The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

As a naturally speedy reader, I can finish a typical novel in a few hours. This is one of the ways I'm able to read so many books every year. Sometimes, though, I want a change of page and am willing to read something longer and thought-provoking. This is the case with The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by the late David Graeber and David Wengrow. It took me almost two weeks to read this book, and I'll need still longer to digest it.

The Dawn of Everything (hereafter to be abbreviated as TDoE), proposes alternate ideas for how civilization (specifically, agriculture, cities, kings, and the rise of states) developed--or, in some regions, was deliberately rejected. They discuss a variety of cultures and archeological sites, from Egypt's First Dynasty (around 3100 BC) to 17th and 18th century encounters between Europeans and Native Americans. They look at cities from Mesopotamia to Central America, slaves in ancient Rome and along the Northwest Coast, and more topics than I could possibly list. I can't summarize all the key ideas the two Davids discussed, but here are a few that I remember:

• Many cultures experimented with farming but didn't settle down to do it full-time. They might spend part of the year at one site and spend the winter fishing or hunting.
• Women may have been the ones experimenting with agriculture and textiles.
• Care-giving used to be valued more highly. However, slave-owning cultures may delegate this work to slaves.
• Two settlements close to each other may deliberately adopt opposite values to distinguish themselves. 
• Some ancient cities lack palaces or other signs of an elite class, suggesting the occupants may have governed themselves through networks of obligations. There are prehistoric sites where people may have temporarily gathered for rituals or big projects, but there are no signs they were forced to do this by a leader.
• Kings come to power by control of violence, control of information (administrators), or personal charisma. 
• The classification of a group of people as a tribe or state is less important than how they organize themselves.
  

Most importantly, many Native American cultures defined freedom as the ability to relocate, the ability to disobey or disregard orders, and the ability to imagine alternate ways of organizing themselves. (I think of these as freedoms of body, will, and mind.) For example, a chief may have absolute power in his village, but the rest of the tribe may choose to live out of his reach. Tribes may choose to be ruled by a council and require representatives from every clan to be part of the decision-making process.

With so many sweeping generalizations in this book, there were a few that I thought went too far (specifically, saying Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries who were taken into Native American groups unanimously returned to them when given a choice. Another statement I didn't agree with was the idea that animals never accumulate a surplus of food. What about bees or ants? A New York Times science article from last week states that in some species, animals can inherit high status or even tools from their parents, which give them an edge.) It would have been helpful to have footnotes on the page with the text instead of at the end (though since the Notes section was about 80 pages, that might not have been practical.) Still, in a world where most of us are not able to relocate easily or disregard orders, a book that restores the ability to imagine other lifestyles is invaluable, especially for speculative fiction writers.