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The Dawn of Everything

A New History of Humanity

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The Dawn of Everything

Written by: David Graeber, David Wengrow
Narrated by: Malk Williams
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Buy Now for $37.30

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About this listen

 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Renowned activist and public intellectual David Graeber teams up with professor of comparative archaeology David Wengrow to deliver a trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution--from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality--and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.

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 only be achieved by sacrificing those original freedoms, or alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. Graeber and 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 encounter 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 path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what's really there. If humans did not spend 95% of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? What was really happening during the periods that we usually describe as the emergence of "the state"? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.

The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. Archaeology Biological Sciences Science Social Sciences World Thought-Provoking
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I really enjoyed the thought that went behind ancient history and how different of a place it may have been. A must listen for people who want to understand and further conceptuallize the deep past. We are so caught up in our current paradigm that it is hard to conceive of anything else. I also appreciated the authors referencing of First Nation's cultures, its impacts on European thought and respecting people as people across both time and space.

The narrator was engaging and well spoken. Highly reccomended.

Ancient history revolutionary thought

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Highly recommend. The proposed concept that our historical knowledge os ancient societal norms may have a lot to teach us is provocative and far reaching.

Aside from its great content the reader’s performance is exceptionally good and captivating.

Fantastic and inspiring book

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narrator was great. tone was playful but not ridiculous. looking forward to my reread of it.

An excellent primer on new historical information

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This book not only presents new archaeological research about civilizations and cultures you never learned about, but it also does so with a philosophical depth that helps you question how and why we’ve interpreted the past through the lens of the western canon. The western canon, after all, is just one socio-cultural lens among many, and by approaching our history through many other lenses, we are able to develop new questions about our diverse histories — the book is filled with great questions to help guide future research and thinking.

Finally, a truly global history of humanity

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The authors do an excellent job of reviewing the literature and starting from a position of curiosity in their analysis. Complex yet very clear.

Complex and clear.

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