintain leadership (hence why a lot of women are attracted to height) and social proof and respect insures that other men trust you and are more likely to listen to you. That being said coercion to build things like pyramids or grand multi-year projects of vast scale requires someone to own wealth. This type of serfdom like heirarchy is much stronger then the hierarchies that existed in hunterer gatherer societies. Definitely more stable since wages and survival required someone to stay at their hierarchical post. Either way hierarchies DID exist in hunter gatherer societies. It's just the tribe leader doesn't have enough power to coerce all men into building a pyramid. That being said I believe the article is disputing this part of what I'm saying but I don't think hierarchies are disputed.
fckgnad 4y ago
I just started reading this. I'm hopeful but the forward and the first chapter don't look good. First off at least one of the authors is into social justice. Social Justice tenants run completely counter to many of the findings of anthropology. It's a source of bias. Second the first chapter comes from the perspective of introducing a better anthropological narrative given a lack of non-depressing stories of human civilization. I'm here for the truth, I'm not looking for narratives that are good or bad. Literally the book goes into "political implications" of alternative "narratives". I quote: "HOBBESIAN AND ROUSSEAUIAN VERSIONS OF HUMAN HISTORY HAVE DIRE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS." all caps literally first chapter. Why even bring up politics at all? Let's talk about truth. The consequence of the truth is irrelevant to the truth. It could be the authors built this book with a pre-existing agenda. Whatever, if it has this many accolades I'll read it.
- unmole 4y ago
  Cherry picking and misrepresenting evidence to support his fringe political beliefs was David Graeber's whole shtick. Full disclaimer: I didn't read Dawn of Everything and I don't intend to. My opinion is based on Debt and some of his other writings.
- gmassman 4y ago
  I finished the book earlier this week, and can say it does distance itself from the initial chapters pretty quickly. They are important frames of reference, and I can definitely understand the authors reasons to include those ideas so prominently. Anthropology was developed as a western oriented study, and carries along with it many of the biases and assumptions that only Europeans could have endowed. The political climates that existed during the colonization of the Americas played an important role in the evolution of modern cultures. The book is filled with examples of different societies and how they formed, and politics has played a role in ever single instance. Regardless of if you agree with the authors’ ideologies or not, they do a pretty good job of remaining neutral when examining historical evidence. I found it a nice change of pace from the typical “westernized” explanations of how civilizations (especially Native Americans) were structured. Overall I think it’s an excellent read, well worth the investment.
- 4y ago
jdmtheNth 4y ago
This is another perspective on The Dawn of Everything: https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/the-gossip-trap https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/the-gossip-trap

115 points by hackandthink 4y ago

I'm about halfway through and it's fascinating. I love a "here is how the dominant paradigm is an over-simplification of reality" story and I also love pre-literary history so I'm finding a lot to enjoy.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
I like the overarching argument and continue to recommend the book to people, but it's worth noting that the book really struggles with its factual basis. The authors aren't experts in most of the examples they discuss and their lack of familiarity really shows. But yes, they definitely take an interesting stance that's worth reading in its own right.
- college_physics 4y ago
  In a sense the fundamental takeaway is: not only history, but also prehistory has been "written" by the subsequent "winners" (interpreting scarce evidence to fit a desired narrative). It seems very plausible yet it would be really satisfactory if we could piece a more complete picture of these long gone eras
  - orwin 4y ago
    Hence critical theory. That's why we don't automagically assume "that particular indoeuropean tomb is probably from a male warrior chief" nowadays, and actually do some interdisciplinary research, because we used to assume a lot in the early 20th. And sometimes the "male chief" have female bones. And the "warrior" lance point was probably the rest of a priest baton. But most archeology we learn come from schoolbooks that are built on those old, often pretty much falsely interpretted discoveries, and pretty much all good research you have to read academia (or look at serious archeology youtube channels, some exists !)
    - thuridas 4y ago
      Other assumption is that every small statue is a religious idol with ritualistic meaning.
    - monetus 4y ago
      Have any YouTube recommendations?
      - nobody9999 4y ago
        >Have any YouTube recommendations? Yes. Don't use YouTube. Or if you feel you must, download (via yt-dlp[0] or similar) videos and watch them offline. [0] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
        monetus 4y ago
        Totally, I agree; huzzah for yt-dlp and appropriate data retention. Still though - if I want to consume relatively digestable archaeological video content, where do I go?
        nobody9999 4y ago
        >Totally, I agree; huzzah for yt-dlp and appropriate data retention. Still though - if I want to consume relatively digestable archaeological video content, where do I go? A fair point. Given the current online media ecosystem, I don't have a good answer for you. :( From a longer-term perspective, high-speed symmetric consumer internet links can enable decent, distributed/decentralized content without rapacious scumbags like Alphabet. But it remains to be seen how long that might take to happen. Until then, (fortunately) there's yt-dlp and its ilk. Sorry, wish I could make a better suggestion.
    - gotoeleven 4y ago
      So is the crux of 'critical theory' to not make generalizations? How does critical theory propose to understand general patterns and trends? Ancient tribal societies were (almost?) always led by male warrior chiefs. Critical theory apparently says to focus on the rare exceptions, but won't that just give you an unrealistic view of history? Inasmuch as critical theory actually causes us to not "assume 'that particular indoeuropean tomb is probably from a male warrior chief'" doesn't that do us a disservice? The tomb __probably__ did belong to a male warrior chief.
jonahbenton 4y ago
Same. I had read most of it ahead of a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, a state with a strong indigenous presence and a lot of within 3000 years human archeological sites. Although Graeber was writing about a much earlier period, having read the work made it much, much easier for me to build a sociological mental model (wrong, sure, but interesting) to appreciate the sites and artifacts we saw.
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  What is the value of that model if it's wrong? Just make up your own "paradigm" to fit your 21st century political views, throw in a disdainful mention of "neoliberal" something or other, straw-man centuries worth of history writing you skimmed over in college, and Bob's your uncle.
  - jonahbenton 4y ago
    Ha. All models are wrong. Some are useful. More to the point, I really like a quote from the Rupert Murdoch character on "Succession"- "The future is real. The past is...all made up." Even the most carefully documented histories are more or less fiction. Those fictions are retold over the years as old narratives are discredited, and new ones emerge that fit known evidence and are realigned to the gestalt and updated mental models of the time. The history I had included nothing about pre-historical peoples and their societies which of course existed in spectacular complexity but about which there was really no narrative starting point. Graeber's book creates that. Just like the history of trade I learned focused on ideas like barter being the basis for economic engagements (rather than credit), a juvenile fiction that Graeber addressed in Debt. What Graeber did in both works was create a vividly imagined holistic and narratively compelling fiction- with some factual bases- that serves as a useful and improved mental model for non-specialists. Useful even if it is wrong. Cheers.
Natsu 4y ago
It's kinda light on evidence for some things, which isn't great when we're talking about someone they describe as an "activist" challenging mainstream history. For example, it just drops assertions like "The authors also show that the earliest cities in Ukraine and Mesopotamia of the 4th millennium BCE were egalitarian and organised without the presence of kings, temples or royal palaces." But why are we to believe these societies were "egalitarian"? I mean, the usual understanding of that means a lot more than just living somewhere without a king or a temple. I can imagine a lot of ways for a city without any of these as such to be far less than what most people think of as "egalitarian" and they really need to flesh this idea out a lot more by going over why we should think that and to what degree, because there's a big gap between the modern understanding of the word "egalitarian" and the evidence provided. Maybe the book does better, if so I'd like to hear that part, but the article is a bit scant here, which is bad when the only thing it is clear on is that this was written by an activist with political motivations.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  > But why are we to believe these societies were "egalitarian"? I haven't read this book, but my understanding is this is usually ascertained from looking at burial grounds, and building remains. Lack of distinction between high status and low status burials is indicative of a society with less stratification. Lack of specialized ceremonial and ruling buildings another. In the case of the Cucuteni-Tripolye civilization & associated cultures in Ukraine & the Danube, though, my understanding is that there really aren't many graveyards or human remains because they didn't bury their dead, at least not in graveyards. Not until the Yamnaya culture (Indo-Europeans) intruded/conquered/took-over/became-dominant later on. So, I dunno. But in that culture the lack of palatial buildings and so on does imply the lack of a kingship system. Plus they didn't build walls around their settlements, and there's few artifacts that imply weaponry until much later.
- eightysixfour 4y ago
  > It's kinda light on evidence for some things, which isn't great when we're talking about someone they describe as an "activist" challenging mainstream history. I agree. I find it interesting that Graeber makes the same mistake he admonished so many others for - the interpretation of small amounts of historical data through their specific lens with minimal evidence - however, since his perspective is unique compared to much of the mainstream his view feels novel, interesting, and ultimately should open reader’s minds to the idea that their view of the past is exceptionally biased by the paradigm we live in today. There are alternate paradigms, and the same evidence can be interpreted entirely differently to challenge many preconceptions.
User23 4y ago
All history is post-literary by definition. To go back further is to visit myths and legends. Some of which are even perhaps something like true.
- ChainOfFools 4y ago
  And the material record of course, it is the availability of access to written records that divides the historian from the archaeologist.
  - User23 4y ago
    One of my favorite works of fantasy is the Malazan Book of the Fallen which was written by an archeologist and it very much shows. I doubt there’s another series in which the word “potsherds” appears more frequently.

college_physics 4y ago

Hmm, i don't see how the vitriolic and largely unsubstantiated attack on Harari (where does he even remotely suggest that neoliberal capitalism is the pinnacle of civilisation?!) does the work of Graeber any favor.

richk449 4y ago
In addition to being unsubstantiated, the criticisms of Harari completely mischaracterize his position. The overriding point of the chapter on agriculture in Sapiens is that farming was a huge step back for humans compared to the hunter gatherer lifestyle. I suspect the the authors of this piece really object to Harari’s framing of agriculture as a step on the path of “human progress”. It would have been more honest to stick to a purely moral and ideological critique in that case, instead of misrepresenting his factual points.
- goatlover 4y ago
  Right, the argument for agriculture is that it's a basis for making city states and empires possible, whatever moral value one assigns to that.
  - readthenotes1 4y ago
    I read The Columbia History of the World. Well, the first 50 pages. It explained that agriculture allowed people to live in cities, and that for agriculture to work, people had to avoid eating their seeds in the long winter. Or, as it got lodged in my mind -- Delayed gratification is the root of civilization. -- Which saying has been impressively valuable in my life
  - joak 4y ago
    This is the main topic of James C. Scott's Against the Grain. James C. Scott and David Graeber are both anthropologists and anarchists. David Graeber might have a lot good mind opening ideas but overall I was less convinced by his narrative.

marojejian 4y ago

Having read the book:Pro:It's a great question and mission.I'm sympathetic to their general critiques and main points e.g.: - prehistoric human were just as smart and creative as us - there's a ton to learn from them. - there is not enough evidence to accept an inevitable path to a state with ever growing power. - prehistoric people tried a bunch of different societal types we can hardly conceive of. - We should strive to be as experimental and playful. - There is interesting new evidence in there (e.g. about potentially non-authoritarian per-historic societies) Con: - Evidence / word ratio very low - Authors have a HUGE Ax to grind. even if I like some portion of that axe, I can't afford to trust them, they are more biased than the folks they attack (not that I like Yuval Harari so much either...) - Poor reasoning processes: 1)X is conceivable 2) Y might be evidence of X, 3) (Much later) As we demonstrated: X is True - Super repetitive So net, I'd say read a few reviews (e.g. Tides of History) and skip the actual book, and hope we can find some better avatars for this mission. Go listen to some Mike Duncan podcasts.

college_physics 4y ago
> prehistoric human were just as smart and creative as us This. The educational system, willingly or just incompetently manages to instill a sense that human intelligence somehow grows monotonically with historical time. Maybe thats because it is conflating it with knowledge accumulation and never bothering to make a clear distinction. In fact its very plausible that 30000 years ago some homo sapiens had a discussion around a campfire that was as intelligent as your average HN thread :-)
- goatlover 4y ago
  Not individual human intelligence as in capability, but certainly in terms of culture, the knowledge has grown exponentially since then. 30,000 years ago people weren't sitting around the campfire talking about deep learning models, quantum mechanics, or how long the ancestors of Native Americans lived in Beringia.
- kqr 4y ago
  I agree with your sentiment, but I think you're under-emphasing the power granted our reasoning ability from knowledge (theoretical concepts) and writing (seekable communication). Part of what I know about basic statistics I got from an old book. I would not be able to draw on those concepts and present a coherent argument if my experience and communicative tools were limited to what they would have been 30,000 years ago. That said, they may have had very intelligent and nuanced discussions about specific topics, like immediately human experiences such as illness, politics, fashion, love, etc.

entropicgravity 4y ago

As this article points out, most the best environments for humans in the deep past would have been along seashores. These seashores are now about 100 metres below current sea level, so much of the information we need to characterize how those people's lived is beyond reach or accessible only at great cost and effort. For me the biggest mystery is how and when did language progress because this is what allowed a group of humans to effectively operate as a pseudo single organism. The ability throw stones accurately and with force would also have been critical in defense. Probably even before (pre)humans learned to make sophisticated stone tools.

unity1001 4y ago
> For me the biggest mystery is how and when did language progress because this is what allowed a group of humans to effectively operate as a pseudo single organism Language evolves very early in species. Pigs are known to have ~150 words. And the 'dialects' differ from herd to herd. The words probably start from the expression of or reaction to natural states, desires, situations and motives, and then develop in complexity as the species evolve and its activities become more varied. We also see primates and chimpanzees act in certain, superstitious ways - throwing things into a certain cave/hole in certain days of a season, arranging objects in certain ways without any utility being present etc. These are thought to be the predecessors of religious beliefs that evolve in later stages of the evolution of a species. At this point its important to note that species learn from each other as well - some orangutans in some regions apparently have learned how to fish using spears by watching humans, and they are now doing it themselves. This would mean many primate species likely have learned from each other and exchanged many things, concluding that the evolution of human species was not something that is clear-cut, neat and certain like how the late 19th century science told it in a way that is uncomfortably too close to the Christian dogmatism and certainty. Its more likely that different species of primates including human ancestors have been using tools, fire and different technologies and practices by learning them from each other by seeing or through actual interaction/coexisting, and the spread of technolog was not instant like how its being implied in our existing perspective. Instead even among the same species of human ancestors its likely that different groups had differing levels of tool use, language use and other practices, whereas other groups have either did not adopt those, were slow to adopt those or outright could have rejected those. So great variety in the levels of technology among the human ancestors' societies should have been possible. And many more things, really, because our perspective of human history still has not broken out of the late 19th century mold...

goatlover 4y ago

Not sure I trust a book which has activism against the current economic system as a goal. From the sound of it, the book does have some interesting ideas about prehistory that might turn out to be at least partially correct. But then to turn that around and use it as an attack on modern society stops being historical and becomes polemical.

jrochkind1 4y ago
I don't believe the book is or is meant as "an attack on modern society".
- goatlover 4y ago
  Meaning a critique of capitalism/neoliberalism and hierarchical societies as an inevitable outcome of civilization progressing. So basically, there's other ways to arrange societies, both politically and economically, because pre-historic people did that, and our current global civilization is just one way, that came about because things went a certain way (contingent), but they could have gone other ways. Therefore, we should reconsider the current setup in favor of alternative models.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    So the altenrnative is the idea that capitalism and hieararchical societies is an inevitable outcome of civilizzation progressing, and there are no other ways to arrange societies? While this is still a popular idea in society at large, I don't think this is in fact an idea supported by mainstream archeology/anthropology/history/whatever other fields would comment on this. It's not in fact a big outrageous thing for the authors to be challenging this, it's very normal mainstream scholarly consensus. If anything, I think they are getting too much credit for being responsible for something groundbreaking in that basic challenge. But I agree with your summary of their basic thesis/organizing narrative approach right there. I think it's curious that you first summarized that as an "attack on modern society" though. You feel that to suggest the way society(ies) are organized now was not teleologically foreordained and could have gone other ways -- is to attack modern society? I think almost anyone writing an account meant to be popularly accessible like this one has __some_ narrative agenda, a point of view on the overall big points or organizing principles. To compare to Harari... yeah, it would be hard to argue that he has less of agenda, or sticks more to facts over his preferred narrative or ideology.

wolverine876 4y ago

Does anyone know about an expert, non-partisan (whatever the parties are in the field of pre-history) review of Dawn of Everything? Someone who can summarize the strengths and weaknesses, claims and critiques, etc.?

jimwhite42 4y ago
This is a good review, on the What is Politics channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJIHWk_M398&list=PLU4FEuj4v9eBWP22ujafheoEejbQhPAdl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJIHWk_M398&list=PLU4FEuj4v9... But it isn't a summary, it goes into a lot of detailed critique. I think each video description links to a bibliography and transcript too.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Thanks. What is the reviewer's background, if anyone knows?
  - jimwhite42 4y ago
    Not sure exactly, he's done some level of anthropology, but isn't currently an academic as far as I can tell, not sure if he used to be one. His channel is about politics from an anthropology angle.
marojejian 4y ago
I think this episode of Tides of History includes effectively a good review: https://art19.com/shows/tides-of-history/episodes/cb335af3-eab3-4e45-98d5-d8ecc5b4faef https://art19.com/shows/tides-of-history/episodes/cb335af3-e... Wyman evaluates it with both sympathy and criticism.

317070 4y ago

My review: the main story and ideas of the book are great, and the many small stories of the book are great too. I have read many of Graeber's books, and it is full of novel ideas. But, the book could have used a bit more editing. As the arc is coming to an end, many new examples are hastily introduced that don't seem to lead anywhere. The book has a great first half, but the second half is lacking. I feel like it has all the raw material of a masterpiece, but it is missing the polishing, possibly due to Graeber's unfortunate early passing. There is an often heard comment that they provide too few data. I find that of little importance. I value novel perspectives on history a lot more. I kind of agree with Graeber that the focus on data succombs to paradox that if you focus on what you can measure, you will automatically look at history with today's eyes, as today is metric-focused.

moloch-hai 4y ago
One of the authors dying during editing can reasonably be expected to have some effect.
- jml7c5 4y ago
  There's no need for italics; the parent post already acknowledges Graeber's death.
sdenton4 4y ago
My understanding was that they published a pile of papers to establish the skeleton of the narrative before it made it into the book. David Wengrow's publication history has a number of papers which rhyme with things in the book, like this one: https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/publication/1519520/1 https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/publication/1519520/1 --- History also has a strong bias towards the status quo. If a new theory is proposed which explains the available evidence with equal ability, the pre-existing idea will typically remain the accepted version of the story. The net effect is that we're prone to get stuck with versions of history originally proposed by phrenologists and worse... When common sense fills in the blanks in the story, you might get stuck with some very bad version of common sense, completely alien to the historical people it's being applied to. We really should approach history with a bit of the spirit of Rashomon. When we look at it with a too narrow lens, we wind up underestimating the breadth of what's possible.

charlescearl 4y ago

All history has a political agenda. “Non-partisan” itself serves to further the legitimacy of Western academia, itself born in service to colonial and neo-colonial projects. The work of Sylvia Wynter, Ngugi wa Thiong o, Edward Said, Walter Rodney among many others are probably good jumping off points.

kspacewalk2 4y ago
Nah. That's just the story the partisans like to construct to make the task of straw-manning competing narratives of history easier. Everyone has some combination of biases, but there are plenty of historians who don't have a political agenda, and they tend to be the good ones, the ones who spend time researching and synthesizing an informed and informative viewpoint, rather than trying to push their ideology though the back door, treating the reader like an idiot who doesn't notice. The latter is a hallmark of both left wing and right wing politicisation of history, equally.

huitzitziltzin 4y ago

Every time I read a review of this book when it came out, the review author would say something like “wow! great! So exciting, EXCEPT in this area *where I am an expert*, the authors got X, Y and Z badly wrong.” There were reviews like that when it came out from people in a bunch of disciplines, certainly in anthropology and prehistory included. Graeber’s prior book about Debt has been widely criticized in my own field. As a result I haven’t felt like it was worth the time to invest in this one even though the topic and the idea seem extremely interesting. It seems like the authors have an axe to grind and a story to tell and whatever evidence they find against it is either ignored or misinterpreted.

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drewcoo 4y ago
Isn't that always the case for any synthesis, let alone a cross-disciplinary one? I felt this book was in need of an editor much more than it was of missing information.

intrasight 4y ago

A heavy dose of political language mixed with questionable science. What rot.

readthenotes1 4y ago
i guess back in those pre-resource-accumulation days, they managed to kill all the charming psycopaths before they became tyrants. Maybe it was the teenage mothers and high infant mortality rate that did it?

kodachrome64 4y ago

I'm about halfway through this book. While it's full of fascinating ideas and information, it's badly in need of an editor. To me, it often reads more like a stream of consciousness than a structured essay. Also, I'm not particularly well-versed in the subject matter, but even I can recognize some of the massive logical jumps that they make based on the evidence that they present. Had this simply been a book to exhibit new ways of understanding and exploring the merits of prehistoric societies, perhaps it would be more fitting of its title "The Dawn of Everything." I could see this working better in a format more like Charles Mann's 1491. Instead, it attempts to tackle a number of broader questions about modern society while slinging mud at every author in the last five hundred years that's touched upon them. Overall, my impression so far is that Graeber and Wengrow bit off more than they could chew. I want to keep reading for the information they present, but it's been a struggle to stay focused.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Totally agree with you here. I've got 25 pages left to read. It has taken me longer to read than any book in recent memory. It's not badly written, but particularly at the end it looses focus, and consequently I have too. I hope to finish it by the end of the month, but I've been saying that for more than 7 months.
- gmassman 4y ago
  Yep, I started the audio book back in August and just finished it earlier this week... 5 months may be a long time but it's probably shorter than the reign of most chieftains. Honestly I really disliked the audiobook. The reader was dreadfully drab, even with his impeccable English. Also the book ended up costing me $60 ($15 / mo Audible subscription), even I technically got to listen for free. Most expensive history lesson I've ever paid for.

moron4hire 4y ago

I keep confusing this book with "The Dawn of The New Everything" by Jaron Lanier. When people started to talk about it on Twitter, I got excited that Lanier's excellent book was having a mini resurgence. Made for an awkward argument with a friend because we had vastly different opinions on the quality of "this" book, until I admitted "maybe I'm just a Lanier fan", to which he replied "who's Lanier?"

pc2g4d 4y ago

The Christian often sees the Devil around every corner. The socialist sees capitalism. The capitalist sees socialism. Something like that.... Being so fashionable to bash on capitalism these days, I can't help suspecting that it is an opposing ideology, rather than truth or facts, driving the bus. Interesting to consider pre-Athens democracy. I'm not so sure Gobekli Tepe overthrows the idea of an agricultural revolution. It just changes its texture. We are, after all, all agriculturalists now. And 3000 years is _not_ a long time for an anthropological "revolution"!

Aunche 4y ago

> Noble savage myth The noble savage is a trope represents the innate goodness of humanity when free from the corrupting influence of civilization. If anything, it's Graeber propagating the noble savage myth. Societies that are smaller have have less stuff are obviously going to have less material inequality. That doesn't mean that they lacked hierarchies and selfishness.

moloch-hai 4y ago
We need not pretend Graeber advanced any notion that hierarchies have never existed in undocumented populations. His point is that they were often lacking in circumstances historians routinely assume, and vociferously insist, hierarchy must have been unavoidable.
- Aunche 4y ago
  Not sure who are the historians who are "vociferously insisting" that something is impossible any more than Graeber does.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    Graeber cites example after example, from throughout history and prehistory, of complex societies that displayed no evidence of permanent, pervasive hierarchical organization. It is very common for historians to insist none of that is possible, or just silently assume it without thought.
drewcoo 4y ago
> Societies that are smaller have have less stuff are obviously going to have less material inequality. As stuff approaches zero, material inequality approaches zero. In gilded ages like today, stealing from the poor and giving to the rich works better when there are more poor people from which to harvest wealth.

didntreadarticl 4y ago

Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael) wrote about this sort of thing in a non-scientific sort of way. More from a philosophy standpoint. But anyway one point he makes that really stuck with me, is that in a hunter gatherer society, you might get a tribe leader or chief or something. But if you dont like what they're doing, you can just leave and be a hunter gatherer somewhere else. No one is depending on any centralised place for food. So you can get complex social structures if thats what everyone wants, but hierarchies are difficult to maintain by force. People will just quit if they dont like it. Whereas in an agricultural society, you get specialisation of skills which helps towards the sort of thing we now think of as 'progress' but you can also have hierarchies enforced by force because someone or some subgroup ends up in charge of the food and can lock it away, and peoples option to just leave and go and fend for themselves is less feasible and so they get stuck being subjects of some ruler. TLDR: You dont have to think of hunter gatherer societies as simple or backward. But they are less likely to have deep hierarchies and specialisation

fckgnad 4y ago
No I don't think this is true. Hierarchies are heavily part of human behavior. The concept of leaders and rank is so ingrained in behavior it's hard to think it didn't exist even in hunter and gatherer societies. Right now we have enough wealth such that everyone can live comfortably. But a lot of people still fight tooth and nail in the rat race all for what? For wealth partly but mostly for Rank. The higher your rank the better it's a huge driving force emotionally... especially for men. Desire for high rank is an inborn biological instinct. This is confirmed in psychology across all cultures. All men are emotionally more satisfied the higher their rank. For women it's also a huge driving force for mate selection. Women marry up. They have a strong desire to marry the highest ranking man. I would imagine in hunter and gather societies rank is maintained by two things. Brute force and social proof. Bigger men have more brute force to maintain leadership (hence why a lot of women are attracted to height) and social proof and respect insures that other men trust you and are more likely to listen to you. That being said coercion to build things like pyramids or grand multi-year projects of vast scale requires someone to own wealth. This type of serfdom like heirarchy is much stronger then the hierarchies that existed in hunterer gatherer societies. Definitely more stable since wages and survival required someone to stay at their hierarchical post. Either way hierarchies DID exist in hunter gatherer societies. It's just the tribe leader doesn't have enough power to coerce all men into building a pyramid. That being said I believe the article is disputing this part of what I'm saying but I don't think hierarchies are disputed.

fckgnad 4y ago

I just started reading this. I'm hopeful but the forward and the first chapter don't look good. First off at least one of the authors is into social justice. Social Justice tenants run completely counter to many of the findings of anthropology. It's a source of bias. Second the first chapter comes from the perspective of introducing a better anthropological narrative given a lack of non-depressing stories of human civilization. I'm here for the truth, I'm not looking for narratives that are good or bad. Literally the book goes into "political implications" of alternative "narratives". I quote: "HOBBESIAN AND ROUSSEAUIAN VERSIONS OF HUMAN HISTORY HAVE DIRE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS." all caps literally first chapter. Why even bring up politics at all? Let's talk about truth. The consequence of the truth is irrelevant to the truth. It could be the authors built this book with a pre-existing agenda. Whatever, if it has this many accolades I'll read it.

unmole 4y ago
Cherry picking and misrepresenting evidence to support his fringe political beliefs was David Graeber's whole shtick. Full disclaimer: I didn't read Dawn of Everything and I don't intend to. My opinion is based on Debt and some of his other writings.
gmassman 4y ago
I finished the book earlier this week, and can say it does distance itself from the initial chapters pretty quickly. They are important frames of reference, and I can definitely understand the authors reasons to include those ideas so prominently. Anthropology was developed as a western oriented study, and carries along with it many of the biases and assumptions that only Europeans could have endowed. The political climates that existed during the colonization of the Americas played an important role in the evolution of modern cultures. The book is filled with examples of different societies and how they formed, and politics has played a role in ever single instance. Regardless of if you agree with the authors’ ideologies or not, they do a pretty good job of remaining neutral when examining historical evidence. I found it a nice change of pace from the typical “westernized” explanations of how civilizations (especially Native Americans) were structured. Overall I think it’s an excellent read, well worth the investment.
4y ago

jdmtheNth 4y ago

This is another perspective on The Dawn of Everything: https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/the-gossip-trap https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/the-gossip-trap