Scan barcode
A review by mjfmjfmjf
The Dawn of Everything by David Wengrow, David Graeber
3.0
That was a tough read. I'm not sure it was improved reading it a chapter a week. But I'm not sure that I would have stuck with it without a book group to talk to about it regularly. Fascinating. And I feel like I learned a lot. But wow this book needed editing, needed to be teased into multiple books.
There were a couple of basic concepts, it is not clear that everyone would agree which was the most important. For me, it was that the basic science of anthropology and archaeology are not making it out into the world - that things that everyone should know aren't known.
And the things that people don't know, including other researchers, are that civilizations don't come from cities, that agriculture is a choice, that autocracy isn't inevitable, that non-autocracy has scaled in the past, that slavery comes and goes and is a choice.
There is just so much in this book - I am hoping that this has impact and other better, more accessible, books appear.
There were a couple of basic concepts, it is not clear that everyone would agree which was the most important. For me, it was that the basic science of anthropology and archaeology are not making it out into the world - that things that everyone should know aren't known.
And the things that people don't know, including other researchers, are that civilizations don't come from cities, that agriculture is a choice, that autocracy isn't inevitable, that non-autocracy has scaled in the past, that slavery comes and goes and is a choice.
There is just so much in this book - I am hoping that this has impact and other better, more accessible, books appear.