PDF Summary:The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber

Why does inequality exist and when did it start? Is inequality a necessary evil of any large, complex society? In The Dawn of Everything, anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow attempted to answer these questions by looking at historical and anthropological research. What they discovered instead is that our beliefs about the evolution of human societies have been wrong all along.

Throughout humanity’s long history, cultures have always been much more diverse than we tend to believe, and the presumed evolution of societies from “primitive” to “civilized” is a myth. Armed with this new worldview, the authors challenge us to use our imaginations to envision new possibilities for our world today.

In this guide, we’ll explore different notions of freedom and equality, and we’ll delve into the authors’ thought-provoking questions about the inevitability of inequality and the potential for dismantling and reorganizing social systems. Throughout the guide, we’ll clarify and expand on some of the academic concepts and examine counterpoints by other scholars and authors.

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According to Graeber and Wengrow, anthropologists traditionally describe the evolution of human societies as follows:

Bands: The earliest human societies were small groups of hunter/gatherers (also called foragers) organized into bands. A band is a small group of usually fewer than 100 people, composed of a few extended families living and working together. These societies would have been egalitarian, meaning everyone was equal in social status and resource distribution. As the story goes, all humans lived in foraging bands for the vast majority of humanity’s history.

Tribes: A tribe is a larger group than a band, with a leader and a more complex organization around distinctions in rank and status. Tribes can range from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of people. Tribal societies may make their living by foraging, raising animals (called pastoralism), or by small-scale farming, called horticulture. While they do have rank and status distinctions, tribes are still fairly egalitarian, certainly as compared with a state-level society. There are typically customs in place to ensure that resources are distributed equally and everyone is taken care of.

Chiefdoms: A chiefdom is typically somewhat larger and more complex than a tribe, often with social status being tied to how closely one is related to the chief’s family. Chiefdoms are usually organized around small-scale farming of communal plots, and they also have customs and rules for ensuring that everyone has the resources they need. There are inequalities in rank and status, but that doesn’t translate into haves and have-nots, and a chief’s main function is to ensure that doesn’t happen. So, these are also considered relatively egalitarian societies, as compared with states.

States: The advent of large-scale agriculture led to a much larger and more complex social organization called the state. Humans began farming at least 12,000 years ago, but intensive cultivation leading to large, dense populations and state societies didn’t arise until several thousand years later, around 3700 BC.

A state-level agricultural society is fundamentally different from any of the other kinds of societies. A state implies a centralized government with the absolute authority to enforce laws. The state is also ranked hierarchically, based on relative access to resources such as ownership of land and monetary wealth. This creates a situation where a large portion of the population has few or no resources and is indebted to the smaller portion of the population who owns the land and other means of production. The rise of the agricultural state is associated with the origin of private property, hierarchy, and patriarchy (male domination).

From “Savage” to “Civilized”

This conventional narrative was drawn from the works of early anthropologists and social theorists who were quite ethnocentric—meaning, they saw their own cultures as superior and evaluated all other cultures against this standard. In his 1884 book The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Friedrich Engels argued that humans had evolved for some time in a state of equality, but with the invention of farming came inequality in all its forms, including gender inequality. However, Engels was drawing his conclusions based on only a small sample of descriptions of non-state societies, on the assumption that they were all generally similar.

Some of the work Engels drew upon was that of early anthropologists, sometimes called social evolutionists or social Darwinists because they took Darwin’s ideas about biological evolution and applied them to human societies. One of these social Darwinists was Lewis Henry Morgan, who wrote the book Ancient Society in 1877. In this book, Morgan described human societies in terms of three levels of social development: savagery, barbarism, and civilization. Morgan defined these levels based on the tools and weaponry the societies had developed, as well as their social organization and structure. So, bands and smaller tribes might have been classified as savages, while larger tribes and chiefdoms might have fallen into the barbarism category. Only state societies could be classified as civilized. And in fact, Morgan subdivided this category into upper and lower civilizations— with the upper civilization category being reserved for the colonizing countries like Britain, France, and America.

Morgan was American and studied the Iroquois tribe firsthand, so he was basing his categorization system on his fieldwork among the Iroquois, combined with descriptions written by other anthropologists of cultures around the world. Since the Wendat were Iroquoian people, and Morgan’s work was taking place in the mid- to latter-19th century, it’s possible his work was influenced by the indigenous critique of the 18th century.

The authors say the dominant narrative in this framework is that the adoption of agriculture dramatically changed the way humans lived, and it led to formal social and economic inequality. The above categories, they explain, are often presented as an evolutionary trajectory, wherein human societies inevitably go through this linear progression from the simple egalitarian band to the complex hierarchical state, with the degree of farming being tied to the degree of social inequality.

According to Graeber and Wengrow, early anthropologists explicitly defined these stages in terms of “progress.” Societies at the state level were considered to be civilized while simpler societies were categorized as primitive or savages. The authors clarify that contemporary anthropology patently rejects such value judgments and would no longer classify any human society as savage. But, they point out, it’s still commonly accepted that the forms of society that existed before agricultural states were all somewhat similar—small, simple, and relatively egalitarian.

We can also see in this framework what Graeber and Wengrow challenge in this book: the idea that inequality is an inevitable fact of life in a state-level society.

As a result of this view of simple indigenous societies, Graeber and Wengrow argue that in the modern imagination there are two general views of what a pre-state kind of lifestyle was like—it was either an idyllic life of harmony with nature, or it was a miserable existence of constant suffering. These two disparate views, they argue, can be traced back to philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who described the admirable life of the “noble savage,” and Thomas Hobbes, who described pre-modern life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

The State of Nature

The debate between the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes is often referred to as a debate about the state of nature, meaning it revolves around the question of whether human nature is inherently good or evil.

Rousseau’s view was that human nature is peaceful and compassionate and that it’s only corrupted when humans move away from their nature and live in an unnatural way—-meaning, in a hierarchical state-level society.

Hobbes, on the other hand, believed human nature was selfish and greedy and tended toward violence. He argued that these natural tendencies must be controlled by man-made institutions, like government and organized religion, that essentially force people to behave.

We can see this dichotomy of thought in many aspects of society today, from political ideologies to education. For example, in the US, the public education system is a highly structured, hierarchical environment with a standardized curriculum and a high value placed on technology. By contrast, Waldorf and Montessori schools place emphasis on allowing children to explore in less structured environments, encourage creativity, and eschew technology. This system values an idyllic concept of pre-modern life and emphasizes sustainable skills like handcrafts and gardening.

Part 3: Challenging the Conventional Narrative

After presenting these conventional views, Graeber and Wengrow argue that the truth is much more complex than our traditional narrative suggests. They say when you look at the historical evidence without an evolutionist bias, you find that people in all times and places have been conscious political actors making deliberate decisions about how to live, and they’ve chosen the kinds of social and political organizations that suit them best.

In this section, we’ll look at specific challenges to the myth that earlier societies were all egalitarian, and then explain why that myth may have been intentionally perpetuated to undermine the indigenous critique of European culture. Then we’ll examine the authors’ critique of the myth that agriculture led to inequality.

Debunking the Myth of the Egalitarian Tribe

Graeber and Wengrow argue that when we examine the anthropological evidence, the evolutionist narrative doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. They say the historical evidence shows us that hierarchy and equality have existed in a variety of ways alongside one another throughout all of recorded history.

The whole idea that societies have evolved—from bands to tribes to chiefdoms to states—suggests that all human societies are in whatever stage of development they're in just because they haven’t yet reached the next stage of development, and they don’t know anything else. But Graeber and Wengrow say there are two major problems with this assumption:

First, many non-agricultural societies had a combination of features of those different structures. Some would be impossible to fit into one of the four evolutionary categories. For example, they say when you look at chiefdoms, those chiefs look a lot like kings. The authors say, for example, some Native American tribes—especially on the northwest coast—had ranks and titles, nobles and commoners, and slaves. Records indicate that in some of these tribes, up to 25% of the population was enslaved.

By contrast, the authors say that the Californian tribes to their south were truly egalitarian and adamantly opposed to slavery. This helps illustrate that as far back as recorded history goes, even cultures living in proximity to one another were often radically different. In fact, Graeber and Wengrow point out that cultures often define themselves in opposition to their neighbors. So, historically, we see more contrast and diversity than similarity among indigenous groups.

So this means there are many societies that wouldn’t be able to be placed on the evolutionary scale.

Native American Tribes and Slavery

Not only were some of the Native American tribes slaveholding societies before European contact, a few tribes even enslaved Africans brought to America by Europeans. The Smithsonian Institute says high-status members of five tribes (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) enslaved African Americans in order to prove themselves more “civilized” in the eyes of the white settlers. Slaves would have been symbols of, and tools for, economic success, and such success would have garnered privilege and status for Native people seeking to improve their situations in the colonizer’s society.

The Smithsonian notes, however, that most Native Americans did not own slaves, and in fact, many more of them were enslaved themselves than were slaveholders.

Second, there are records of some indigenous cultures choosing to change their social organizations, either temporarily or permanently. For instance, there’s evidence that some societies tried farming for a while, then abandoned it and went back to hunting and gathering. This implies they knew there were multiple options.

The authors say band foragers weren’t always just band foragers because they couldn't even imagine anything else and had no other options available. People in these societies made conscious decisions to organize themselves in ways that suited their environments, values, and preferences.

This defeats the claim that all societies inevitably progress through these stages over time.

(Shortform note: Researchers have also recently learned that some of the cultures originally assumed to be foragers were actually cultivating plant food. In the forests of British Columbia, First Nations people were believed to be engaged in hunting and gathering wild animals and plants. The plentiful forest gardens looked like wild natural spaces to white settlers. But in fact, ecologists have recently determined that those tribes were intentionally cultivating many of the fruit trees and berry bushes in the area. This is another factor that complicates the simplified classification system of indigenous societies.)

Undermining the Indigenous Critique

Graeber and Wengrow argue that this oversimplified view of indigenous societies was deliberately used to undermine the indigenous critique of European culture by equating “egalitarian” with “primitive."

The authors explain that the reasoning went like this: If “primitive” tribes were egalitarian (as they were all presumed to be) then one could logically conclude that an egalitarian structure was primitive and associated with a simple-minded worldview. Then, by contrast, since “civilized” societies were all hierarchical, that structure must be associated with a more sophisticated worldview. Then, when we add notions of social evolution to the narrative, Graeber and Wengrow point out, it’s easy to conclude that an egalitarian structure is less evolved and that as human societies progress, they naturally and rightfully become more stratified.

So this rationale worked to undermine the indigenous critique by discrediting the source: If indigenous societies were primitive and simple-minded, they obviously couldn’t have any valid critique of a civilized, sophisticated society. They just didn’t understand the complexities of civilization.

Survival of the Fittest

The evolutionist narrative of human societies is not only incorrect, but it’s also actively harmful, as it has been used to justify racism. In thinking about these systems for categorizing societies on a scale from savage to civilized, early social scientists also noted that people in these different societies looked different. It was only at this point in history (during the colonial era of the 1800s) that the concept of human “races” as distinct biological categories emerged. When the concept of race overlapped with the idea of social evolution, this could justify the claim that some humans were naturally less-evolved, and therefore inferior, to other humans.

In fact, contrary to popular belief, it was not Charles Darwin who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest”—it was social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, in discussing the evolution of societies. Using these ideas, then, the colonizing societies could conclude that they were naturally superior and more fit for survival, while the indigenous peoples they encountered were less fit and destined to die out. And, of course, they could use this to justify eliminating them.

Debunking the Myth of the Agricultural Revolution

The idea of an agricultural revolution is also something of a myth, according to Graeber and Wengrow. They point out that there's evidence that people were cultivating crops since at least 10,000 BC, while major state-level societies didn't happen until long after that. Also, they say, some societies have farmed and never become hierarchical states. For example, Çatalhöyük is an ancient site in Turkey that was settled around 7,400 BC and was occupied for around 1,500 years. Archaeological remains tell us that this community was engaged in foraging as well as raising animals and farming, and it doesn’t appear that there were any social distinctions in rank, including between men and women.

(Shortform note: The argument Graeber and Wengrow put forth here doesn’t make the distinction between what anthropologists call horticulture versus agriculture. Anthropologists are aware that people were farming long before what’s called the agricultural revolution—it’s large-scale intensive farming that’s associated with the revolution and the subsequent hierarchies. A society like Çatalhöyük would be considered horticultural, which actually isn’t conventionally associated with a high degree of inequality. On this point, the authors seem to be arguing against a claim that isn’t being made.)

Additionally, Graeber and Wengrow point out that there were non-agricultural societies that had the concept of private property, such as strict territorial boundaries, as well as the notion of the sacred, which can translate to “this is mine and you can’t have it.” And they point out there have been many farming societies that understood all land as communally owned.

So, the authors suggest that farming allows for the possibility of a hierarchical state to emerge, and it is conducive to notions of private property, but it doesn't make these things inevitable, nor does it cause them to happen. Some cultures have intentionally chosen not to cultivate crops, and some have moved back and forth between farming and foraging.

(Shortform note: It could be argued that the authors’ accounts of ranked foraging societies are exceptions, not the rule, and that those are examples of “complex foragers.” Such societies became complex and ranked because they had a steady, abundant source of wild food. For example, those who lived near salmon-rich rivers were able to harvest and store a surplus of fish, which served the same purpose as farming. Anthropologists acknowledge that such groups exist. Graeber and Wengrow claim they’re more common than what could be considered exceptions to the rule, but some anthropologists disagree.)

Part 4: Conclusion: Is Inequality Inevitable?

To circle back around to the driving question of this project, Graeber and Wengrow ask: How did we come to view inequality as inevitable and get stuck in unequal state-level societies? Rather than answering this question, the authors simply raise it for the reader’s consideration, suggesting that understanding the complexity and diversity of different kinds of societies throughout history might prompt us to broaden our ideas about the possibilities for our contemporary societies.

Imagining Alternatives

A thorough examination of the literature shows us that people throughout history have deliberately changed social and political customs that weren’t working, and they were able to creatively envision different alternatives. Could we use these examples as templates to imagine alternatives for ourselves?

Graeber and Wengrow say that most citizens of modern states have a hard time even imagining a different social order than the one they live in. Indigenous people, however, are not only able to imagine it, they sometimes move back and forth between different social orders in cycles with the seasons. And some have abandoned their social organization entirely and reorganized because what they had wasn’t working well.

For example, Graeber and Wengrow describe the Nambikwara people of Brazil, who live in two different places at different times of the year—one location in the rainy season and another for the rest of the year. They farm during part of the year, they hunt and gather during another part of the year, and they have different political systems, social organizations, and rules for those different phases of the year. (Shortform note: Many people consider nomadic cultures to be a thing of the past, but millions of nomads still exist today and they are present on nearly every continent.)

If people throughout history have been assembling and dismantling hierarchies on a seasonal basis or even in a historical pattern, then the authors challenge us to consider: Why have we been stuck in the state structure for so long? Why did most of humanity allow these permanent hierarchical systems to take root? How did we as a species come to give in and accept these systems?

Graeber and Wengrow leave us with more questions than answers. But in conclusion, they point out that earlier people took conscious steps to avoid domination and hierarchy and to protect personal freedoms, liberties, and equality. And they say this indicates that we could also dismantle the systems we have in place and build something different. We’re only limited by our imaginations.

Can We Have Peace Without State Control?

In the spirit of imagining alternative ways of living, you might wonder: Is it possible to have a peaceful society and true egalitarian freedoms?

Taking Hobbes’s pessimistic perspective of human nature, Steven Pinker would say that in large-scale societies, a formal government is necessary to keep our violent instincts in check. In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker argues that today’s modern societies are less violent than small-scale societies of the past, specifically because we have greater social control mechanisms, which have led to what he calls the “pacification process.” He argues that the reason we need a government, police, and a criminal justice system in complex societies is because it would all descend into chaos if we didn't have that.

Graeber and Wengrow disagree with this notion. They say the evidence doesn’t support the claim that a formal government is necessary for a peaceful society. It can also be argued that the modern state’s monopoly of force can be used for much larger-scale acts of terror and oppression, and that it curtails the kinds of freedoms and liberties associated with an egalitarian society.

Which Modern Countries Are the Most Egalitarian?

Although none embody the freedoms of the indigenous egalitarian societies, some contemporary nations are much more egalitarian than others. Could we look at those countries as models to start thinking about global steps in that direction?

Ranking countries in terms of equality is complicated because there are many different dimensions of inequality, including economic, gender, and racial inequalities. However, when we look at the data, we see some common names appearing on the “top five” lists.

• Top five countries with the greatest income equality: Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland

• Top five countries with the greatest gender equality: the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland

• Top five countries with the greatest racial equality: the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Canada, and Finland

It’s clear from these lists that there are a handful of countries full of people who may not believe they’re stuck in a system of inequality, and who are actively using their imaginations to re-think their social systems to move toward a more egalitarian world.