Review of "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" by David Graeber and David Wengrow

A broad-sweep history of early humanity to challenge all of the other broad-sweep narratives about the emergence of what might loosely be called civilisation. So no one-way trip from smaller loosely organised bands into tribes and then into nations, with state formation accompanying. No one-way trip from hunter-gathering into agricultural society, with concomitant evolution of coercive forms of government. No hydraulic imperative driving the rise of absolute rulers and associated bureaucracies. Instead we get a myriad of different forms, huge stone age cities and monuments for different purposes including ritual, sport, and drug-taking, and lots of examples of agriculture and state formation attempted and abandoned.

It's hard to keep on top of all the examples, and a bit hard to keep on top of the argument too - I will for once look for an online talk that might make the structure of that a bit clearer. But it's a brilliant and enjoyable read, and more hopeful and optimistic than the dreary certainties of Sapiens.

I note in passing that David Graeber keeps knocking books out...he's not going to let a little thing like dying affect his output.