The Dawn of Everything

Ambitious narratives should be supported by significant evidence. This is not an easy thing to do when the narrative encompasses the large sweep of human history. An anthropologist and an archaeologist teamed up to write a 500+ page tome with the ambitiously titled The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Sadly, one of the authors, David Graeber, passed away. It remains to be seen whether his co-author David Wengrow will follow-up the story – there is still much to uncover.

 

Many parts of the story were not so new to me because I had previously read Against the Grain and The Art of Not Being Governed, both by James C. Scott. A number of the themes Scott writes about are echoed by Graber and Wengrow. I find their work more compelling than the large sweeps provided by Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel) or Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens) with captivating sweeps that are conceptually ‘cleaner’ and perhaps downplay the messiness of human history and how much we really don’t know about the past.

 

There are several conceptual pieces in The Dawn of Everything that struck me. The most prominent is how the authors underpin three conceptual parts that give the modern nation-state their particular flavor of dominance, bureaucracy and governance. Sovereignty is one piece; some ancient ‘kingdoms’ had a monarch in a central role who wielded power – although being able to enforce one’s will was much more limited in the ancient world. Administration is another piece; it is related to esoteric knowledge and results in management applied on a larger scale via the use of specialists. Charismatic competition is the third piece; these may feature voting and election of leaders but may also encompass how decision-making is made that affects the whole ‘tribe’. The authors highlight ancient societies that focused on one of the three, which are then followed by others that combine two of the three. They speculate how this might take place, but leave the question open. And how the three parts come together in modern dominions was likely planned for a future book.

 

The strength of their arguments come from a wide range of examples including many puzzling ones such as Teotihuacan and several other societies in the early Americas. I was familiar with the famous Mayan and Incan ‘empires’, and I knew something about the more shadowy Olmecs. I’d also read a lot about Egypt, Sumeria, the near East, – although I didn’t realize how unusual Knossus (Crete) was until reading the authors’ analyses. I knew something about the Shang dynasty, but I was intrigued to learn of what might have come before. The authors also provided new insight into the Indus valley ‘civilization’ cities. I also came away with the appreciation that words such as ‘empire’, ‘kingdom’, ‘tribe’ or ‘civilization’ carry with them a lot of baggage.

 

Schismogenesis – when societies expressedly try to distinguish themselves from their neigbors – gets a prominent treatment by Graber and Wengrow. They expand on Scott’s observations where he contrasts the societies of the plains versus those in the hinterlands. I think the argument is relevant today as globalization continues its steady march. We see the polarization among different people groups, and increased “us versus them” rhetoric. Interestingly, Graber and Wengrow started their quest to explore “what are the origins of inequality?” and then went down a huge rabbit hole. They haven’t answered their original question, perhaps as they suggest, because it’s the wrong question to ask. I’m happy that they didn’t stop with Hobbes and Rousseau (which is where they started) but instead give their reader something much richer and more complex.

 

I won’t make any of their arguments here – because I would not do them justice at all in a short informal blog post. (Read their book!) I will however, in closing, quote one paragraph in their Conclusion that gives you a flavor of their writing and the interesting questions they explore. I found it both powerful and revealing.

 

“Social science has been largely a study of the ways in which human beings are not free: the way that our actions and understandings might be said to be determined by forces outside our control. Any account which appears to show human beings collectively shaping their own destiny, or even expressing freedom for its own sake, will likely be written off as illusory, awaiting ‘real’ scientific explanation; or if none is forthcoming (why do people dance?), as outside the scope of social theory entirely. This is one reason why most ‘big histories’ place such a strong focus on technology. Dividing up the human past according to the primary material from which tools and weapons were made (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age) or else describing it as a series of revolutionary breakthroughs (Agricultural Revolution, Urban Revolution, Industrial Revolution), they then assume that the technologies themselves largely determine the shape that human societies will take for centuries to come – or at least until the next abrupt and unexpected breakthrough comes along to change everything again.”

 

And with that, I was motivated to play a game of History of the World this weekend. (The Sumerians survived the seven epochs!) Even though its narrative encompasses monolithic empire-building and subsequent shattering, much the opposite of The Dawn of Everything, but one is indeed reminded that such empires are not built to last. Dusk still comes and Ozymandias turns to dust.