We’ve all heard the same old story about how humans "civilized" themselves. It usually goes something like this: we started as small, egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers, then we discovered farming, and suddenly we were trapped in a world of kings, taxes, and social hierarchies because, well, that's just the price of progress. But The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow basically takes that entire narrative and throws it out the window. It’s a massive, 700-page reality check that suggests we’ve been lying to ourselves about human nature for centuries.
The book isn't just a dry history lesson. It’s a provocative argument that humans haven't always been stuck in one way of living. Honestly, the most mind-blowing thing about their research is the idea that our ancestors were way more creative and politically savvy than we give them credit for. They weren't just wandering around looking for berries; they were experimenting with different social structures like it was a hobby.
The Myth of the Simple Savage
For a long time, we’ve relied on thinkers like Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to explain our origins. Hobbes thought we were naturally violent and needed a "Leviathan" (a state) to keep us from killing each other. Rousseau, the more optimistic one, thought we were "noble savages" who were happy until property and agriculture ruined everything. The Dawn of Everything argues both were wrong.
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Actually, they were worse than wrong; they were unimaginative.
Graeber and Wengrow point out that many indigenous societies had complex political debates long before Europeans showed up to "enlighten" them. They highlight the "Indigenous Critique," specifically looking at figures like Kandiaronk, a Wendat philosopher-statesman. Kandiaronk basically dunked on European society in the 17th century, calling out their obsession with money, lack of freedom, and weirdly punitive laws. It turns out, a lot of what we think of as "Enlightenment" values—like liberty and equality—might have actually been borrowed from the very people Europeans were trying to colonize.
Did Farming Really Ruin Everything?
One of the biggest targets in The Dawn of Everything is the "Agricultural Revolution" myth popularized by writers like Jared Diamond or Yuval Noah Harari. The standard view is that once you have grain, you have surplus. Once you have surplus, you have a ruling class to guard it.
But it wasn't that simple.
Archeology shows us that people "played" with farming for thousands of years without ever becoming "trapped" by it. In places like the Fertile Crescent, people would farm for a bit and then just... stop. They’d go back to hunting or foraging because they realized farming was a lot of work and they didn't feel like being told what to do by a local strongman. They weren't stuck in an evolutionary "trap." They were making conscious choices.
Think about Göbekli Tepe in modern-day Turkey. It’s this massive, monumental stone structure built by hunter-gatherers around 9,000 BCE. It predates agriculture. This flips the script entirely. It means people could organize massive, sophisticated projects without a central government or a permanent hierarchy. They did it because they wanted to, likely for ritual or social reasons, not because a king forced them to.
Seasonal Politics and the Freedom to Move
Humans used to be incredibly fluid.
One of the coolest examples in the book is how some societies would change their entire political system based on the seasons. Take the Inuit, for example. During the summer, they might live in small, patriarchal groups to hunt. But in the winter, they gathered into large, communal houses where everyone was equal and property was shared. They flipped their "government" like a light switch.
This suggests that for most of history, we had three basic freedoms that we've mostly lost today:
- The freedom to abandon one’s community and move away.
- The freedom to disobey commands.
- The freedom to create or transform social relationships.
Nowadays, if you don't like the rules, you can't just walk into the woods and start a new society. Every inch of the planet is claimed by a state. We've lost the "freedom to move," and because of that, we've lost the ability to experiment.
The Mystery of the "Great Abandonment"
The book also looks at cities that didn't have kings. We usually think of ancient cities as places of absolute power—think Egyptian Pharaohs or Mayan lords. But The Dawn of Everything looks at sites like Teotihuacan in Mexico.
Around 300 CE, the people there seemingly had a revolution. They stopped building giant pyramids for rulers and started building high-quality, egalitarian apartment complexes for everyone. For centuries, the city thrived without any evidence of a single central ruler. No statues of kings, no royal tombs. Just people living together in a well-planned, comfortable urban environment.
Eventually, the city was abandoned, but it proves that "urban" doesn't have to mean "oppressive." We have historical receipts for successful, large-scale societies that didn't rely on a 1% at the top.
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Why This Matters Right Now
You might be wondering why any of this matters in 2026.
It matters because our current political imagination is kinda broken. We’re told that the way we live now—with massive inequality, environmental collapse, and rigid bureaucracy—is the only way a complex society can function. The Dawn of Everything argues that this is a lie. If our ancestors could build cities without kings, change their laws every six months, and prioritize leisure over "productivity," then we aren't actually stuck.
The "dawn" wasn't a single moment in time. It was a long, messy, creative process of trial and error. We've just spent the last few centuries in a bit of a rut.
Graeber and Wengrow don't give us a blueprint for the future. They aren't saying we should all go back to being hunter-gatherers. That would be impossible. What they are saying is that we are "political animals" in the truest sense. We have the capacity to reinvent how we live together. The "shackles" of civilization are mostly in our heads.
Breaking the Narrative
The book has its critics, obviously. Some archeologists argue that the authors cherry-pick their data or overlook evidence of early violence. And yeah, maybe they are a bit too optimistic about human nature at times. But even if only half of what they say is true, it still fundamentally changes the story of humanity.
It moves us away from the idea of "social evolution" toward "social self-creation."
We aren't just biological machines reacting to the environment. We are agents. The fact that we've lived in so many different ways—some peaceful, some violent, some equal, some hierarchical—proves that nothing about our current setup is "inevitable."
Actionable Steps for Rethinking History
If you want to actually apply the insights from The Dawn of Everything to how you see the world, start here:
- Question "Inevitable" Hierarchies: Next time someone says a large organization must have a top-down CEO structure to work, look up the history of "council-led" cities like Tlaxcala. Challenge the assumption that complexity equals command.
- Audit Your Knowledge of Indigenous Philosophy: Most of us can name five Greek philosophers but zero Indigenous ones. Look into the works of Kandiaronk or the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy. Their influence on modern democracy is huge and largely ignored.
- Look for Seasonal Flexibility: Observe how your own social groups change. Do you act differently at work versus a holiday? That "seasonal" shift in personality is a remnant of how our ancestors used to run entire civilizations.
- Practice the Freedom to Move: While we can't easily start new countries, we can foster communities—online or local—that prioritize the "freedom to leave" and "freedom to disobey." The more we practice these small-scale freedoms, the more we remember they exist.
- Read the Source Material: Don't just take a summary's word for it. Pick up the book or look into the specific archaeological sites mentioned, like Çatalhöyük or the Ukrainian "mega-sites." Seeing the physical evidence of egalitarian cities changes how you view a skyscraper.
The history of humanity is a lot more interesting than the "ascent to the state" story we were taught in high school. We’ve been many things, and we can be many things again. The first step is just realizing that the way we live now is just one of many options we’ve tried.