The Dawn of Everything challenges a mainstream telling of prehistory
middleeasteye.net
middleeasteye.net
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.
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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.
It is not necessary.
I'm reading the book right now, I'm not an English native speaker so I'm being a bit slow, but I've watched several videos about it (that's how I knew about the book, thanks YouTube) and the first thing that got me excited was that, for the first time since I remember, this theory is not patronizing towards ancient civilizations.
All our building blocks are based on the concept "they couldn't possibly be capable of", while it is now evident that not only they could, but they did.
The second thing I liked about Wengrow was that he acknowledges that questions such as "was there an advanced civilization before the Sumerians?" are legitimate questions, historians and archeologists should embrace that mentality and answer the questions, not try to disprove wild theories proposed by amateurs and sometimes plain crooks. It doesn't necessarily follow that it was the aliens of course, but, AFAICR, at school they taught me that "it was impossible", not that we don't know, but that humans were, in layman terms, "too stupid to even think about it" and in the end the unanswered questions, the fact that people see that the evidence do not add up, lead to the success of people like Graham Hancock, instead of leading people to trusting the hard work on the field of historians and archeologists. It's a vicious circle that I hope this book will break.
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.
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...
https://genv.org/pigs-intelligent-human-smart/
https://nypost.com/2022/03/08/scientists-use-algorithm-to-fi...
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.
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.
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.
That said, agriculture did radically transform society, as several other technologies have done since then. I do think this is worth highlighting, it just comes off better when it's not coming from someone trying to sell you on an ideology.
Because I bet that their idea of 'egalitarian' only includes castes like priests and kings, but not men & women, and we know those groups were quite different all over the world until the technology of birth control upended things.
According to the book, some included both.
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.
But yes, they definitely take an interesting stance that's worth reading in its own right.
It seems very plausible yet it would be really satisfactory if we could piece a more complete picture of these long gone eras
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 !)
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.
It's sounds like the argument is that this generalization doesn't have lot of basis in evidence, given that it's based on potentially inaccurate identification of remains. If you start with the conclusion that the generalization is correct, then yes, of course it would be silly to ignore it. The question seems to be whether those generalizations are worth assuming at all or not.
That's why we have made so much progress in how we view Celts and different Celt cultures. We use to saw them through a Christo-latin prism, ignoring the fact that they had concubinage contract, could divorce at the initiative of the woman, who get her dowry back in that case. That also had an impact on how we saw their weapons and their woodworking/metalworking, and how their education worked. By the way, Celtic education also have implication about where the "Witch" imagery really came from but i don't care that much about the late antiquity/low middle ages, so i can't tell you much about it.
I was just giving a low-level example of critical theory, but we improved our understanding a lot now that we don't just copy our understanding to people of the time. I think it helped quite a lot our understanding of Neanderthal.
Yes. Don't use YouTube.
Or if you feel you must, download (via yt-dlp[0] or similar) videos and watch them offline.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://art19.com/shows/tides-of-history/episodes/cb335af3-e...
Wyman evaluates it with both sympathy and criticism.
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
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.
I think the tendency to follow is part of human behavior. The tendency to fight against others telling you what to do is also heavily a part of human behavior. We clearly have both aspects to our nature from a very early age.
There's a lot beyond the tendency to follow that I think of when I read the word 'hierarchies', so it's not clear how strong a claim you intend to make here.
> 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.
Rank, leadership and authority are different things. I've read accounts of rank and leadership without authority, of leadership without rank, of rank without either leadership or authority, of authority without rank (when executing the decisions of a tribal council), etc.
It is indeed hard to imagine that any society didn't have acknowledgement of expertise or impartiality and a measure of deference to it in its own sphere (therefore leaders), and even in a 'egalitarian' society there would be differences in wealth, family size, influence (and therefore 'rank'). But that doesn't necessarily mean a full throated 'hierarchy', at least as I would use the word.
Perhaps I'll read it. I will say that what I'm "claiming" is what's claimed by academia. It's the status quo. If DoE doesn't agree then I don't think it's widely regarded as good by academia.
1/3 of the pages are references and footnotes should you want to dig deeper.
Also, "academia" does not speak with one voice on the matters covered in the book.
"He was an activist and public intellectual of international repute who tried to live his ideas about social justice"
I worry that this book may be under the same light as creationism. An attempt to retrofit evidence such that it forms an awkward scaffold that maintains an existing belief about social justice. The authors clearly have a bias against the academic status quo the same way a Christiaan has a bias against the same thing.
Clearly modern anthropology does run against the grain of what a lot of social justice warriors claim to be true about human nature, so such a hesitation is not out of place.
Nevertheless, a social justice background does not necessarily preclude someone away from unbiased analysis. I will read.
It is deeply evident that big construction projects have often not required hierarchy beyond deference to an architect. The architect need have no coercive authority over anybody for this to work.
That said, I suspect you'll find that answer unsatisfying. Part of the issue here is that there isn't a single answer to give or a single ivory tower consensus to speak to. If you only want the anthro 101 description you'll find in most textbooks, I already gave it: Modern forager societies are described as "relatively egalitarian". It's not perfect (what simplification for undergrads is?), but it communicates the broad strokes.
If you want a deep, comprehensive dive into the literature, there are dozens of distinct and nuanced perspectives that refine that oversimplified model for particular groups, regions, periods, etc. I have one perspective, DoE advocates another, etc. I'd recommend "Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers" as an introduction to that topic, but really you're going to have to put in a few months of reading to get a good sense of the literature because there ultimately isn't a single framework or even a single set of frameworks that everyone uses. Another good introduction to this question more specifically is Boehm's "Hierarchy in the forest". It's not comprehensive either, but it's sort of a landmark work on the topic.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C7%83Kung_people#Social_struc...
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Australian-Aboriginal/Leade...
( FWiW
There are those that would quibble even with "the subordinate status of women notwithstanding" as being laced with an particular European PoV, the later sentence:
> Women were excluded from the core of men’s secret-sacred ritual activities, and areas of privilege were further defined by graded acceptance of youths and adult men as they passed through rites of learning.
doesn't reflect the reflective reality of women's secret-sacred ritual activities and acknowledged privilege in their rites. )
The article acknowledges that a few specific areas (more toward the PNG and Torres Strait) are more hierarchical but the thrust is clear, few exceptions aside, the bulk were not.
> pre-historic humans
Aboriginal social groups have long oral histories and a number maintained upkeep on some of the oldest rock art known on the planet .. and groups such as the Pintupi Nine that made first contact with "modern civilisation" in the mid 1980s are certainly not "pre-historic" as we have video, interviews, their artwork, etc.
> like what agriculture would end up supporting.
Quasi nomadic "hunter gather" groups have a regular circuit and a deep knowledge of the animals and plants in that area which they tend to in decisive knowlege based manner - it's not "agriculture" as European grain harvesters for winter storage may know it, but it is absolutely agriculture in the sense of tending to plants in order to eat from them and use their products (and the animals that rely upon them) in later seasons and years to come.
[1] https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_high...
(oops - map added!)
Other then that, How do we know that whether or not Aboriginals in Australia are the norm? Are they the norm or are they the exception. From my perspective the vast majority of societies have hierarchies and by virtue of being the majority it's strong evidence for hierarchies to be the more natural paradigm. Especially when paired with the biological evidence associated with serotonin and hierarchies.
Your perspective as a visitor to many of the 190+ countries across the globe, from speaking to people from many non European language groups, from talking at length online to people with internet connections, .. that experience?
If you're saying a more detailed anthropologist perspective can change my viewpoint then I'm open to changing it. However I can't change viewpoint just off of being told that my viewpoint is inaccurate. Even so I think what I say is still true. From both viewpoints it is a fact that the vast majority of modern societies have hierarchies. Is there nuance about this fact that you want to elaborate on?
Also a bit of a branching; Do you know of refutations from the biological and evolutionary perspective? Serotonin and ranking? Primate societies with no hierarchies?
And of course some cultures were so divided that there was no one who spoke for or led the community as a whole. The Waorani and Shuar of Ecuador might have fallen into this situation in the past, possibly less so now.
I have less often heard whether elders are generally recognized as leaders. I suspect that a good hunter is someone who over the course of his life has brought back a lot of meat. That would probably be someone older.
To be human is to have the power to consciously choose behavior.
We have conscious choice, sure, but that doesn't change the fact that we're part of larger systems that we only have some influence over. It also doesn't change the fact that conscious choice is somewhat biologically driven.
Also, the book makes a point about ephemeral leadership, either leadership (and the corresponding organization) that is seasonal according to the needs of the time of year, or temporary for a particular task (house building, field clearing, hunting...). Which may be what you're saying in the first paragraph about temporary groups, but they're saying this is the normal--or even only--situation in some cultures, and that furthermore it works just fine.
As for biologically driven choices, I suspect the authors would say that the range of choices is far greater than you might think.
No. But all your experience in the world is in hierarchies. You have no relevant experience to draw on.
A hierarchy is the laziest choice among ways to organize.
More evidence of the relationship between hierarchy and biology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXxKBiidbeo
Serotonin is the biological chemical that is linked with hierarchy in biology and we are awashed in it.
I'm also pretty sure any linkage of serotonin to hierarchy is unproven.
It's happened before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mead and not just with her. It's more prevalent in anthropology then in other sciences.
This is just an educated guess. If you provide actual sources I can verify what the academic community thinks of these reports or findings, and really that's the only best available metric I can go off of.
>I'm also pretty sure any linkage of serotonin to hierarchy is unproven.
Science cannot prove anything. Be very careful with your language. Especially in the social sciences where things are less quantitative... proof is fundamentally impossible. There is only evidence in favor of and evidence against.
Evidence in favor of serotonin and hierarchy: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01378-2 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anna-Ziomkiewicz-2/publ... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09594...
No. G&W is wrong and misinformed on this matter. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ypVbUBEZHg
I realize Jordan Peterson is controversial but what he talks about here is factual.
Hierarchies are not only observed in modern human societies but in ALL primate societies. From gorillas to chimpanzees. The idea that humans are an exception is very unlikely and categorically False.
Most schools of thought have valid arguments. I have presented evidence for my school of thought.
If we are being truly unbiased here, you will note you have not presented any evidence to forward your argument. At most you have told me about a person who agrees with you but no real evidence that is in favor of your argument and you have attacked my evidence as false (a statement with also no evidence). If you were truly unbiased and If I was more biased then you then you should have noted this deficiency.
The most unbiased and logical way to rectify this situation involves two possibilities: Present evidence so we can continue the discussion. Or make a statement about how it's not worth your time or some other excuse and the conversation ends with me presenting evidence and you presenting none.
I never Denied examples didn't exist. I stated your arguments of "you're wrong" prove nothing without evidence. YOU didn't present evidence on this thread; I Did; That's all I said.
I'm sure it's not a "good look" to people who've read the book, but your attitude guarantees that you alienate people on the other side. It is not only a good look to people who believe in the anthropologic status quo, but it's the one look that should matter. I mean are you here just to toot your own horn? This is essentially what I'm seeing from you: "I read the book, you do it too because you're wrong." I came seeking reasons from people like you on why this book should be read.
This book is obviously more of a fringe perspective on anthropology so it does not do you any good at all to project that attitude.
Yes, hunter/gatherer societies routinely lack hierarchies. But settled populations, throughout prehistory and history, have very often also lacked hierarchies, including in places historians insisted otherwise. And, hunter-gatherer societies have sometimes had hierarchies despite the apparent impossibility.
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.
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.
The work of Sylvia Wynter, Ngugi wa Thiong o, Edward Said, Walter Rodney among many others are probably good jumping off points.
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.
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
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Delayed gratification is the root of civilization.
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Which saying has been impressively valuable in my life
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.
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.
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.
And there might be a good justification, in the sense that maybe a lot of sudden changes happened during this period, but you’re still leaving a lot aside.
This view of history although it might present itself as the truth because it’s the status quo, it’s a narrative as it the ones who might succeed it. And you might not like it, but also had, has and will have political implications.
While I knew many of the points and facts in the book, somehow that realization had never stuck before.
History was written be the victors, pre-history even more so. The first chapters have a good point, which gets clearer later on in the book. Much of the historic narrative has been coloured by the way Eurasia thinks in the last 500 years.
And it is stuff I kind of knew or suspected, now I really internalised the idea because of the book. The main idea is obvious in retrospect.
There was diversity, but given behavioral modernity and a sufficient resource surplus, complex social organization seems to have been something close to a human universal. Graham Hancock has pointed out that prehistoric people were capable of large-scale infrastructure projects the remains of which have survived in some form to the present day - and that implies some combination of effective hierarchical organization (required to coordinate the effort of significant numbers of people, well beyond the scale of a single band or troop) and long-term time orientation.
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.
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.
I felt this book was in need of an editor much more than it was of missing information.
Thinking about this, I don't know a single book that has an economical and/or political focus that doesn't in some way or another criticize the status quo or at least challenge our understanding of it. In fact I doubt such a book would be worth reading at all.
Therefore, we should reconsider the current setup in favor of alternative models.
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.
My guess is that if there are any technological alien life out there, it likely follows the same general development, at least up to this point (given we don't know how the future plays out and of course just using our history so far, and also allowing for significantly different biologies or climates and geologies leading to divergent outcomes from ours).
I think most contemporary scholars, definitely in anthropology the discipline that Graeber and Wengrow are operating from, would call that "teleological thinking" and warn strongly against it -- the idea that the way things turned out is the only way they could have turned out, that everything was necessarily leading to this. There is actually nothing particularly innovative or unusual about arguing against it, it's quite mainstream to reject that kind of teleological thinking -- if it's a bias or agenda, it's one that is shared by mainstream scholarly disciplines.
I understand you disagree, but what you are proposing is not a current mainstream anthropological or social science way of seeing things, and to challenge it is in fact quite mainstream.
So again, I think in fact one error is giving Graeber and Wengrow too much credit for being groundbreaking here. They are not being innotivate or unusual in disagreeing with you that "it was just a matter of time" until society wound up as it is -- and scholars don't need to want to make an "attack on modern society" to disagree with you here!
What those scholars instead seem to be arguing against--assuming I'm understanding your explanation correctly--is that history has directionality, in the same sense that biological evolution has some directionality (thereby creating creatures that are better adapted to their environment, at least until that environment changes). Darwin's idea was to separate the two kinds of directionality, and provide a plausible mechanism for the one.
Same in population density and technological advances leading to "civilization" (the point you're responding to). This is not teleology, this is a sense that hill climbing will eventually lead to a certain outcome (and maybe further outcomes in the future that we can't conceive of now). Whether this is true is, of course, a different question. But calling it "teleology" is missing the point.
> I understand you disagree, but what you are proposing is not a current mainstream anthropological or social science way of seeing things, and to challenge it is in fact quite mainstream.
I'm not aware that they disagree with the idea that more complex social structures emerge over time. Of course it doesn't have to happen, say if an extinction event had occurred or a permanent ice age prevented the right conditions from coming about.
- 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.
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 :-)
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.
On the other hand there are definitely cultural inflection points (like writing or numeracy) that seem to have reshaped the ability of a trained brain in a very short period of time. E.g. if you compare writings from the same civilization / region just several hundred years apart (Homeric poems vs Classic Athenian philosophy) its hard to believe its even the same species...
Instead perhaps the local priest might have discussed the next sacrifice needed to bring the rains.
For as long as there has been humans, there has been politics.
The 2 party corrupt form of politics that is the mainstay in US does not require reasoning ability beyond the ability of a 30'000 Homo Sapien?
It might my definition of politics but I doubt very much that what our ancestors were practicing 30k years ago wasn't politic in any sense that we could understand.
Communally sharing knowledge about watering holes and what the next door tribe was doing was probably more along the lines of what was discussed.
Societal informational interchange isn't politic. Politic is, for me, a group of people coming together (I.e. The ruling class) and deciding what the group as a whole (i.e. Everyone else) should be doing.
Why do you say politics didn’t exist long ago?
> Instead perhaps the local priest might have discussed the next sacrifice needed to bring the rains.
So… politics?
Grade inflation has a lot to answer for. It's a serious problem in the UK but understandable, all statistics are designed to bolster the image of the organisation producing them.
Several remarks here. It is growing with time. Average IQ grows every year such that they have to re-normalize it all the time. This is on a very short timescale though.
Second, there is logic behind an actual theory that prehistoric humans were actually SMARTER then modern day humans. A human back in the day had much more to deal with in order to survive. Nowadays you can get away with working at menial and repetitive jobs. This implies that there is less recent evolutionary pressure for maintaining high intelligence indicating at the possibility of humans becoming stupider in modern times.
I think their mission of puncturing the grand narratives of the evolution of human society is a good one, and I think they have the evidence, but I'm not sure it's going to have any effect in the long run.
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"!