[Review] The Dawn of Everything

[petrea_mitchell]

Full title: The Dawn of Everything: A New HIstory of Humanity
Authors: David Graeber and David Wengrow
PUblisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021

The Dawn of Everything aims to shake up everything the pop-science reader has been taught to believe about prehistoric human societies.

It falls into roughly three sections. In the first, the authors tackle popular misconceptions about "primitive" peoples, starting from the imperialist-era myth that the noble savage represented the state of innocence that all humanity began in, up through more recent variations of the idea and into other now-debunked ones. Along the way, they name and flame all their least favorite popular writers (Jared Diamond appears to be at the top of the list).

After two or three chapters of this the book transitions into the fun part, which occupies most of the book. Here, Graeber and Wngrow gleefully produce example after example that fails to conform to the standard anthropological models developed in the 19th and 20th centuries: Societies which don't fit the standard band -> tribe -> chiefdom -> state progression. Societies which oscillated between two categories on an annual basis. Societies which figured out casual agriculture and then stuck with that for a long time rather than proceeding straight to intensive-full time agriculture like they are supposed to. States without the assumed required powers of states, kings whose authority only reached a few hundred yards away from their person, societies which built organized monumental architecture, supposedly the final peak of civilization, and then went "nah" and switched to entirely different city plans.

In the conclusion, the authors restate their opposition to the myth of the fall from grace, but then turn around and proceed to argue their own version of it. Humanity once had basic freedoms which are now lost, they say, as society has become "stuck" in a mode which no longer allows experimentation with different modes of living. Where did it all go wrong, exactly? They can't quite bring themselves to say, and so the book ends in a frustrating ellipsis.

What is never stated in the text, but feels crucial for understanding it, is that Graeber and Wengrow are self-identified small-c communists. Knowing that, one can see a theme to the examples that are given in detail, and catch the moment, a couple chapters before the end, where they do point out how they think it went wrong (not a specific historical moment, but an attitude shift that has occurred in more than one context).

If you love books like 1491, the fun part is absolutely worth reading the whole book. It just behooves the reader that these authors, no less than the ones they villify, also bring an agenda to the stories they choose to tell. I'm keeping my copy, personally, but it gets to sit next to a Jared Diamond book.

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

This was interesting, thank you!

[pauraque]

I should check this out. I loved Graeber's Debt, which is like this except focused on the history of money and banking systems. He definitely wrote from a certain political perspective, but is work was very thoroughly researched and eye-opening. It is such a shame that he died rather young.

[cactus_rs]

Debt is so good, I kind of regret leaving my copy at my parents' house because I probably need to read it at least two more times to really understand everything.

*

[minoanmiss]

Guns, Germs, and Steel saved my life in high school, so I've been contemplating this book ever since I heard about it, both on the subject of human societies and on the promised critique of Diamond. Your review very much encourages me to lay hands on a copy.

Re: *

[cactus_rs]

If you want a concentrated dose of Jared Diamond and GG&S criticism, it's a favorite topic on the badhistory subreddit, for example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/6owzax/bad_history_of_writing_guns_germs_and_steel_chp/