The Dawn of Everything Book Club
How did our distant ancestors live? And what can this tell us about our contemporary world? Drawing on wide-ranging research in archaeology and anthropology, The Dawn of Everything is an ambitious attempt to overturn the conventional narrative about human history, including the origins of farming, property, cities, and democracy, and replace it with a more accurate, interesting, and unpredictable story.
This event series will feature experts from across the UW-Madison campus providing their assessment of the book and how it might change the way we think about and teach the deep past as well as what it tells us about the present. We will meet at 4pm starting Wednesday, February 15. Register below to take part.
Thank you to the Havens Wright Center for Social Justice, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, and the Department of Anthropology at UW-Madison for co-sponsoring this event series.
Resources & Supplemental Reading
See how different Historians reviewed Dawn:
- William Deresiewicz. Human History Gets a Rewrite. The Atlantic (Positive)
- Daniel Immerwahr. Beyond the State. The Nation (Mixed)
- David Bell. A Flawed History of Humanity. Persuasion (Negative)
Speakers
Session 1: Rethinking the Roots of Inequality, with Katherine Robiadek
Recommended reading: Chapters 1-2.
What are the origins of social inequality? The story we all know is that humans used to live in small, egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers until the invention of agriculture led to the formation of settlements, then cities, then states, which brought with them ever greater inequality. Yet, according to Graeber & Wengrow, new evidence shows that for thousands of years our distant ancestors consciously and collectively transformed their worlds in a variety of ways. In this introductory session, we will introduce the book, its authors, and the controversies it has generated.
Wednesday, February 15 2023, 4pm
Session 2: The Revolution that Never Happened?
Recommended reading: Chapters 3-7.
Some 10,000 years ago, the first ‘Agricultural Revolution’ decisively and irreversibly changed the trajectory of humankind forever. Or did it? Graeber & Wengrow instead present an account of a partial and contingent process whereby farming practices were taken up and rejected in different parts of the world over the course of thousands of years. In this session, we will examine the evidence they leverage and its implications for how we understand history.
Wednesday, February 22 2023, 4pm
Session 3: Cities, Scale, and Political Hierarchy
Recommended reading: Chapters 8-9.
It is often assumed that as societies become more dense and complex, top-down forms of governance inevitably emerge in order to maintain order. Drawing on evidence from Mesoamerica, Ukraine, China, and the Indus Valley, Graber & Wengrow argue that the story is far more complex. In this session, we will assess their argument and what it means for our understanding of ancient cities.
Wednesday, March 1, 2023, 4pm
Session 4: The Deep Past and the Political Present
Recommended reading: Chapters 10-12.
If our distant ancestors really did invent a wide variety of different political formations, why is it so difficult to imagine political alternatives in the present? In this final session, we will examine some of the key insights and limitations of the book for our understanding of the past. We will also ask how this might inspire us to rethink the political challenges we face today.
Wednesday, March 8, 2023, 4pm