A Hidden History of Humanity

 “The Dawn of Everything – A New History of Humanity,” by David Graeber and David Wengrow, 2021

This is a book of anthropology, taking aim at the sidelining of many early examples of egalitarianism, ‘freedom’ and indigenous life by most conventional anthropologists, including people like Jared Diamond.  The book is based on new discoveries as well as the clarification of older sources that were misinterpreted or ignored.  Graeber is a deceased but well-known anarchist, and his argument is along these lines, trying to find examples of indigenous and ancient democracies, egalitarianism, freedom and logic in the ruins of villages, cities and documents.  This is a more sophisticated and left-wing view of the past than most academics project, showing variations, anomalies and quite clear exceptions to rigid and simple classifications of periods of history.

Graeber/Wengrow have succeeded in crafting a genial narrative of educated speculation, impish questions and actual facts spanning the Indus Valley, the west coast of North America, the forests of the Great Lakes, the Puebla & Mexic Valleys of Mexico, the highlands of Turkey, the Yellow River in China, farming areas in central Europe, the Ukrainian plain, the lower Mississippi Valley, the Amazonian region, the Peruvian Andes, Yucatan’s swamps, Basque villages, southern Sudan along the Nile, ancient Egypt, Minoan Crete and the legendary ‘Fertile Crescent’ in the Middle East.  They cover various hunter-gatherer societies, styles of early farming, some of the oldest types of cities and the rudimentary evidence of states and non-states. 

They criticize mainstream anthropology for putting modern (and oppressive) templates on past human settlements, not seeing them in their variety and real significance, presenting them as either “Hobbesian” or ‘noble savages’ in the Rousseau tradition, or just backdated examples of modern society, cities or states.  They also oppose the influence of technological determinism – ‘guns, germs and steel’ – on views of the past.

The authors emphasize the role of politics in the choices of social organization, not just the influence of modes of subsistence. Humans make their own societies ultimately – it is not some automatic product according to them. They cover the reality that many indigenous groups were more free, equal and democratic than their colonial discoverers.  It includes the role of various forms of (small) private property, some leading to bits of hierarchy and some not, in indigenous clan life. Or how academics have ignored democratic forms and content in a good number of tribal societies and cities.  They contravene simple images of primitive communism and egalitarian tribes, ‘complexity’s’ role in the growth of cities or the dour impact of agriculture. They point out that women were sidelined at the beginnings of inequality and stratification in societies, as kings mimicked the ‘head of household.’ They claim there is no origin to the state … which seems more of a playful joke on the authors’ part, as the state clearly exists.  Immaculate conception is not really a thing.

Graeber spends no time on the influence of modes of production or subsistence, while also sidelining labor and poverty - seemingly seeing these as part of the woodwork. This would comport with the anarchist idea that ‘hierarchy,’ bureaucracy and warfare are the things to be concerned with.  They make fun of many terms in anthropology, and come up with a few on their own.   

10 years of research, in 526 pages, led to discoveries or confirmation of less common anthropological, archeological and ultimately political views, which they have organized under the somewhat overblown title The Dawn of Everything – A New History of Humanity.  It is an easy, conversational and enjoyable read, a broad introduction to anthropology and should be required reading for everyone involved in the field, along with Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State and The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.

·    *  They highlight ‘the indigenous critique’ of colonial society by an orator and thinker called Kandiaronk of the Huron / Wendet tribe, which was relayed to Europe by the French Jesuits.  Kandiaronk pointed out the cruel treatment of French citizens, the dominating role of money, land ownership and property and the idiocy of ranks and kings among the Europeans.  This critique in favor of ‘liberty’ and mutual aid was also made by the Iroquois / Haudenosaunee.

·       *They only once mention the 'leveling' influences from Europe itself – Greek and Roman philosophy, Spartacus and slave rebellions, peasant rebellions, even medieval folk culture - which also influenced Enlightenment thinking as to equality, freedom and real democracy.

·       *One of the authors overarching concepts is that ‘freedom’ consists of 1, the freedom to leave or travel; 2, the freedom to ignore instructions and 3, the freedom to ‘create another way of life.’  You might see how this definition of ‘freedom’ could be misused, as it ignores material freedom, like the freedom to eat.

·        *Another tack is their opposition to the idea that complexity, a city or irrigation systems require a hierarchy.  They show examples of how early farmers or city dwellers collectively decided things without a ruler or a bureaucracy.  This opposes the conventional idea that any organization over 150 people requires a boss.

·        *They identify 3 aspects of what they consider to be the state – violence, control of information (bureaucracy) and charisma, i.e. a revered, all-powerful leader.  They track how various societies put 1, 2 or all 3 of these together, and sometimes none.  As you can see, the state's 'control of the surplus' is missing.

·        *One of their key ideas is schismogenesis – that side-by-side societies style themselves in a different manner from their neighbors, so that very different social patterns could exist nearby.  This could be a somewhat negative habit, as it might reject perfectly good ideas or methods by neighbors … and also the reverse, rejecting a bad example.  Their examples come from bands and cities in Mexico, eastern and coastal North America and the Middle East.  For instance, along the U.S. west coast, slave holding and non-slave holding bands existed side by side.

·        *They highlight the concept of ‘play’ in these societies – not just in the conventional sense of games, festivals, gambling and the like, but in the sense of ‘play farming,’ ‘play warfare,’ ‘play kings’ and ‘play obedience.’  This is to illustrate how people did not all of a sudden become full farmers, or warriors, or actual kings or subjects.  It took many millennia sometimes. 

·        *Seasonality is a big issue in hunter/gatherer/ ‘play’ farming societies.  They recorded how the seasons could change a whole society for a few months, only to go back to its normal state when the meetings, celebrations or religious events were over and people got away from kings, priests, overseers or judges.  These societies sometimes created massive public works in these periods, such as Stonehenge and Cahokia near Natchez.

·        *While some think early humans stayed put, there is much evidence of travel and trade over very long distances, by foot, boat and horse.

·        *They highlight the concept of control by a ruler and ‘care’ within a home.  A patriarchy will impose a ruler in the home too, resulting in the oppression of women, children and domestic slaves.  This is illustrated in Roman law, which was adopted by Britain and later, the U.S. 

·        *They focus on the matriarchy of Minoan Crete, a water-born trading nation, where a women’s council made decisions.  This was similar in other societies, where women had their own groups, though not ruler-ship.  They detail how women invented weaving and many agricultural skills, while sometimes being a hindrance to warfare.

·        *Slavery from war captives was common in some indigenous clans.  For instance the Huron would adopt, use or torture captive men to death – but had no discipline when it came to their own village folks or children.

·        *They cite a good number of examples of cities on the Euphrates, in Peru, in Mexico, that were organized on a somewhat democratic line.  In the Mexico Valley, after a revolution against human sacrifice and monument building, the Teotihuacan society built almost exactly equal-sized housing.

·        *The authors link the beginnings of property with that of religion, sacredness and worship.

·       * Agriculture does not automatically lead to slavery or a tribute society.

·        *They point out that ‘equality before the law’ only relates to a sovereign, not to actual lived equality.

·       * ‘Civilization’ is many times the name given to very organized and impressive barbarism.

·        *The Aztec, Inca, Shang, Sumerian and Egyptian ‘empires’ are many times the only models.  But even in Egypt the workers building the pyramids got bread and beer during festivals, because the lords had to show some consideration.

The Republic of Tlaxcala joins with Cortes against the Aztecs

Their main point is that progressive and communistic societies in early history are ignored.  The many exceptions are irrelevant to academe, while monuments, bloody emperors or kings, gods, expensive trinkets, ornate funerals, warfare, palaces, temples and pyramids are focused on, ignoring the millennia where ‘ordinary’ human life went on, without much war, hierarchy or dictatorship. 

The authors think that the anthropology view of ‘evolutionism’ (that is what they call it!...) makes the present armed, bureaucratic and exploitative class societies inevitable. They fail to answer the key question - how did we get to the present, or ‘stuck’ as they say? 

The authors defend meta-narratives against post-modernism, oppose the fascistic notion of ‘circular time,’ yet reject Marxist approaches to property and modes of production, and indeed, some key material issues like surplus or its absence.  The authors have no truck with concepts like ‘quantity into quality’ and never mention class struggle.  They think the idea of the ‘origin of inequality’ is also bogus. They do understand the role of internal contradictions, which they observe created revolutions against cruel, unequal or corrupt rule even within several ancient social structures.  They also frequently note dialectic argument, which they highlight among early ‘republican’ councils across the world.

Yet the authors have nothing to substitute as a meta-narrative, saying the truth “will remain a matter of speculation.”  This is actually a very long treatise of interesting and progressive facts, correctives and theories that don’t quite add up to explaining the present, or, as they put it “how we got stuck.”

P.S. - Guardian reports on ancient and 'equal' Zapotec city of Monte Alban in Oaxaca, Mexico.  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/16/monte-alban-mexico-zapotec-community-oaxaca

Prior reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using these terms:  “The Utopia of Rules – On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy” “Bullshit Jobs – A Theory,”& “Debt – the First 500 Years” (all 3 by Graeber); “Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” & “Guns, Germs and Steel – the Fates of Human Societies” (both by Diamond); “People’s History of Science,”  “Liquidated – An Ethnography of Wall Street,” “Time and Time Again”(Rifkin); “Patriarchy of the Wage” (Federici); “The Age of the Vikings.”

And I bought it at May Day Books, which carries many of Graeber’s works.

Red Frog

March 1, 2021

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