Questioning current narratives on humans
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow is a big book in the mould of Guns, Germs and Steel, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Sapiens and so on – except that it sets out to bust those all-encompassing narratives.
Humans have existed for roughly 2 lakh years but most of that past – at least 95% – is obscure to us. About 10,000 years ago, humans began farming, domesticating plants and animals. Agricultural surplus led to hierarchy and private property, cities took root, armies were needed, as was specialisation. With increasing sophistication from tribe to kingdom and state, and with industrialisation, came the gifts and curses of modernity. In this telling, inequality is the price of progress, of a complex society.
This consensus about ‘prehistory’ is invoked to draw lessons about who we essentially are, and how societies naturally evolve. It appeals to Hobbesian cynics (like Steven Pinker today), who say that thuggishness and calculating self-interest make us human, that we are propelled forward because social institutions police our baser drives. It also appeals to romantics from Rousseau to Yuval Noah Harari, for whom the state of nature has an Edenic allure. The point is, the worldview has everything to do with the narrative.
Humans have existed for roughly 2 lakh years but most of that past – at least 95% – is obscure to us. About 10,000 years ago, humans began farming, domesticating plants and animals. Agricultural surplus led to hierarchy and private property, cities took root, armies were needed, as was specialisation. With increasing sophistication from tribe to kingdom and state, and with industrialisation, came the gifts and curses of modernity. In this telling, inequality is the price of progress, of a complex society.
This consensus about ‘prehistory’ is invoked to draw lessons about who we essentially are, and how societies naturally evolve. It appeals to Hobbesian cynics (like Steven Pinker today), who say that thuggishness and calculating self-interest make us human, that we are propelled forward because social institutions police our baser drives. It also appeals to romantics from Rousseau to Yuval Noah Harari, for whom the state of nature has an Edenic allure. The point is, the worldview has everything to do with the narrative.