The Dawn of Everything

Notes from David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything (2021)

short bluesky summary

⌘ I don’t know if I want to go back to posting a public reading thread, like I did for many years on Twitter, though I do want the record to show that I finally finished this one

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Notes [oldest to newest]

1. Chinese origins of Western statecraft

2. Margaret Mead's origin of civilization

3. The origin of "Americans"

4. Brixham Cave and the origins of "prehistory"

5. Sarah Hrdy's "Mothers and Others"

6. Earliest art

7. Early human population of Europe

8. Ridicule, shame, and shunning

9. Prehistorical "public works"

10. The basic complaint about the "agriculture" hypothesis

11. The "indigenous critique"

12. Graeber and Wengrow on Hobbes and Rousseau

13. Against "inequality" as such

14. Early human burials

15. Cherry-picked indigneous peoples

16. The Yanomami

17. Where do Enlightenment ideals come from?

18. Colonists going native

19. Object circulation without markets

20. Iroquoian dreams

21. Indigenous gamblers

22. Europe's global position in the Middle Ages

23. Chinese and Indian influence on the Enlightenment

24. Europe and the Chinese model of statecraft

25. Graeber / Wengrow on "the origins of social inequality"

26. Misunderstandings of the "noble savage"

27. National character and schismogenetic processes

28. Rethinking the "Western gaze"

29. Rousseau and "The Discouse on the Origins of Social Inequality"

30. The origins of "left" and "right" as political orientations

31. Rousseau and the "stupid savage"

32. Pierre Clastres and progressive tribalism

33. African habitation

34. The myth of the "original" human society

35. Earliest signs of "culture"

36. Behaviorial complexity in Europe (and elsewhere)

37. Christopher Boehm's definition of politics

38. Thought is dialogic

39. Paul Radin's "Primitive Man as Philosopher"

40. Levi-Strauss' "The Savage Mind"

41. Seasonal dualism and double morphology societies

42. Levi-Strauss' epilogue to "Man the Hunter"

43. Franz Boas' studies on Kwakiutl peoples

44. The carnivalesque

45. Defining ritual

46. "Youth abbeys"

47. Rituals as anti-structures

48. Indigenous regional organization

49. "Mesolithic" cultures and early cuisine

50. The origins of domination

51. Did agriculture create bureaucracy?

53. Egalitarian immediate return economies

54. Formal freedoms vs substantive freedoms

55. Marshall Sahlins's "Original Affluent Society"

56. Office workers vs medieval serfs

57. The work ethic of hunter-gatherer societies

58. Kwakiutl art

59. Poverty Point

60. Indigineous standards of measurement

61. Hunter-gatherer amphitheaters

62. European forager art

63. 1690: Locke and labor

64. Indigenous land management

65. Foragers in extreme climates

66. "Structures of exclusion"

67. C. B. Macpherson's "possessive individualism"

69. Roman law's rights of possession

70. Churinga / tsurinja

71. Cultural subdivision

72. "Nostratic"

73. "Culture areas"

74. Culture as a structure of refusal

75. The art of two Pacific culture areas

77. Slavery in indigenous North America

78. Breeding slaves vs raiding for slaves

79. The origin of egalitarian politics

80. Rethinking fertility goddess figurines

81. Feminism in the Oz novels

82. Believers in primitive matriarchy

83. Marija Gimbutas and the origins of exploitation

84. Indigenous councils of women

85. Social organization in Catalhöyük

86. The cultivation of straw

87. "Archaeobotany"

88. Cultivation vs the "Agricultural Revolution"

89. Flood-retreat farming

90. "Charters for the hatred of women"

91. Gendered knowledge of plants

92. Plant-based knowledge

93. Witchcraft and capitalism

94. Scientific innovation in prehistory

95. "Skull portraits"

96. Equitable agricultural systems

97. Alternate centers of domestication

98. Californian rejection of farming

99. The "Columbian exchange"

100. The "ecology of freedom"

101. Alfred Gell's "Wrapping in Images"

102. Urban life does not inherently create social classes

103. Strong social ties vs. close biological kinship

104. Clan-based social systems

105. The small social world of the urbanite

106. Cities and amicable relations among strangers

107. Marsh metropoles

108. Mega-sites

109. Egalitarian organization on an urban scale

110. Women in early Mesopotamia

111. Uruk and writing

112. Sumerian teaching

113. Sumerian conceptualization of work

114. Sumerian production and standardization

115. Heroic societies / warrior aristocracies

116. Proving the existence of self-governance

117. Caste hierarchies with egalitarian governance

118. Collective governance of complex infrastructure

119. Independent cities

120. Pre-Shang China

121. Political revolutions in prehistory

122. Teotihuacan

123. Coinage of "the state"

124. Defining "the state"

125. Property rights and the West

126. Property and violence

127. Three elementary forms of domination

128. What khipu encodes (possibly)

129. Alfred Kroeber and the laws of cultural growth and decay

130. Against "collapse" as such

131. Egyptian "intermediate" periods

132. The history of loose political associations

133. 1500-1000 BC: The Olmec

134. Organized power and ritual among the Olmec

135. Chavin imagery

136. Psychedelic Chavín culture

137. Chavín temples

138. "Sovereignty without the state"

139. The internal moral dynamic of sovereignty

140. Graeber and Wengrow's "three forms of freedom"

141. "The world's first peasantry"

142. "How the pyramids were actually built"

143. Factory logic and slavery

144. Graeber and Wengrow's "caring labour"

145. Shang oracular texts

146. Ritual bureaucracies

147. Tell Sabi Abyad and "village bureaucracies"

148. Egalitarian administrations

150. Bureaucratic empires

151. States and specialists

152. Play farming and play states

153. Kings as the medium for social relations

154. The critical gap in power

155. The political reality behind states

156. The separation of civilization and state

157. Rethinking social evolution and rethinking politics

159. The cultural accomplishments of non-hierarchical societies

160. Women's knowledge in early civilization

161. Minoan Crete

162. "The ecstasy of being" in Minoan Crete

163. Minoan objects

164. Grain states and anarchist barbarians

165. Slavery and the Axial Age

166. The "Hopewell Interaction Sphere"

167. Hopewell Sphere earthworks

168. Hopewell Sphere visual art

169. Hopewell Sphere ritual

170. Gender equity in Hopewll Sphere cultures

172. The Corn Mother

173. Administrative esoterica

174. Spiritual reformations in history

175. Possible Osage influence on Montesquieu

176. The "political history" of Indigenous America

177. The Gayanashagowa

178. League of the Five Nations

179. The origins of modern social theory

180. Inventions discovered via play and art

181. Has war always existed?

182. Roman Law and slave law

183. War and peace in the Indigenous Americas

184. Indigenous Americans and European torture

185. "Heterarchy"

186. The relationship between care and domination

187. Civilization and cities

188. Patriarchy and potestas

189. Reframing our perspective on human social experience

> all notes from David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021)

> part of unfinished everything

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unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

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