A new history of humanity. For generations, we have considered our ancestors to be simplistic, whether free and equal or brutal and warlike. We learn that we could only create civilization by sacrificing our primordial freedom or taming our basic instincts.

David Graeber and David Wengrow explain how such theories first emerged in the 18th century as a reaction to the critiques of European society from indigenous peoples and why they are wrong. This book overturns the way we see human history, the origins of agriculture, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.

The authors, based on groundbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, demonstrate that history can suddenly become much more interesting if we see what it really says. If people did not spend 95% of their evolutionary past in small groups of hunter-gatherers, then what were they doing all that time? If agriculture and cities did not throw us into hierarchy and domination, then what did they mean? The answers are often surprising and suggest that the course of human history may not be set in stone, but rather filled with entertaining possibilities more than we tend to imagine.

The Dawn of Everything radically changes our perception of humanity's past and offers a way to envision new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. A monumental work, the result of scientific curiosity, moral vision, and faith in the power of direct action.

"If, as many claim, the future of our species now depends on our ability to create something different (say, a system in which wealth cannot easily be transformed into power, or in which people do not hear that their needs are insignificant or that their lives have no inherent value), then what ultimately matters is whether we can rediscover the freedoms that make us primarily human.

[...] We are works of collective self-creation. What if we approached human history this way? What if we treated people from the outset as imaginative, intelligent, playful creatures worthy of being understood as such? What if, instead of telling a story about how our species fell from some idyllic state of equality, we wondered how we ended up trapped in such tight conceptual bonds that we can hardly even imagine the possibility of reinventing ourselves?"