The Dawn of Everything. A New History of Humanity

Original title: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow reassemble the puzzle of human history, challenging the dominant notions of societal development as a movement from egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups — through the agricultural revolution and urbanization — to the creation of hierarchical states. According to the authors, this traditional narrative has nothing to do with facts and merely reproduces myths entrenched in historical science. Perhaps humanity is following a completely different path. Based on data from archaeology, anthropology, and related disciplines, gathered over the last few decades, and the views of indigenous thinkers, Graeber and Wengrow invite us to look at social history from outside the Western canon. The authors objectively assess the ambition of their task — understanding a new picture and having it accepted by science will take years, making it all the more important to produce a conceptual shift already now. «The Dawn of Everything» emerged as a kind of game and turned into a captivating intellectual journey.