Delaware County District Library

The dawn of everything, a new history of humanity, David Graeber and David Wengrow

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 611-673) and index

mapsillustrations

index present

non fiction

The dawn of everything

bibliography

David Graeber and David Wengrow

a new history of humanity

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike--either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this dialectic has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors illustrate how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual blinders and perceive what's really there.

Farewell to humanity's childhood, Or, why this is not a book about the origins of inequality -- Wicked liberty: The indigenous critique and the myth of progress -- Unfreezing the Ice Age: In and out of chains: the protean possibilities of human politics -- Free people, the origin of cultures, and the advent of private property (not necessarily in that order) -- Many seasons ago: Why Canadian foragers kept slaves and their Californian neighbours didn't; or, the problem with 'modes of production' -- Gardens of Adonis: The revolution that never happened: how Neolithic peoples avoided agriculture -- The ecology of freedom: How farming first hopped, stumbled and bluffed its way around the world -- Imaginary cities: Eurasia's first urbanites -- in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Ukraine and China -- and how they built cities without kings -- Hiding in plain sight: The indigenous origins of social housing and democracy in the Americas -- Why the state has no origin: The humble beginnings of sovereignty, bureaucracy, and politics -- Full circle: On the historical foundations of the indigenous critique -- Conclusion: The dawn of everything

New history of humanity