 SUMMARY

OF

The Dawn of Everything:

A New History of Humanity 

By

David Graeber & David Wengrow

Oscar V. Clarissa

1
  Disclaimer
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the content from the book “The Dawn of Everything:
A New History of Humanity”
Copyright © by Oscar V. Clarissa 2022. All rights reserved.
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please purchase an additional copy for each person you
share it with. Copyright © Oscar V. Clarissa

2
 Table Of Content
Introduction
Chapter 1;
Society didn't grow in a straight line.
Chapter 2;
The "indigenous critique" sparked a wave of
Enlightenment theories that continue to
influence contemporary thought.
Chapter 3;
Agriculture was much more diverse than we
are led to believe.

Chapter 4;
When concepts of ownership and the sacred
emerged, once-forgotten freedoms began to
deteriorate.
Chapter 5;
3
It is common for neighboring cultures to form
social institutions in response to one another.
Chapter 6;
While rural communities adopted an
agricultural lifestyle, their highland neighbors
did the opposite.
Chapter 7;
Hierarchies did not immediately emerge when
people began to congregate in urban centers.
Chapter 8;

In the beginning, kings relied on spectacular

acts of violence to demonstrate their cosmic
power and necessity.

Chapter 9;
4
Experimentation and reaction led to the
development of the "indigenous critique,"
which continues to exist in a variety of forms
today.

Conclusion

• About The Authors

5
David Graeber taught anthropology at the London
School of Economics. His work includes Debt:The Initial
5,000 Years and Terrible Jobs: A Theory, as well as The
Guardian, The Baffler, and Harper's Magazine. His early
efforts in Zuccotti Park made Occupy Wall Street a
movement that defined an era. He is a well-known
thinker and activist. On September 2, 2020, he died.
David Wengrow has been a visiting professor at New
York University and teaches comparative archaeology at
the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.
He has written several books, the most recent of which is
What Makes Civilization? Wengrow works in the Middle
East and Africa on archaeological excavations.• Author
David Graeber was an anarchist and American
anthropologist. He was the author of several books,
including Debt:The Initial 5,000 Years
British archaeologist David Wengrow has written a lot
about Neolithic societies and the first states in Egypt and
Mesopotamia.

 About The Book

6
Based on recent discoveries in the fields of anthropology
and archaeology, The Dawn of Everything (2021)
reimagines human history. The authors say that new
findings challenge what we thought we knew about
inequality, property, the state, and hierarchies.

 Introduction
What can I can from these summaries?
7
Get a thorough examination of the genesis of political
hierarchies.
Prehistoric humans, we like to believe, were simpler than
we are today. We might even believe them to be stupid,
like cavemen and women chewing on raw meat with
clubs. Naturally, these portrayals are far from accurate.
There is no documentary in The Flintstones. However,
these ideas point to a fundamental idea that has been
held for a long time by intellectuals and philosophers:
that people of the past were incapable of abstract
political thought or social organization.
We now know this is not the case.
Prehistoric people were certainly political, according to
new research. They disagreed over more than just
political arrangements; Those plans were the subject of
discussion and debate. A clear picture is provided by the
archaeological and anthropological evidence: We’ve
known for a long time that prehistoric societies were
more interesting and complex than we thought.
You will learn the true story of how modern concepts of
property, human rights, and the state emerged, as well

8
as the reasons why history is still being written, in these
summaries.

• Chapter 1

 Society didn't grow in a straight line.

9
There are two competing narratives regarding the
development of human society.
The first one is from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a French
philosopher, and it goes like this: We were all hunter-
gatherers once upon a time. We lived in small groups and
were all roughly equal. The development of agriculture
followed. We stopped gathering and hunting and learned
how to cultivate animals and plants. Political structures
became more complicated as a result of this agricultural
revolution, and cultural phenomena like literature, the
arts, and philosophy also developed. Additionally, it gave
rise to hierarchical phenomena like mass execution,
patriarchy, and interminable bureaucracy.
The English writer Thomas Hobbes was the one who
came up with the other story, and he was a decidedly
glum thinker. The following is his story: Humans are
fundamentally self-centered creatures. Life was "single,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short" in the past. He believed
that dominance and hierarchy have always been a part of
human society.
So which tale is accurate? The majority of social scientists
would respond to both. However, the evidence, which
10
includes an ever-increasing archeological archive, makes
it abundantly clear that the bit-of-both response is also
insufficient. You have to understand that linearity is a
central idea in both stories. That is, they both contend
that we evolved into our current "civilized" state from a
pre-civilized condition, such as Hobbes' hierarchy or
Rousseau's equality. However, if you carefully consider
the evidence, you will discover that human society did
not develop in a linear fashion.Civilisation did not
advance. It marched sideways, retreated, and remained
stationary. In any case, the metaphor of "marching
forward" is absurd and misleading because it is not
always true that our society is superior to its
predecessors.
So, why is it so difficult for us to come up with alternative
narratives to Rousseau and Hobbes'?
More interesting and complex than we are led to believe
were early societies.
By demonstrating that there are numerous additional
opportunities for political organization and social
interaction, these summaries aim to restore our
ancestors to their full humanity.
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  Chapter 2

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• The "indigenous critique" sparked a wave of
Enlightenment theories that continue to
influence contemporary thought.
A leader from the Huron-Wendat people in North
America met with French colonists in Montréal in the
1690s to discuss a wide range of social and political
issues. His French translators adored him and gave him
the name Kandiaronk. They described him as singularly
brilliant and witty at the same time. Nearly every
Enlightenment thinker responded to a book of his ideas
that sold like hotcakes across Europe.
To put it simply, Kandiaronk wanted to know why
Europeans were so preoccupied with money and private
property. When you think about it, why did their kings
hold so much power while everyone else lacked it?
What’s the point of all this poverty? Why are people
willing to endure it? He didn't back down: After reflecting
on the beginnings of European society for six years, I still
cannot think of a single inhuman act.
Europe's philosophers were both shocked and excited by
his harsh criticisms. However, Kandiaronk's viewpoint

13
was not unique. After interacting with European
colonists, many indigenous people adopted them. At the
time, they were referred to as the indigenous critique.
The indegenoius critique would not suffice for
conservatives in Europe. Right-wing thinkers started
calling indigenous people in North America, and their
ideas of individual freedom and social checks on
authoritarianism, "savage" in an effort to undermine
their critiques of European culture.
Simply put, European society was further along the
inevitable path toward "civilization," making it more
advanced. The marching of indigenous peoples had
barely begun. Sure, there was oppression, poverty, and
religious persecution in Europe. However, these freedom
losses were offset by a far greater gain: the realization of
a real civilization.
The Europeans coined the term "egalitarian" to describe
societies devoid of what they referred to as "civilization,"
a kind of fictitious utopia that remains when judges,
kings, and overseers are removed. Conservatives even
attributed the violence of the French Revolution to the

14
links of Kandiaronk, claiming that they had incorporated
new liberal ideas into a stable social hierarchy.
However, categorizing so many societies and
communities as idyllically and unrealistically egalitarian
reveals more about the culture that needed to define
itself in opposition to those societies and societies.
In the end, the issue of equality or inequality must be put
aside if we are to comprehend how modern dominance
systems developed. Instead, we must determine the
reasons behind the rise of kings, princes, and overseers.
Therefore, let's figure it out.

15
  Chapter 3
• Agriculture was much more diverse than we
are led to believe.
Before writing down information, humans had existed for
more than three million years. We know very little about
what happened during that time because there is no
written record.
However, one thing we can deduce from the
archaeological evidence is that humans were significantly
more physically and culturally diverse than we are today.
Similar to how giants, hobbits, and elves coexist in
fantasy stories, human-like species coexisted with one
another.
We also know that there was a lot of movement among
people. They only got together at certain times of the
year, like during the harvest in the summer.
Archaeological evidence suggests that they did not
exhibit the dominant-submissive behavior of our ape
relatives at this time. Social checks in ethnographic
accounts of forager bands in Asia and South America
support this. Humans typically make fun of braggarts and
16
showoffs, whereas gorillas beat their chests to show
dominance and are taken seriously by other gorillas.
In addition, there are other areas where the
anthropological record can be of assistance. For instance,
numerous post-Enlightenment philosophers argued for
centuries that pre-agricultural humans lacked rational
thought. However, this is obviously absurd.
Claude Lévi-Strauss was an anthropologist who lived with
and studied the Nambikwara, a community of part-time
farmers and foragers in western Brazil.
Nambikwara chiefs serve as intermediaries between
farming during the rainy season and foraging during the
dry season, two distinct social systems. Chiefs act largely
as authoritarians while foraging, and their actions
determine their reputations. People congregate around
chiefs based on their dry-season antics when farming,
where life is significantly more sedentary. These days,
chiefs behave more like statesmen, resolving disputes
and setting an example for others. Levi-Strauss reasoned
that these chiefs were self-conscious political actors.
The Nambikwara show that social order was not always
set in stone in many societies. Seasonally, socio-political
17
orders changed depending on whether people were
trying out farming or herding at the time.
As a result, it stands to reason that the first kings may
have only been in power for a brief theatrical period. But
when did kings and queens become mainstays of society,
along with the permanent inequality systems they
established? To put it another way, how did we become
"stuck" in the current system?
Let's find out, shall we?

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• Chapter 4

 When concepts of ownership and the

sacred emerged, once-forgotten freedoms
began to deteriorate.
Previously, cultural practices and norms were shared
across continents and thousands of miles.
and remain in the company of people whose totemic
designations they had at home.
Three fundamental freedoms were held by our distant
ancestors but are now largely lost to history.
First, the freedom to leave one's home and the assurance
that one will be welcomed in other countries.
The freedom to switch between social structures comes
next.
Lastly, the freedom to defy authority without being
punished.
Why do we not? Or, to return to the previous question:
When did systemic inequality and kings and queens enter
the picture? However, it might be preferable to ask when
it became impossible to laugh at kings and queens
19
outside of court rather than when they first appeared
blink.
The development of the concept of property may have
started the erosion of this freedom, the freedom to
disobey authority, as well as the erosion of the other two
freedoms.According to European convention, indigenous
people did not work the land, so they did not own it for
European colonists. However, this is not entirely
accurate; the amount of land that some foraging
societies used was sufficient to support a wide range of
social structures, including royal courts, priestly castes,
and standing armies.
Communities such as the Nambikwara have not
developed the same concept of property as "Western"
cultures. However, we can point to a similarity that may
provide insight into the development of the concept of
property. Exclusionary structures include the idea of
private property and the sacred. The word tabu, which
means "not to be touched" in Polynesian, refers to the
sacred and is analogous to the British legal theory that
property refers to rights held "against the whole world.
“According to British legal theory, for instance, if you

20
own a car, you are entitled to forbid anyone from
anywhere in the world from entering it.
In communities all over the world, ritual theaters were
created as places where exclusive claims over property
and demands for unwavering obedience are likely to be
made. How did these concepts of property and the
sacred organize so many other aspects of human life? On
the west coast of North America, we will examine how
concepts of property and humanity intersected, further
entangling freedoms that earlier humans took for
granted.

• Chapter 5
21
  It is common for neighboring cultures to
form social institutions in response to one
another.
Scholars frequently view indigenous and pre-agricultural
communities not as what they were in and of
themselves, but rather as what they were preparing to
become: a legitimate kingdom whose citizens paid
homage to a ruler. But some people didn't live before
agriculture, like the indigenous people of California.
Actually, they were against agriculture.
Take for instance the native Californians. According to
the evidence, they developed their culture in opposition
to the culture of their neighbors further north along the
Northwest Pacific coast.
One illustration is chattel slavery. Up to a quarter of the
people living in communities in the Northwest Pacific as
late as the 18th century were enslaved. The potlatch—
ecstatic celebrations of excess—were common in these
communities. These were times of gluttony and death,
including the death of a human being.

22
Native Californians, on the other hand, practiced
asceticism and avoided self-promotion at all costs. At
ceremonies, they preferred to eat staple foods over
more expensive options. Slavery was also rejected by
them.
Communities in California have a strong political
component to their opposition to the taking of slaves.
For indigenous Californians, the practice of enslaving
others was against the social order. Since they traveled a
lot back then, they must have been aware that slavery
could be a social order. However, we believe that they
actively rejected it or, at the very least, upheld social
values like self-sufficiency and industry that would have
been at odds with slavery.
Contrarily, the aristocracy was unable to support itself
without a reliable workforce, so slavery became
commonplace in Northwest coastal communities. To
protect themselves from slavery, the communities in
northern California that were most at risk from their
northern neighbors established social institutions.
Coastal peoples began to define themselves against one
another more and more.

23
This suggests that equality and hierarchy begin to
emerge as complementary concepts. Additionally,
dominance first emerges at a very personal level—at
home.
Understanding how human freedoms were lost depends
on this cultural divide. It also demonstrates that a
community's values and conceptions of human
relationships were reflected in decisions regarding the
adoption of established hierarchies.

24
  Chapter 6
• While rural communities adopted an
agricultural lifestyle, their highland neighbors
did the opposite.
An odd ritual was practiced by the ancient Athenians.
Women would carry little gardens in baskets, planted
with herbs and grains that grew quickly, onto rooftops on
a particular hot midsummer day. They would be left
there to wilt in the sun. It was a botanical recreation of
Adonis's death, when he was in his prime.
This practice, which began long before agriculture
became widespread, can be considered a form of play
farming. It was a game that represented a first foray into
the field of agriculture, eventually evolving into the
serious business of producing food for large populations.
Farming is hard work for the back: You need to haul
water, pull weeds, and clear fields. Humans had to put in
a lot more effort than they had in the past to feed
themselves when agriculture came into being. It’s not
out of the question that some communities gave it a shot
but either gave up or only farmed part of the year.
25
It may have taken us up to 3,000 years, ten times longer
than necessary, according to scientists, to domesticate
cereals like wheat because of this. Before finally settling
on agriculture, human communities experimented with
farming by cultivating plots while also foraging and
hunting as they had always done. The transition was
gradual and came and went. Additionally, a fascinating
fact is that women probably performed the majority of
this work.
In addition, it was risky to become overly dependent on
agriculture. Relying solely on one food source had
devastating effects on Neolithic societies in Austria and
Germany today: When crops failed, not only did they
starve, but the crisis also sparked horrific violence.
Populations that dabbled in farming appeared to strike a
careful balance between foraging and farming after
learning from such disasters. In addition, there is no
evidence that the shift to farming also brought about
private property or land ownership. From Highland
Scotland to the Balkans, communal management,
redistribution of plots, and field tenure were and are
common practices among agricultural communities.

26
  Chapter 7
• Hierarchies did not immediately emerge
when people began to congregate in urban
centers.
It seems odd that humans ultimately chose to live
together in cities, given the dangers of farming and the
work involved?
The fact that early cities, which may have had millions of
inhabitants, did not follow a hierarchical structure is
evident.
For instance, there is absolutely no evidence of
monarchy in the early cities of Mesopotamia. On a
system similar to the French corvée, where labor is
required for certain seasonal civic projects, chores were
performed collectively. In order to ensure that citizens
had a voice in the government, additional institutions
were established. Mega settlements built by Hittites,
Phoenicians, Philistines, and Israelites all featured
popular assemblies on a regular basis. Finally, the main
districts of Mesopotamian mega settlements, which were
made up of a wide range of ethnic groups, were found to
27
have an astonishingly even distribution of wealth,
production of crafts, and administrative tools. In the
public meeting, different small groups in a city might
have opposing ideas about how to run the city. This
would occasionally result in violence, and other times it
would be settled peacefully.
Teotihuacan, in what is now central Mexico, was founded
in the 12th century, but its structure was similar. It was a
place of grandeur and sophistication, home to at least a
million people, with subtle social organization and ethnic
diversity without rulers. The city's visual arts clearly
celebrate the community as a whole and its shared
values by depicting Teotihuacanos as roughly equal in
size.
In the smaller hill towns that were adjacent to these
cities, things were different. The beginnings of an
historical elite can be seen in these locations close to
urban civilization. In places like Arslantepe in eastern
Turkey, a warrior aristocracy lived in palaces or forts and
was heavily armed with swords and spears. These
warriors fiercely fought for retainers and slaves and

28
rejected writing and other aspects of nearby urban
civilizations.

29
•Chapter 8

 In the beginning, kings relied on

spectacular acts of violence to
demonstrate their cosmic power and
necessity.
We've noticed that some of the societies we've
considered start to resemble states. The conventional
definition of a state states that it owns the exclusive right
to use coercive force within a specific territory.
Social power is based on three guiding principles: control
over information, violence, and individual charisma. The
modern state relies on each of these as the foundation
for institutions like bureaucracy. Many people believe
that the convergence of these three forms of dominance
was predestined. But how did scale dominance first
emerge?
The charismatic leaders of the Olmec civilization, which
later became known as the "mother culture" of
Mesoamerican societies, gained power by excelling at
sports. In the highlands of Peru's pre-Inca city of Chavn

30
de Huántar, leaders gained power by controlling occult
knowledge.
These cultures, despite their power, were not states. Two
of the three principles of dominance needed to be
combined in a spectacular display of violence for
something resembling a state to emerge. Ancient Egypt
experienced this. In Egypt and other early states, kings
were buried alongside their followers, often thousands of
them who had been killed especially for the occasion.
Today, archaeologists consider ritual killing to be a
certain indication that a state was being formed. In a
way, violence makes kings.
However, it is crucial to keep in mind that violent proto-
states were not the only places where political
organization existed. In fact, archeological evidence
suggests that small Neolithic villages like Tell Sabi Abyad
in today's Syria developed the first systems of specialized
administrative control to monitor resource allocation.
These were developed as a response to bureaucrats
overcharging. The Neolithic people seemed to be aware
that if things weren't working out, they could always

31
change them. Therefore, the question of "Why did kings
and ruling classes develop?" remains.
Do you remember how play farming was the beginning of
large-scale agricultural production? What would happen
if political systems like kingdoms began with fictitious
play kings? Building monumental structures like
pyramids, which were meant to project eternal power in
the same way that huge human sacrifices were, makes
sense for newly elevated royals.
To put it another way, it seems abundantly clear that the
state was only a relatively recent synthesis of the three
forms of dominance and was never an inevitable
outcome. Additionally, even if the state was never
inevitable, it might not be permanent.

32
  Chapter 9
• Experimentation and reaction led to the
development of the "indigenous critique,"
which continues to exist in a variety of forms
today.
In the second summary, did you recall the indigenous
criticism of European colonial political systems? The
criticism in and of itself was not spontaneous. It was the
culmination of indigenous North Americans' centuries-
long political debate and conflict.
Along the floodplain of the Mississippi River, people
began cultivating maize as a staple crop between 400
and 800 CE.Armed conflict escalated shortly thereafter,
culminating in an urban explosion at the site of Cahokia
in present-day Illinois. Cahokia grew quickly to become
the largest city in the Americas north of Mexico. Cahokia
reached its peak population of approximately 40,000
people around 1050 CE.
Similar to the demise of cities like Teotihuacan and those
in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, an event sparked a

33
long, violent, and slow period of destruction within a
century in Cahokia. We have no idea what that incident
was. However, we do know that Cahokia residents who
were dissatisfied simply left.
This demonstrates an important fact: The inevitable
conclusion of societal evolution is not state formation.
Nothing prevents a society from moving in a different
direction or from not forming a state once it has begun
moving in that direction. The backlash against Cahokia
sparked values like political debate, diversity of opinion,
and a clear anti-authoritarian sentiment in subsequent
communities across North America. As a defense against
what had occurred in Cahokia, social orders were
established in communities around the Great Lakes.
These concepts are still with us in various forms today.
Not only did indigenous North Americans avoid the
pitfalls we assume communities face when forming
states; The European colonists who learned from them
were astonished by their political sensibilities that were
independent and anti-authoritarian. In addition, the
Enlightenment thinkers whose ideas serve as the

34
foundation for contemporary political thought were
profoundly influenced by the indigenous critique's ideas.
Political and social change do not follow a straight line.
We’ve seen that both come and go, through trials and
tribulations. Political change and experimentation are
just as ongoing as history.

35
  Conclusion
In conclusion, early human societies were significantly
more complex than previously thought. From band
society to the modern state, there was a long period of
experimentation rather than a straight line. This
demonstrates that history continues; Things still have the
potential to alter.

36