The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
by David Graeber and David Wengrow
In a continuing trend on my bookshelf, this is yet another astonishing piece of non-fiction that shreds the modern #Scientism paradigm.
Again, we are going after #anthropology and #archaeology, and particularly the idea that human social organization has evolved smoothly from simple hunter-gatherer / anarchism, through agriculture / feudalism, to the current industrial / nation state mandatory repression situation. From freedom and simplicity to increasingly complex, restrictive, and hierarchical social structures.
The authors dismantle this belief system with a multitude of examples, from deep prehistory to the recent past, of human social organization not only experimenting with ideas that are "inappropriate" for the time and place, but sometimes even oscillating between radically different social arrangements in winter and summer, or neighboring societies that seem to consciously organize themselves to NOT be like their neighbors, going in opposite directions.
This picture is one of variety and a deep willingness (seemingly lost in modern times) to experiment. Particularly noteworthy for anarchists are the examples throughout history and all over the world of very large communities / cities that seem to do just fine with little or no hierarchical structure.
This was a very good and engaging scholarly read, the last third of the book consumed entirely by citations.
#review #bookreview