Chapter four of The Dawn of Everything is titled “Free People, the Origin of Cultures, and the Advent of Private Property (Not necessarily in that order)”. The disorderliness celebrated in the subtitle is typical of this cheeky 700-page survey of what historical anthropology has to say about the received wisdom concerning the “rise of civilization”. On the one hand, David Wengrow and the late David Graeber puncture many a cherished assumption underpinning the standard narrative (purveyed in recent years by such writers as Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker) of how “man” ascended from a state of primitive sociality to his present civilizational heights. On the other hand, while the authors seem to delight in using evidence imaginatively to tell “a new history of humanity”, it’s often difficult to see how their speculations about particular places and times add up to a coherent story.
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