The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

“As we will soon be discovering, there is simply no reason to believe that small-scale groups are especially likely to be egalitarian—or, conversely, that large ones must necessarily have kings, presidents, or even bureaucracies. Statements like these are just so many prejudices dressed up as facts, or even as laws of history.”

The entire book is a rebuttal to most large-scale attempts to describe the development of human history. These conventional narratives claim—without fully examining the range of evidence—that small bands of egalitarian forager-hunter groups eventually settled into agrarian societies, which led to cities, states, and empires, and, ultimately, hierarchical forms of rule. Instead, they offer an alternative story that suggests the development of human societies—and the inexorable drift into inequality—need not be inevitable, as the evidence provides avenues for a variety of possibilities.

“There is no contesting that European traders, missionaries and settlers did actually engage in prolonged conversations with people they encountered in what they called the New World, and often lived among them for extended periods of time—even as they also colluded in their destruction. We also know that many of those living in Europe who came to embrace principles of freedom and equality (principles barely existing in their countries a few generations before) claimed that accounts of these encounters had a profound influence on their thinking.”

Here, the authors refer to the Indigenous critique, wherein Indigenous thinkers and groups pointed out the contradictions, inequalities, and injustice within European societies. The authors argue that the Europeans learned more about the possibilities for egalitarianism in human societies from the Indigenous peoples than the other way around. The authors go so far as to suggest that many of the principles associated with the Enlightenment originated in these conversations with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It upends the traditional—and racially biased—narrative that suggests that Indigenous groups did not live in complex societies or understand the workings of politics.

“In conclusion, he [Kandiaronk] swings back to his original observation: the whole apparatus of trying to force people to behave well would be unnecessary if France did not also maintain a contrary apparatus that encourages people to behave badly. That apparatus consisted of money, property rights and the resultant pursuit of material self-interest.”

Kandiaronk, a member of the Wendat tribe, is one of the most famous progenitors of the indigenous critique. His conversations with Frenchman Baron Louis-Armand Lahontan were recorded in Lahontan’s book, New Voyages to North America. For centuries, these conversations were dismissed as Lahontan’s critique of French society disguised in the voice of an Amerindian. Again, because of racially and culturally biased assumptions, Kandiaronk’s insights were taken as either the camouflaged words of a Frenchman or the childlike thoughts of the “noble savage,” innocent and primitive, without knowledge of how complex societies work. The authors provide evidence that, in fact, Kandiaronk’s critique was, indeed, his own, born out of historical realities, deep political awareness, and a sophisticated understanding of how societies organize themselves.

“[Our earliest ancestors] were far, far more physically diverse than humans are today; and presumably their social differences were even greater than their physical ones. In other words, there is no ‘original’ form of human society. Searching for one can only be a matter of myth-making, whether the resultant myths take the form of ‘killer ape’ fantasies that emerged in the 1960s, seared into collective consciousness by movies like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; or the ‘aquatic ape’; or even the highly amusing but fanciful ‘stoned ape.’”

The authors address the “sapient paradox,” the idea that humans evolved from simian societies in ways that either resemble violent chimpanzee groups, fighting for dominance and living in hierarchical systems, or gentle bonobos, who spend their time enjoying food, sex, and peaceful relationships. It also suggests that human groups had the capacity to live in more complex societies for thousands of years, yet chose not to; or, when faced with the decision to form more complex societies, chose only the one (chimpanzee) option. These views are promulgated not only by scholars working on large-scale histories but also by the broader media that make up popular culture. These notions become truisms simply because they are repeated, not because they are evidently true.

“Still, it’s worth pointing out because it exposes the much deeper silliness of the initial assumption: that societies must necessarily progress through a series of evolutionary stages to begin with. You can’t speak of an evolution from band to tribe to chiefdom to state if your starting points are groups that move fluidly between them as a matter of habit” and “With such institutional flexibility comes the capacity to step outside the boundaries of any given structure and reflect; to both make and unmake the political worlds we live in.”

The authors address the issue of “seasonal dualism,” wherein the evidence points to a pattern of shifting between different forms of social organization at different times of the year. Many early human societies appeared to have enjoyed a kind of fluidity of governance; at certain times of the year, they lived in egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers, while at other times of the year, they settled into larger tribes complete with chiefs and regulations. Thus, there is no clear, teleological progression from one state of existence to another; this simplifies and flattens the actual story of human history and social development.

“American citizens have the right to travel wherever they like—provided, of course, they have the money for transport and accommodation. They are free from ever having to obey arbitrary orders of superiors—unless, of course, they have to get a job. In this sense, it is almost possible to say the Wendat had play chiefs and real freedoms, while most of us today have to make do with real chiefs and play freedoms.”

The authors point out a clear paradox between the alleged freedoms of humans living in modern societies and the tangible freedoms enjoyed by Indigenous groups prior to European conquest. That is, modern societies provide ideas about freedom, but they do not actually promise literal personal autonomy. The structures of authority and bureaucracy limit those individual freedoms in ways that would be foreign to members of Wendat, and other Amerindian, societies.

“In a similar way, the stereotype of the carefree, lazy native, coasting through a life free from material ambition, was deployed by thousands of European conquerors, plantation overseers and colonial officials in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania as a pretext for the use of bureaucratic terror to force local people into work; everything from outright enslavement to punitive tax regimes, corveé labour and debt peonage.”

In an essentially post-colonial critique, the authors note how the “legacy of European colonial expansion” played a significant role in how the concept of private property, particularly regarding land ownership, was transported to the colonies. That is, because the natives were not actively cultivating the land—at least in the European’s eyes—they claimed no ownership over it. Thus, the imperialist dispossession of Indigenous territory was justified.

“It raises the possibility that decisions such as whether or not to adopt agriculture weren’t just calculations of caloric advantage or matters of random cultural taste, but also reflected questions about values, about what humans really are (and consider themselves to be), and how they should properly relate to one another.”

Discussions about these values and relationships did not suddenly become the province of European Enlightenment-era thinkers. They were issues for debate in early human societies across the world, from North American tribes like the Northwest Coast tribes and the Yurok (which are explored at length in this chapter) to the upper and lower Fertile Crescent civilizations to the “heroic societies” that developed in Europe, among other places, on the margins of large urban centers. Agriculture represents a choice about how humans decide to organize their respective societies.

“It suggests that populations directly adjacent to the Californian ‘shatter zone’ were aware of their northern neighbors and saw them as warlike, and as disposed to a life of luxury based on exploiting the labour of those they subdued. It implies they recognized such exploitation as a possibility in their own societies yet rejected it, since keeping slaves would undermine important social values (they would become ‘fat and lazy’).”

In contradiction to the notion that slavery emerged among the Northwest Coast peoples because of ecological factors, the authors argue that, in fact, it was due to a cultural value system that put a high premium on a kind of aristocracy that needed forced labor to support their excessive lifestyles. In contrast, the Californian tribes chose a different path—with self-consciousness and cultural self-awareness. Thus, each tribe expresses their own autonomous set of opposing cultural values, as in the processes of schismogenesis.

“We need to understand that this 3,000-year period as an important phase of human history in its own right. It’s a phase marked by foragers moving in and out of cultivation—and as we’ve seen, there’s nothing unusual or anomalous about this flirting and tinkering with the possibilities of farming [. . .] but in no way enslaving themselves to the needs of their crops or herds. So long as it didn’t become too onerous, cultivation was just one of many ways in which early settled communities managed their environments.”

In Neolithic times, the possibilities for how human societies are organized are in flux, and agriculture—far from being the determining factor in the rise of cities and, later, nation-states—is also one of many options. The conventional narrative that suggests once agriculture is “discovered,” then societies settle down, grow their populations, invent notions of private property, and thus must create systems of government to control goods and people is inaccurate. Agriculture was only one factor among many which determined how societies survived, thrived, and organized themselves.

“Consciously or not, it is the contributions of women that get written out of such accounts. Harvesting wild plants and turning them into food, medicine and complex structures like baskets or clothing is almost everywhere a female activity and may be gendered female even when practiced by men. This is not quite an anthropological universal, but it’s about as close to one as you are ever likely to get.”

Throughout the book, the authors point out the previously undervalued contributions of women to the development of human societies across the globe. In fact, early forays into farming were likely more about producing household and ceremonial items—the province of women—rather than about growing large stores of food. Thus, the technologies that become the driving forces behind the development of human civilizations were likely innovated by women.

“We know much less about the prehistory of these other regions than we do about the Fertile Crescent. None followed a linear trajectory from food production to state formation. Nor is there any reason to assume a rapid spread of farming beyond them to neighbouring areas. Food production did not always present itself to foragers, fishers, and hunters as an obviously beneficial thing.”

The authors discuss the dangers of teleological history throughout the book, the tendency to explain the past by observing the present. This assumes a “linear trajectory,” wherein the end result is inevitable, the system of hierarchically managed nation-states that are the dominant method of social organization today—which, in turn, produces inequality on a global scale. The authors emphasize that such results were not, in fact, inevitable, as the historical record reveals a plethora of options, ones that could be revisited to open possibilities for the future.

“Farming, as we can now see, often started out as an economy of deprivation: you only invented it when there was nothing else to be done, which is why it tended to happen first in areas were wild resources were thinnest on the ground.”

Discussing the practices in Amazonia, the authors argue that the advent of agriculture was in all places a complex and often scattershot process. In fact, in certain groups, the domestication of animals came into conflict with spiritual beliefs; thus, “there was no obvious cultural route, in Amazonia, that might lead humans to become both the primary carers for and consumers of other species” (269). In this instance, farming (which typically includes the domestication of animals) takes a back seat to more important cultural concerns. Other examples suggest that farming was too uncertain and too labor intensive for it to replace more traditional sources for sustenance, like hunting, fishing, and foraging.

“Very large social units are always, in a sense, imaginary. Or, to put it in a slightly different way, there is always a fundamental distinction between the way one relates to friends, family, neighbourhood, people and places that we actually know directly, and the way one relates to empires, nations and metropolises, phenomena that exist largely, or at least most of the time, in our heads.”

The authors emphasize the distinction between relationships that are built on direct contact, personal knowledge, familial and ancestral lineage with those that are premised upon the conceptual notion that one belongs to a much larger group. That is, one only “imagines” oneself a citizen of this nation or that city—indeed, those entities are only social constructs, not material realities—by implicitly or explicitly agreeing with, or participating in, the cultural rituals and political regulations (i.e., obeying the law) handed down by the governing bodies of those entities.

“Times of labour mobilization were thus seen as moments of absolute equality before the gods—when even slaves might be placed on an equal footing to their masters—as well as times when the imaginary city became real, as its inhabitants shed their day-to-day identities as bakers or tavern keepers or inhabitants of such and such a neighbourhood, or later generals or slaves, and briefly assembled to become ‘the people’ of Lagash, or Kish, Eridu or Larsa as they built or rebuilt some part of the city or the network of irrigation canals that sustained it.”

This example demonstrates both how “imaginary” cities become at least partial realities to citizens, through the organization of large-scale public works, and how early cities still participated in some forms of egalitarian arrangement. During these mobilizations of labor, as in times of festival or carnival, the typical hierarchical divisions between social classes dissolve. Thus, even as early settlements coalesced into cities with rulers and bureaucracies, there were still vestiges of fluidity in the social contract at times.

“Increasing the number of people living in one place may vastly increase the range of social possibilities, but in no sense does it predetermine which of those possibilities will ultimately be realized.”

Again, the authors again make the assertion that large populations do not necessarily and inevitably lead to one particular, usually rendered as hierarchical, form of social organization. They emphasize repeatedly throughout the book that different groups engendered different forms of governance and bureaucracy based on distinct cultural values exercised with self-conscious self-determination.

“All the evidence suggests that Teotihuacan had, at its height of its power, found a way to govern itself without overlords—as did the much earlier cities of prehistoric Ukraine, Uruk-period Mesopotamia and Bronze Age Pakistan. Yet it did so with a very different technological foundation, and on an even larger scale.”

For example, following the above, the populous city-state of Teotihuacan appeared to reverse course at some point in its history, moving away from authoritarian rule to some form of republican governance. For hundreds of years, the evidence suggests that the residents of Teotihuacan lived in apartment units of equal size and quality, led by small groups of local councils per every hundred unit. Thus, it does not necessarily or inevitably follow that a large and complex society need implement authoritarian types of rule.

“You might think all this would be of interest to historians. Instead, what really seems to strike them as worthy of debate is the degree to which democratic mores displayed in the texts might be some sort of near-miraculous adaptation by ‘astute Indians’ to the political expectations of their European masters: effectively some kind of elaborate play-acting. Why such historians imagine that a collection of sixteenth-century Spanish friars, petty aristocrats and soldiers were likely to know anything about democratic procedure (much less, be impressed by it) is unclear, because educated opinion in Europe was almost uniformly anti-democratic at the time. If anyone was learning something new from the encounter, it was surely the Spaniards.”

As in the example of Kandiaronk from above, the authors note that historians have long misinterpreted the tenor of the conversations between Europeans—including the French and the Spanish—and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This gives support to their claim that Indigenous ideas regarding equality and democratic rule were transported back to Europe, providing a significant spark for the Enlightenment that would emerge there, rather than the other way around.

“As we can now begin to see, modern states are, in fact, an amalgam of elements that happen to have come together at a certain point in human history—and, arguably, are now in the process of coming apart again (consider, for instance, how we currently have planetary bureaucracies, such as the WTO or IMF, with no corresponding principle of global sovereignty).”

After providing archeological and anthropological evidence to suggest the origins of “modern states” are myriad, regionally distinct, fluid (as in the case of Teotihuacan and Taosi, in particular), and never completely settled. Thus, it should come as no surprise that new forms of social organization and governance are arising considering technological changes in communication, travel, and financial systems. States are no more inevitable than they are eternal.

“Urban populations seem to have a remarkable capacity for self-governance in ways which, while usually not quite ‘egalitarian,’ were likely a good deal more participatory than almost any urban government today. Meanwhile most ancient emperors, as it turns out, saw little reason to interfere, as they simply didn’t care very much about how their subjects cleaned the streets or maintained their drainage ditches.”

Relying on their examples from Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, Asia, and elsewhere, the authors observe the many ways in which the archeological record reveals systems of governance that resemble democracies, including town councils and local meeting-places, throughout early human history. They also note the relative powerlessness of kings and emperors, “imprisoned in their palaces” (396), wherein their authority (not to mention their ability to use force and violence) is limited to those subjects within their immediate vicinity. Most citizens went about their daily lives without interference from their distant kings or emperors.

“Empires were exceptional and short-lived, and even the most powerful—Roman, Han, Ming, Inca—could not prevent large-scale movements of people into and of their spheres of control.”

As in the example above, the authors point out that, for much of human history, the more centralized and concentrated the ruling authority, the more diffusive the freedoms and lived experience of individual subjects are. In contrast, modern technology provides much more opportunity for control and surveillance: one cannot travel between borders without state-issued identification (passports, e.g.); the use of personal computers and cell phones leave a technological trail; and the rising implementation of facial recognition technology gives governments even more prospects for tracking their citizens.

“Certainly, the overall direction, in the wake of Cahokia, was a broad movement away from overlords of any sort and towards constitutional structures carefully worked out to distribute power in such a way that they would never return. But the possibility that they might always lurked in the background. Other paradigms of governance existed, and ambitious men—or women—could, if occasion allowed, appeal to them.”

The example of Cahokia—a violent authoritarian state in pre-Colombian North America—appears to have set Amerindians on a deliberate path of egalitarian self-determination within their various tribal groups. However, there was also the memory of Cahokia, the knowledge that other forms of government (perhaps quite lucrative for the powerful few) were always available. This also serves to emphasize how intentional the decision was within most Amerindian communities, pre-European encounter, to organize their societies in democratic fashion.

“Instead of some male genius realizing his solitary vision, innovation in Neolithic societies was based on a collective body of knowledge accumulated over centuries, largely by women, in an endless series of apparently humble but in fact enormously significant discoveries. Many of those Neolithic discoveries had the cumulative effect of reshaping everyday life every bit as profoundly as the automatic loom or the lightbulb.”

Here, the authors provide another critique of the Great Man Theory of history: this is one of the traditional ways at interpreting history—largely fallen out of favor in the academy yet still perpetuated in popular histories—wherein a revolution or a cultural shift or a social development can be explained by the “discovery” or “invention” of a sole (almost always male) genius. For much of human history, the authors insist, these kinds of developments occur through the cooperative innovation frequently initiated by women.