[HN Gopher] The Dawn of Everything challenges a mainstream telli...
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The Dawn of Everything challenges a mainstream telling of
prehistory
Author : hackandthink
Score : 74 points
Date : 2023-01-22 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.middleeasteye.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.middleeasteye.net)
| intrasight wrote:
| A heavy dose of political language mixed with questionable
| science. What rot.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| i guess back in those pre-resource-accumulation days, they
| managed to kill all the charming psycopaths before they became
| tyrants. Maybe it was the teenage mothers and high infant
| mortality rate that did it?
| charlescearl wrote:
| All history has a political agenda. "Non-partisan" itself serves
| to further the legitimacy of Western academia, itself born in
| service to colonial and neo-colonial projects.
|
| The work of Sylvia Wynter, Ngugi wa Thiong o, Edward Said, Walter
| Rodney among many others are probably good jumping off points.
| marojejian wrote:
| Having read the book:Pro:It's a great question and mission.I'm
| sympathetic to their general critiques and main points e.g.:
|
| - prehistoric human were just as smart and creative as us
|
| - there's a ton to learn from them.
|
| - there is not enough evidence to accept an inevitable path to a
| state with ever growing power.
|
| - prehistoric people tried a bunch of different societal types we
| can hardly conceive of.
|
| - We should strive to be as experimental and playful.
|
| - There is interesting new evidence in there (e.g. about
| potentially non-authoritarian per-historic societies)
|
| Con:
|
| - Evidence / word ratio very low
|
| - Authors have a HUGE Ax to grind. even if I like some portion of
| that axe, I can't afford to trust them, they are more biased than
| the folks they attack (not that I like Yuval Harari so much
| either...)
|
| - Poor reasoning processes: 1)X is conceivable 2) Y might be
| evidence of X, 3) (Much later) As we demonstrated: X is True
|
| - Super repetitive
|
| So net, I'd say read a few reviews (e.g. Tides of History) and
| skip the actual book, and hope we can find some better avatars
| for this mission. Go listen to some Mike Duncan podcasts.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| college_physics wrote:
| > prehistoric human were just as smart and creative as us
|
| This. The educational system, willingly or just incompetently
| manages to instill a sense that human intelligence somehow
| grows monotonically with historical time. Maybe thats because
| it is conflating it with knowledge accumulation and never
| bothering to make a clear distinction.
|
| In fact its very plausible that 30000 years ago some homo
| sapiens had a discussion around a campfire that was as
| intelligent as your average HN thread :-)
| goatlover wrote:
| Not individual human intelligence as in capability, but
| certainly in terms of culture, the knowledge has grown
| exponentially since then. 30,000 years ago people weren't
| sitting around the campfire talking about deep learning
| models, quantum mechanics, or how long the ancestors of
| Native Americans lived in Beringia.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| > The educational system, willingly or just incompetently
| manages to instill a sense that human intelligence somehow
| grows monotonically with historical time.
|
| Grade inflation has a lot to answer for. It's a serious
| problem in the UK but understandable, all statistics are
| designed to bolster the image of the organisation producing
| them.
| euroderf wrote:
| I detect a parallel with the monotonic, cumulative evolution
| depicted in the typical image that has man at the apex of a
| pyramid of evolution. As pointed out in "Wonderful Life"
| (about the Burgess Shale), evolution has been very different
| from this.
| kqr wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment, but I think you're under-
| emphasing the power granted our reasoning ability from
| knowledge (theoretical concepts) and writing (seekable
| communication).
|
| Part of what I know about basic statistics I got from an old
| book. I would not be able to draw on those concepts and
| present a coherent argument if my experience and
| communicative tools were limited to what they would have been
| 30,000 years ago.
|
| That said, they may have had very intelligent and nuanced
| discussions about specific topics, like immediately human
| experiences such as illness, politics, fashion, love, etc.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| 30'000 years ago politics didn't exist, doubt very much
| they would had discussion about it.
|
| Instead perhaps the local priest might have discussed the
| next sacrifice needed to bring the rains.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| This is quite a statement. How do you suppose these
| anatomically modern humans would have made group
| decisions? Mind control by a warrior king?
| richk449 wrote:
| > 30'000 years ago politics didn't exist, doubt very much
| they would had discussion about it.
|
| Why do you say politics didn't exist long ago?
|
| > Instead perhaps the local priest might have discussed
| the next sacrifice needed to bring the rains.
|
| So... politics?
| kqr wrote:
| Politics emerges naturally when a group of people in
| constrained by time to perform only a subset of a large
| selection of activities; children are political about
| what to play.
|
| For as long as there has been humans, there has been
| politics.
| college_physics wrote:
| The starting point is that our brain was (probably) more or
| less as today, hence in principle capable of cognitive
| tasks of similar "quality" or complexity. But there is no
| doubt that _what_ these capabilities were applied to might
| feel very exotic or even uncomfortable to us. E.g., Graber
| makes this point in particular in relation to social
| relations. A lot of modern society would probably look like
| totally brain damaged to them in terms of emotional /
| social intelligence. We have also the examples of very
| elaborate religious / theological discourse, which seems to
| have been a major preoccupation for the longest time.
|
| On the other hand there are definitely cultural inflection
| points (like writing or numeracy) that seem to have
| reshaped the ability of a trained brain in a very short
| period of time. E.g. if you compare writings from the same
| civilization / region just several hundred years apart
| (Homeric poems vs Classic Athenian philosophy) its hard to
| believe its even the same species...
| jawon wrote:
| Like I said in another comment, I'm only halfway through. I'm
| not sure what the denouement is going to be or where they are
| going to take the evidence that there have been urban
| civilisations that were not ruled by kings or other
| hierarchical power arrangements and resolve it with the
| present, but their goal to show how the Hobbesian and
| Rousseauian views of human history are not supported by
| evidence only needs a single counter example and I feel they've
| supplied plenty.
|
| I think their mission of puncturing the grand narratives of the
| evolution of human society is a good one, and I think they have
| the evidence, but I'm not sure it's going to have any effect in
| the long run.
| pc2g4d wrote:
| The Christian often sees the Devil around every corner.
|
| The socialist sees capitalism.
|
| The capitalist sees socialism.
|
| Something like that....
|
| Being so fashionable to bash on capitalism these days, I can't
| help suspecting that it is an opposing ideology, rather than
| truth or facts, driving the bus.
|
| Interesting to consider pre-Athens democracy.
|
| I'm not so sure Gobekli Tepe overthrows the idea of an
| agricultural revolution. It just changes its texture. We are,
| after all, all agriculturalists now. And 3000 years is _not_ a
| long time for an anthropological "revolution"!
| moron4hire wrote:
| I keep confusing this book with "The Dawn of The New Everything"
| by Jaron Lanier. When people started to talk about it on Twitter,
| I got excited that Lanier's excellent book was having a mini
| resurgence. Made for an awkward argument with a friend because we
| had vastly different opinions on the quality of "this" book,
| until I admitted "maybe I'm just a Lanier fan", to which he
| replied "who's Lanier?"
| Aunche wrote:
| > Noble savage myth
|
| The noble savage is a trope represents the innate goodness of
| humanity when free from the corrupting influence of civilization.
| If anything, it's Graeber propagating the noble savage myth.
| Societies that are smaller have have less stuff are obviously
| going to have less material inequality. That doesn't mean that
| they lacked hierarchies and selfishness.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| We need not pretend Graeber advanced any notion that
| hierarchies have never existed in undocumented populations. His
| point is that they were often lacking in circumstances
| historians routinely assume, and vociferously insist, it would
| have been impossible.
| didntreadarticl wrote:
| Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael) wrote about this sort of thing
| in a non-scientific sort of way. More from a philosophy
| standpoint.
|
| But anyway one point he makes that really stuck with me, is that
| in a hunter gatherer society, you might get a tribe leader or
| chief or something. But if you dont like what they're doing, you
| can just leave and be a hunter gatherer somewhere else. No one is
| depending on any centralised place for food. So you can get
| complex social structures if thats what everyone wants, but
| hierarchies are difficult to maintain by force. People will just
| quit if they dont like it.
|
| Whereas in an agricultural society, you get specialisation of
| skills which helps towards the sort of thing we now think of as
| 'progress' but you can also have hierarchies enforced by force
| because someone or some subgroup ends up in charge of the food
| and can lock it away, and peoples option to just leave and go and
| fend for themselves is less feasible and so they get stuck being
| subjects of some ruler.
|
| TLDR: You dont have to think of hunter gatherer societies as
| simple or backward. But they are less likely to have deep
| hierarchies and specialisation
| moloch-hai wrote:
| You miss the point.
|
| Yes, hunter/gatherer societies routinely lack hierarchies. But
| settled populations, throughout prehistory and history, have
| very often _also_ lacked hierarchies, including in places
| historians insisted otherwise. And, hunter-gatherer societies
| have _sometimes_ had hierarchies despite the apparent
| impossibility.
| fckgnad wrote:
| No I don't think this is true.
|
| Hierarchies are heavily part of human behavior. The concept of
| leaders and rank is so ingrained in behavior it's hard to think
| it didn't exist even in hunter and gatherer societies.
|
| Right now we have enough wealth such that everyone can live
| comfortably. But a lot of people still fight tooth and nail in
| the rat race all for what? For wealth partly but mostly for
| Rank. The higher your rank the better it's a huge driving force
| emotionally... especially for men. Desire for high rank is an
| inborn biological instinct. This is confirmed in psychology
| across all cultures. All men are emotionally more satisfied the
| higher their rank.
|
| For women it's also a huge driving force for mate selection.
| Women marry up. They have a strong desire to marry the highest
| ranking man.
|
| I would imagine in hunter and gather societies rank is
| maintained by two things. Brute force and social proof. Bigger
| men have more brute force to maintain leadership (hence why a
| lot of women are attracted to height) and social proof and
| respect insures that other men trust you and are more likely to
| listen to you.
|
| That being said coercion to build things like pyramids or grand
| multi-year projects of vast scale requires someone to own
| wealth. This type of serfdom like heirarchy is much stronger
| then the hierarchies that existed in hunterer gatherer
| societies. Definitely more stable since wages and survival
| required someone to stay at their hierarchical post.
|
| Either way hierarchies DID exist in hunter gatherer societies.
| It's just the tribe leader doesn't have enough power to coerce
| all men into building a pyramid.
| entropicgravity wrote:
| As this article points out, most the best environments for humans
| in the deep past would have been along seashores. These seashores
| are now about 100 metres below current sea level, so much of the
| information we need to characterize how those people's lived is
| beyond reach or accessible only at great cost and effort.
|
| For me the biggest mystery is how and when did language progress
| because this is what allowed a group of humans to effectively
| operate as a pseudo single organism. The ability throw stones
| accurately and with force would also have been critical in
| defense. Probably even before (pre)humans learned to make
| sophisticated stone tools.
| jawon wrote:
| I'm about halfway through and it's fascinating. I love a "here is
| how the dominant paradigm is an over-simplification of reality"
| story and I also love pre-literary history so I'm finding a lot
| to enjoy.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Same. I had read most of it ahead of a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico,
| a state with a strong indigenous presence and a lot of within
| 3000 years human archeological sites. Although Graeber was
| writing about a much earlier period, having read the work made
| it much, much easier for me to build a sociological mental
| model (wrong, sure, but interesting) to appreciate the sites
| and artifacts we saw.
| Natsu wrote:
| It's kinda light on evidence for some things, which isn't great
| when we're talking about someone they describe as an "activist"
| challenging mainstream history. For example, it just drops
| assertions like "The authors also show that the earliest cities
| in Ukraine and Mesopotamia of the 4th millennium BCE were
| egalitarian and organised without the presence of kings,
| temples or royal palaces."
|
| But why are we to believe these societies were "egalitarian"? I
| mean, the usual understanding of that means a lot more than
| just living somewhere without a king or a temple. I can imagine
| a lot of ways for a city without any of these as such to be far
| less than what most people think of as "egalitarian" and they
| really need to flesh this idea out a lot more by going over why
| we should think that and to what degree, because there's a big
| gap between the modern understanding of the word "egalitarian"
| and the evidence provided.
|
| Maybe the book does better, if so I'd like to hear that part,
| but the article is a bit scant here, which is bad when the only
| thing it is clear on is that this was written by an activist
| with political motivations.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| > But why are we to believe these societies were
| "egalitarian"?
|
| I haven't read this book, but my understanding is this is
| usually ascertained from looking at burial grounds, and
| building remains. Lack of distinction between high status and
| low status burials is indicative of a society with less
| stratification. Lack of specialized ceremonial and ruling
| buildings another.
|
| In the case of the Cucuteni-Tripolye civilization &
| associated cultures in Ukraine & the Danube, though, my
| understanding is that there really aren't many graveyards or
| human remains because they didn't bury their dead, at least
| not in graveyards. Not until the Yamnaya culture (Indo-
| Europeans) intruded/conquered/took-over/became-dominant later
| on. So, I dunno.
|
| But in that culture the lack of palatial buildings and so on
| does imply the lack of a kingship system. Plus they didn't
| build walls around their settlements, and there's few
| artifacts that imply weaponry until much later.
| User23 wrote:
| All history is post-literary by definition. To go back further
| is to visit myths and legends. Some of which are even perhaps
| something like true.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| And the material record of course, it is the availability of
| access to written records that divides the historian from the
| archaeologist.
| User23 wrote:
| One of my favorite works of fantasy is the Malazan Book of
| the Fallen which was written by an archeologist and it very
| much shows. I doubt there's another series in which the
| word "potsherds" appears more frequently.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I like the overarching argument and continue to recommend the
| book to people, but it's worth noting that the book really
| struggles with its factual basis. The authors aren't experts in
| most of the examples they discuss and their lack of familiarity
| really shows.
|
| But yes, they definitely take an interesting stance that's
| worth reading in its own right.
| college_physics wrote:
| In a sense the fundamental takeaway is: not only history, but
| also prehistory has been "written" by the subsequent
| "winners" (interpreting scarce evidence to fit a desired
| narrative).
|
| It seems very plausible yet it would be really satisfactory
| if we could piece a more complete picture of these long gone
| eras
| orwin wrote:
| Hence critical theory.
|
| That's why we don't automagically assume "that particular
| indoeuropean tomb is probably from a male warrior chief"
| nowadays, and actually do some interdisciplinary research,
| because we used to assume a lot in the early 20th. And
| sometimes the "male chief" have female bones. And the
| "warrior" lance point was probably the rest of a priest
| baton.
|
| But most archeology we learn come from schoolbooks that are
| built on those old, often pretty much falsely interpretted
| discoveries, and pretty much all good research you have to
| read academia (or look at serious archeology youtube
| channels, some exists !)
| thuridas wrote:
| Other assumption is that every small statue is a
| religious idol with ritualistic meaning.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| Every time I read a review of this book when it came out, the
| review author would say something like "wow! great! So exciting,
| EXCEPT in this area *where I am an expert*, the authors got X, Y
| and Z badly wrong."
|
| There were reviews like that when it came out from people in a
| bunch of disciplines, certainly in anthropology and prehistory
| included.
|
| Graeber's prior book about Debt has been widely criticized in my
| own field. As a result I haven't felt like it was worth the time
| to invest in this one even though the topic and the idea seem
| extremely interesting.
|
| It seems like the authors have an axe to grind and a story to
| tell and whatever evidence they find against it is either ignored
| or misinterpreted.
| [deleted]
| kodachrome64 wrote:
| I'm about halfway through this book. While it's full of
| fascinating ideas and information, it's badly in need of an
| editor. To me, it often reads more like a stream of consciousness
| than a structured essay. Also, I'm not particularly well-versed
| in the subject matter, but even I can recognize some of the
| massive logical jumps that they make based on the evidence that
| they present.
|
| Had this simply been a book to exhibit new ways of understanding
| and exploring the merits of prehistoric societies, perhaps it
| would be more fitting of its title "The Dawn of Everything." I
| could see this working better in a format more like Charles
| Mann's 1491. Instead, it attempts to tackle a number of broader
| questions about modern society while slinging mud at every author
| in the last five hundred years that's touched upon them. Overall,
| my impression so far is that Graeber and Wengrow bit off more
| than they could chew. I want to keep reading for the information
| they present, but it's been a struggle to stay focused.
| goatlover wrote:
| Not sure I trust a book which has activism against the current
| economic system as a goal. From the sound of it, the book does
| have some interesting ideas about prehistory that might turn out
| to be at least partially correct. But then to turn that around
| and use it as an attack on modern society stops being historical
| and becomes polemical.
| dgb23 wrote:
| > Not sure I trust a book which has activism against the
| current economic system as a goal.
|
| Thinking about this, I don't know a single book that has an
| economical and/or political focus that doesn't in some way or
| another criticize the status quo or at least challenge our
| understanding of it. In fact I doubt such a book would be worth
| reading at all.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I don't believe the book is or is meant as "an attack on modern
| society".
| goatlover wrote:
| Meaning a critique of capitalism/neoliberalism and
| hierarchical societies as an inevitable outcome of
| civilization progressing. So basically, there's other ways to
| arrange societies, both politically and economically, because
| pre-historic people did that, and our current global
| civilization is just one way, that came about because things
| went a certain way (contingent), but they could have gone
| other ways.
|
| Therefore, we should reconsider the current setup in favor of
| alternative models.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| So the altenrnative is the idea that capitalism and
| hieararchical societies is an inevitable outcome of
| civilizzation progressing, and there are no other ways to
| arrange societies?
|
| While this is still a popular idea in society at large, I
| don't think this is in fact an idea supported by mainstream
| archeology/anthropology/history/whatever other fields would
| comment on this.
|
| It's not in fact a big outrageous thing for the authors to
| be challenging this, it's very normal mainstream scholarly
| consensus. If anything, I think they are getting too much
| credit for being responsible for something groundbreaking
| in that basic challenge.
|
| But I agree with your summary of their basic
| thesis/organizing narrative approach right there. I think
| it's curious that you first summarized that as an "attack
| on modern society" though. You feel that to suggest the way
| society(ies) are organized now was not teleologically
| foreordained and could have gone other ways -- is to attack
| modern society?
|
| I think almost anyone writing an account meant to be
| popularly accessible like this one has __some_ narrative
| agenda, a point of view on the overall big points or
| organizing principles.
|
| To compare to Harari... yeah, it would be hard to argue
| that he has less of agenda, or sticks more to facts over
| his preferred narrative or ideology.
| goatlover wrote:
| Graeber was an activist and anarchist, so his motivation
| is definitely to critique modern society with the hope of
| it eventually being replaced with something more to his
| liking. My understanding is that modern society in
| general (not the specifics) is the most likely outcome of
| human development over time, in that some sort of
| technologically advanced global civilization with
| governments, global trade and militaries was probable
| once modern humans spread out and colonized the planet,
| providing no extinction event happened before then. It
| was just a matter of time before population density and
| technological advances led to civilization as we
| understand it, whatever detours that may have taken, and
| however different it might have played out given various
| historical contingencies.
|
| My guess is that if there are any technological alien
| life out there, it likely follows the same general
| development, at least up to this point (given we don't
| know how the future plays out and of course just using
| our history so far, and also allowing for significantly
| different biologies or climates and geologies leading to
| divergent outcomes from ours).
| [deleted]
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Does anyone know about an expert, non-partisan (whatever the
| parties are in the field of pre-history) review of _Dawn of
| Everything_? Someone who can summarize the strengths and
| weaknesses, claims and critiques, etc.?
| jimwhite42 wrote:
| This is a good review, on the What is Politics channel:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJIHWk_M398&list=PLU4FEuj4v9...
|
| But it isn't a summary, it goes into a lot of detailed
| critique. I think each video description links to a
| bibliography and transcript too.
| 317070 wrote:
| My review: the main story and ideas of the book are great, and
| the many small stories of the book are great too. I have read
| many of Graeber's books, and it is full of novel ideas.
|
| But, the book could have used a bit more editing. As the arc is
| coming to an end, many new examples are hastily introduced that
| don't seem to lead anywhere. The book has a great first half, but
| the second half is lacking.
|
| I feel like it has all the raw material of a masterpiece, but it
| is missing the polishing, possibly due to Graeber's unfortunate
| early passing.
|
| There is an often heard comment that they provide too few data. I
| find that of little importance. I value novel perspectives on
| history a lot more. I kind of agree with Graeber that the focus
| on data succombs to paradox that if you focus on what you can
| measure, you will automatically look at history with today's
| eyes, as today is metric-focused.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| One of the authors _dying_ during editing can reasonably be
| expected to have some effect.
| college_physics wrote:
| Hmm, i don't see how the vitriolic and largely unsubstantiated
| attack on Harari (where does he even remotely suggest that
| neoliberal capitalism is the pinnacle of civilisation?!) does the
| work of Graeber any favor.
| richk449 wrote:
| In addition to being unsubstantiated, the criticisms of Harari
| completely mischaracterize his position. The overriding point
| of the chapter on agriculture in Sapiens is that farming was a
| huge step back for humans compared to the hunter gatherer
| lifestyle.
|
| I suspect the the authors of this piece really object to
| Harari's framing of agriculture as a step on the path of "human
| progress". It would have been more honest to stick to a purely
| moral and ideological critique in that case, instead of
| misrepresenting his factual points.
| goatlover wrote:
| Right, the argument for agriculture is that it's a basis for
| making city states and empires possible, whatever moral value
| one assigns to that.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I read The Columbia History of the World.
|
| Well, the first 50 pages.
|
| It explained that agriculture allowed people to live in
| cities, and that for agriculture to work, people had to
| avoid eating their seeds in the long winter.
|
| Or, as it got lodged in my mind
|
| --
|
| Delayed gratification is the root of civilization.
|
| --
|
| Which saying has been impressively valuable in my life
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