The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

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‘Fascinating, thought-provoking, groundbreaking. A book that will generate debate for years to come’ Rutger Bregman’The Dawn of Everything is also the radical revision of everything, liberating us from the familiar stories about humanity’s past that are too often deployed to impose limitations on how we imagine humanity’s future’ Rebecca Solnit’This is not a book. This is an intellectual feast’ Nassim Nicholas TalebFor generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike – either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a reaction to indigenous critiques of European society, and why they are wrong. In doing so, they overturn our view of human history, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery and civilization itself.D