In their 2021 book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber and David Wengrow work to upend numerous entrenched assumptions about the origins of complex human societies, urban settlements and nation-states, and the global problem of social inequality.

An anthropologist and archeologist, respectively, the authors examine the latest archeological evidence and reinterpret decades of anthropological study to provide detailed accounts of how early human societies developed. Their project is to reject the traditional narrative that small hunter-gatherer bands of humans lived in egalitarian harmony before they discovered agriculture, settled down, scaled up their populations and implemented hierarchical systems of administrative and political control. Instead, the authors argue that organizing processes were much more complex and reveal a significant level of conscious self-determination.

Released by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2021, The Dawn of Everything has sparked lively debate among scholars and armchair historians alike.

Summary

The authors discuss the lingering influence of two early political philosophers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), over historical scholarship and anthropological study. The authors refute both thinkers, proposing another way of looking at early human history and its contributions to the present. They wish to restore specificity and complexity to early human societies, letting the evidence reveal that the past was definitively more complicated and the people infinitely more sophisticated than current accounts of history would have it.

The answers to the problem of social inequality, the authors argue, are complex and varied. They illustrate what is called the “Indigenous critique” of Western culture, wherein Indigenous Amerindians pointed out the flaws and contradictions in European society. Indeed, such critiques reveal the political sophistication and democratic leanings of 17th- and 18th-century Amerindian philosophy and society. The authors argue that this thinking influenced Enlightenment ideals, rather than the other way around—though centuries of conquest and domination have obscured the Amerindian contributions.

The authors provide evidence that reveals the fluidity of early human societies. It was not uncommon for a society to live as an egalitarian hunter-gatherer band for one season of the year, when food was scarce and groups scattered, then to live as a centralized tribe, with some type of ruling authority, in one settled area for another season of the year. While vestiges of this social fluidity exist in certain modern festivals and celebratory times of the calendar year, the authors find the more pressing issue to be why modern society has lost most of this fluidity. The standard arguments—that once humans settled into agricultural communities, the concept of private property inevitably followed, which led to social inequality—do not hold up considering recent archeological evidence.

The authors debunk popular myths about agriculture and its impact on civilization. The advent of agriculture did not represent the beginnings of some new and inevitable form of human society, replete with top-down organization and social inequality. Instead, farming was often a last resort, and there is archeological evidence to suggest that its adoption in certain parts of the world, as in Central Europe, was a failure. Many early societies relied on a combination of methods, as mentioned above, to ensure their survival.

The earliest cities were formed and functioned in a variety of ways. There appears to be no single pathway to urbanization, nor is there a straightforward pattern of governance across societies. The mix of farming, foraging, fishing, and hunting could be preserved in such regions. Moreover, the authors also suggest that, while archeological evidence is not always available, there is reason to believe that many of these early communities practiced some form of democracy.

The authors argue there is no single, original form of social organization that precedes the solidification of what today is the dominant form of political control in the world, the nation-state. Instead, there were multiple beginnings originating from various forms and combinations of social control. Three central forms of social control—sovereignty, bureaucracy, and politics—are adopted to varying degrees and in different combinations by distinct societies across the globe. They provide archeological and anthropological evidence from societies in Mesoamerica, Ancient Egypt, Africa, China, and Mesopotamia.

The authors return to the idea of the Indigenous critique. They relay the example of Cahokia, which they suggest is the first “state” to exist in the Americas. Apparently, as the city-state grew, so too did authoritarian rule and extreme violence. After some centuries of what appears to be surveillance, brutal punishment, and constant warfare, Cahokia is abandoned, and the area is left unpopulated. Most Indigenous peoples return to tribal systems of government and self-consciously reject forms of authoritarian rule, instead adopting traditions of democratic debate and communal forms of social organization.

In the concluding chapter, the authors recount all their main arguments and examine the function of myth. They emphasize that there was nothing inevitable in how human history and society developed, nor is there anything fixed and unyielding about the problem of social inequality.