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The renowned activist and public intellectual David Graeber teams up with the professor of comparative archaeology David Wengrow to deliver a trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation
For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, 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 conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.
Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? What was really happening during the periods that we usually describe as the emergence of "the state"? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.
The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.
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Showing 13 featured editions. View all 13 editions?
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01
Au commencement était...: Une nouvelle histoire de l'humanité
2023, Les Liens Qui Libèrent
in French
9791020924636
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03
Anfänge: Eine neue Geschichte der Menschheit
Jan 29, 2022, Klett-Cotta Verlag
hardcover
3608985085 9783608985085
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04
Anfänge: Eine neue Geschichte der Menschheit
2022, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung
Paperback
in German
- Sonderausgabe
374250889X 9783742508898
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05
El amanecer de todo: Una nueva historia de la humanidad
Oct 11, 2022, Editorial Ariel
hardcover
8434435721 9788434435728
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06
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Nov 08, 2022, Picador
paperback
1250858801 9781250858801
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07
Zorii tuturor lucrurilor: O nouă istorie a omenirii
2022, Polirom
Paperback
in Romanian
9734687883 9789734687886
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08
Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
2022, Penguin Books, Limited
in English
0141991062 9780141991061
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09
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
2021-11-09, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Hardcover
in English
0374157359 9780374157357
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10
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
2021, Penguin Books
E-Book
in English
024140245X 9780241402450
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11
Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
2021, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
in English
0374721106 9780374721107
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12
Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
2021, Penguin Books, Limited
in English
0241402425 9780241402429
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13
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Apr 15, 2021, Signal
hardcover
077104982X 9780771049828
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