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The Dawn of Everything | LSE Online Event
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 15. 08. 2024
- David Wengrow was in conversation with Alpa Shah about his new book co-authored with the late David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.
đŽ This event was streamed live on Facebook on 13 October 2021:
/ live
đŽ Find out about more of our upcoming events:
www.lse.ac.uk/E...
đĄ This event is part of our Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative: #LSEPostCOVID
Speakers:
đŽ Professor David Wengrow
đŽ Professor Alpa Shah
Chair:
đŽ Professor Francisco Ferreira
âčïž More info:
www.lse.ac.uk/...
first time is see a youtube video with a person translating in sign language... thumbs up LSE, way to go!! Plus this book you are talking about seems to me to be a major piece of intellectual work... then again no suprise there, "Graeber" is written on the cover
Yes, I thought having a signer (is that the term?) is definitely new and welcome. I wonder if I were deaf whether I would be able to search for youtube videos that have signers? I hope CZcams make this possible.
I am a scholar of African history. My focus of study has been on migrations, warfare, slavery and empire. A significant number of African and non-African societies that have been colonized, before being conquered, were colonizers themselves. They defeated their neighbors and encroached upon their territories. Prior to the Tran-Atlantic slave trade, warfare, slavery and empire were widespread across the continents of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Thoughtful scholars have long understood that Western Civilization was shaped by indigenous peoples. After all, who were the predecessors of the ĂatalhöyĂŒk, Sumerian, Harappan, Assyrian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Ain Ghazal, Danubian, Minoan, Sabine and Ligurian people? Were they not all indigenous peoples?
What is Western Civilization? It is not a culture originating in Europe. It is a cross-polinated conglomeration of the cultures of Africa and Eurasia, with later influences from the Americas. If we want to identify a geographic locus, it is largely the land mass surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Our distant âindigenousâ and âcivilizedâ ancestors were practical people who freely borrowed ideas and technologies from each other.
The process of decolonization, going on today in academia, is a new form of colonization, accomplished not through physical domination but by argumentation and indoctrination. Itâs view of history is as politically selective and prone to cherry-picking historical facts and perspectives as was the regime that preceded it. The interpretation of historical facts is as personal and political as has ever been.
The notion that we need a book like this to give us hope that we can change the structure of social and economic relationships is curious-as if society is rigidly circumscribed. The structure of social and economic relationships has changed more rapidly in the past 200 years than it did in the previous 2,000. In fact, the rate of change is rapidly accelerating.
I look forward to reading the book.
Interesting. đ
Never met or knew Mr. Graeber, but I've enjoyed his work and lectures, and I'm glad you took a minute of silence and kept it in the CZcams video too. Very nice.
What is so insane about our current political predicament is that Hobbes and Rousseau have had such an outsized influence on EVERY concept we reference about society, culture, and politics. So glad to see this effort to disabuse us of these concepts. Can't wait to get my hands on a copy of The Dawn...
At least in the US we're told all these myths, "Nature red in tooth and claw" and so on. And what surprised me is, in going into running a small business, is that the other businesses in my field weren't so much competitors as comrades who worked together, sent customers to each other, and so on. Not saying there wasn't some competition, but it wasn't as vicious as we're taught to believe.
whenever any liberal/libertarian type starts with talks of the "nature of the individual" I always exclaim bullshit! the "individual" barely existed before Hobbes. these people are confident in their worldview in inverse proportion to how deep its bases are.
Amazing book! David Graeber and David Wengrow opened a new era.
for less than 0.1% of the world's population.
I've started the book and it is ***blowing my mind***.
One egalitarian society within south america that I didnât hear mentioned are the chachapoya people of northern peru, which were later conquered by the inca. Although their population was quite large, archeological evidence indicates that their society was flat rather than hierarchical. The burials were all similar, without any disparity in the amount of artifacts buried along with them, indicating that no individuals were ranked particularly higher than others. And their ruin sites show than houses were all relatively similar in size, without any grand palaces for kings or chiefs. This is in contrast to the Inca, who were treated as nobility that reigned above their empire.
Ok
There are hundreds of egalitarian type societies across Asia... Given white folks in the global north have much to discover and even learn from.
A minute silence. Such a respectfull gesture, and one I feel is rarely used anymore.
Wow. Excellent discussion. Thank you! R.I.P. David Graeber â€ïž
Please read the above.
Rest in Power, David Graeber
David's rebuttal at around the 1:12:00 mark of Alpa's insinuation that the two Davids (who are both white males) are upholding colonialism/patriarchy in writing this book is brilliant and devastating!
I look at the DEI movement today and I see a group of people who do NOT want equality with men and whites - they want a reversal of power, giving minorities and women the power that white men have traditionally held.
In other words, instead of saying "power over others is bad", DEI says "we want that power for ourselves." Thank you David for shooting down that dangerous thought and going back to egalitarianism and a recognition that ALL races and genders are equally capable of learning from each other in a world of equality and peace.
Really impressed by this ongoing viewpoint.
Many of the things that are talked about in the book are related to the decolonialist ideas of the Latin American Philosophy of Liberation, which dates back to the 1960s and 1970s. It is curious how these ideas were invisible for so long and only recently has the Anglo-Saxon academy catches up on these matters.
I just wrote an email to a friend with exactly the same thoughts.....
You point out to something interesting - Anglo-Saxon academy or insitution or culture or call it chauvanism has little to offer, to the rest of the world, in terms of originality or utility. Yes James Watt and the great steam engine and George Orwell aside for the moment, Anglo-Saxon sphere did little to contribute to european music, culture, intellect, art, lifestyle, etc etc
@@AudioPervert1 Shakespeare? Seems like they did well with "bardic", literary and musical persuits (there'd be no bluegrass without British folk-music)! Very crafty world-class ship-builders and that whole Magna-Carta/Social Contract conception seems like a pretty influential bit of "culture". This is just off the top of my head! Just cuz the "5 Eyes" countries are the "bullies on the block" these days don't mean they ain't got no culture! Matter of fact, some of their arrogance is surely self-justified by invoking these accomplishments!
In the beginning it's mentioned that this is the first in a series of events related to Graeber's works. Are any other of those events available online?
This was a fascinating and informative discussion!
What a beautiful experience this clip was for me. The ASL is beautiful, so well done (felt), The idea of society based on containing the ego rather than flaunting the ego has been a lost narrative for too long. It is part of my life mission also to bring forth this deeper human possibility. We are such capable beings, and this is one of the keys to reaching our true potential. it is so rare to meet anyone with this understanding. Where to such like minded ones gather? This is a mailing list I would really like to be on. Thank you, Namaskar! (my heart and soul salutes your heart and soul)
Starts ~10 mins in
The book completely ignores evidence of indigenous societies that existed before 14k years ago though. It then concludes that humans are innately greedy. Lookup 'dawn of everything critique' to find out more. The channel named 'WHAT IS POLITICS?" is particularly well made in this regards.
Fabulous. đč
my dear god i miss david and thank god to have known him. thank you for that introduction and that time of silence was perfect lenght for my eyes to do their thing and get them cleaned up. You folks are some of my favorite. Very well rounded all of you and david is no doubt resting well with his contaigous smile thankful for time he had.
Great discussion.
I think Rousseau and Hobbes were so influential they've created a teleological myth about social progress which puts indigenous people down as uncivilized but they weren't stupid and were v creative, ethically and socially.
Just look at agriculture.
A huge human fault is over generalization. It seems that too many "conclusions" don't account that every population has an "average" manifestation of relative intelligence but also has "outliers" who think and process the world differently, who are sometimes lauded and/or elevated or sometimes ridiculed and/or killed. We often oversimplify history in our favor.
@@rembeadgc I was surprised at the weight given to unscientific and speculative theory. I had hoped for some serious insights into the development of human society and couldn't listen to more than 15 minutes of this self - aggrandising blah blah blah.
There's ancient architecture in the Americas that still stands that all our vaunted "advanced" technology is totally incapable of reproducing!
Decision making is a skill that takes many years to develop a competent capacity. We currently have to be born into specific 'cultures', and are thus subjected to whatever form an 'upbringing' takes, given the confines OF that 'society'. Most people assume this is 'job done' and then like to refer to themselves as 'grown up'..the same 'society' tells them that this is so, and they spend the rest of their lives trying to justify this paucity of understanding, ..but if the creative-intuitive force is strong enough within an individual this where genuine 'education' merely begins.. This is the point at which we start to genuinely educate ourselves, and decide to become our own authority..
This is the 'anarchic' truth of nature..The only real truth in, and of, existence..
"History abundantly shows that people's views of the universe are bound up with their views of themselves and of their society. The debate in cosmology has implications far beyond the realm of science, for it is a question of how truth is known. How these questions are answered will shape not only the history of science, but the history of humanity." (Eric Lerner, 1992)
spaceandmotion
Listening to this, to me, just underlines how screwed up the perception of ourselves and our fellow human beings has often been and how detrimental it was/is to our engagement. There are so many angles of force that influence knowledge and opinion at different times and almost none of them are necessarily driven by virtue. I'm still of the opinion that there is where the biggest quandaries lie because therein lies what affects everything else.
What is the archaeological evidence they keep going on about?
a quite lovely intro by Alpa Shah.
00:19:00 ff "We are standing on the shoulders of others who came before us...some sort of 'wiry savage'..." Graeber and Wengrow went back and considered scholarship that had been hidden, dismissed based on the race (?) and or non-mainstream culture and or faith- based belief and practices of the colonized and or our predecessors before our ancestors became chattel slaves. Tragically, this groundbreaking tome appears at a time when an overwhelmingly white European army of anti-intellectuals are laying waste to American Public School systems after The Log Cabin Republicans have concluded that there is more profit to be made from functional illiteracy and fascist dictatorships obsessed with sickness and death. Unfortunately/ fortunately(!!!đ„) ignorance is never bliss!
Excellent!
So "Noble Savages" could be "brutish, nasty and short" when they felt like it and visa versa.Seems to me like this book merely" kicks the can" BACK "down the road" because humans knew a lot more a lot earlier than was hithertofore understood.Surely, at SOME point in our collective evolutionary journey there were "simple" hunter-gatherer bands analogous to what we see in the apes of today and it took SOME kind of technological or conceptual advance to "cross the line" into a situation where these more far-reaching social arrangements were made possible?
Sign language interpreters đ
The indigenous people know how to live in harmony with the ecosystem. Until now it seem's that the human race has been racing after wealth and power. Hopefully it seem's that a lot of us have evolved enough to understand that peace and decent lives of the masses are more desirable than personal wealth and power. We can better enjoy our short lives if no one was hurting or living in misery.
It was indigenous people who whipped out mammoths. It is due to indigenous people we don't have mao birds in New Zealand and did not have horses in North America until Spaniards brang it back from the Old World. It was indigenous people who decimated Australia's fauna and chopped down last tree on Rapa Nui.
You're believing in fairy tales.
@Ryn Shane-Armstrong I don't really get the concept. Everybody's "indigenous" to somewhere at the same time that humans have been on the move forever and sometimes groups gang up on other groups and oppress each other for a while. This will always seem like "forever" (or at least much too long!) to a relatively short-lived individual in the group suffering the oppression but on the grander scale of the rise and fall of civilizations it's a blip and the only constant is change! How long you have to hang around a particular spot to be considered "indiginous" is not too clear to me and since a lot of these "indiginous" groups took possession of "their" lands by conquering and/or running off the previous "indigenous" group until an other group grabbed it who happened to be "indiginous" to another continent instead of the next valley over is why I don't get it !
@Ryn Shane-Armstrong Too late, you just did ! And I appreciate the acknowledgement that the thing even got read! Your comment just started a train of thought in my head that I wrote out here cuz it's what started me thinking along those lines! No expectations! Thanks for asking!
@Ryn Shane-Armstrong You too!
Some indigenous people lived in harmony... some over-used their resources. The Shoshone wiped out the beaver in certain areas of Idaho, and so on. That's the point of the book that human organize themselves in multiple ways and our current system is no more inevitable than any other. Thus we can organize our current society in a less stratified, more egalitarian way.
It's hard to believe that some humans can define anyone from their color, the outside matter's less than the inside.
They can't, but they attempt to. It's common knowledge that people can be driven by fear and ignorance, both of which have the power to override reason, logic or rationality. What could be frightening to some is that regardless of one's education or social status the line from rationality to irrationality can be easily crossed, and without the individual's conscious awareness.
@@rembeadgc "The sleep of reason breeds monsters" that are sold to us as what "we must give up liberty for the sake of a little security" for by our (mis-)"leaders" who have run the "protection racket" of hierarchical societies since time immemorial!
đ and if humans have innside sexual organs or outside.
There seem to be a lot of French works referencing discussions with and critiques made by Native Americans, but what about English works? Are there some? And why aren't there more? After all, there were a lot more English settlers than French.
I found the most thought provoking comment of the Q&A section to be one from Professor Shah when she noted how ironic it is that it takes two white men focusing on decolonizing the curriculum to give voice to the marginalized wisdom of indigenous and female intellectuals and scholars. 1:09:59 Clearly we have yet much to learn.
Since neither Hobbes nor Rousseau was known in Asia until recently, wouldn't that provide a point of comparison? Asia had origin myths but nothing like the conjections of Hobbes and Rousseau.
Published on the 10th Anniversary of Occupy.
01:25:20 I think he was refering to the fact that states existed independently of europeans, but I dont know...
Given that David Graeber was an amazing thinker, and his books help understand late-civilisation in a new light - how does his ideas, critique and observation effect public policy or even imagination? Not just with some few white folks, but the rest of the world as such? LSE itself an example of institutional hegemony and bureaucracy, which DG was totally opposed to...
Seems like Graeber is basing this in no small part on the previously discounted and therefore overlooked work of indigenous scholars so it might actually be him and his somewhat "inbred" audience that are "late to the party" in terms of "re-discovering" stuff that's been more or less known all along by the people you fear he isn't reaching!
@@richardsawicki8521 David Graeber's ideas or say books reach a tiny microscope segment of English speaking society. My comment was about LSE which itself institutional hegemony and bureaucracy. Given that DG's ideas could empower many people outside this small elite circle, LSE or any such institution has no interest nor objective to do so...
@@AudioPervert1 Sounds like you know more about it than I do so I differ to your greater insight gleened thru superior knowledge!
@@richardsawicki8521 Your assumption may or may not be true. Since I am from India, which hosts about 140 million tribal peoples - they do not have a clue nor care about DG speaks of - and most are forced to abandon what their traditional means and lives are worth, or were worth.
Actually starts at about 5.20 after blah blah.
Blah blah blah đ
đ, & I remain Hopeful that The Real Ruling Class will retire soon leading to the Next Big Global Enlightenment, last big one was from November Of 2014!, to May Of 2015!!
Could the Indian castes be hierarchical societies on common territory?
Colonization reveals slavery relationships , and is indicative of a backward civilization for peoples who engaged in those slavery relationships in order to create wealth by exploitation ! Egypt or China and other ancient civilizations had developed for thousands of years without need to do slavery nor colonization !
Both China and Egypt had slaves.
@@marktomasetti8642 You ARE REPEATING THE MYTH OF SLAVERY--COLONIZATION ( of USA and companies .... ) WRONG HISTORY THAUGHT AND PROPAGANDA of those nations that continued SLAVERY LAWS BANNED , under '' colonization '' practices : There were and still are two distinct races in HUMANS one developed out of CANIBALS , and another more civilized branch of HUMANS that developed tools and sciences and laws , such as EGYPT , CHINA , INDIA , some Amer-Indians etc.... and some Indo-european , all non-colonizer people dominated by warriors in certain periods , ( AS ENGLISH DOMINATION IN INDIA ! ) as CELTS and old european civilization , Semerians etc.... !
The difference between the first francophone settlers who adopted the ways of the natives in contrast to the various upper-crust king representatives shipped to New France who despied the ''colons''... the roots of Quebec society lays in the metissage of early settlers with indigenous ways.... far from the genocidal tendency of the British... no wonder there is still an unconscious divide between Quebec and the Rest of Canada.... bTW it is Frontenac and may everyone visit the traditional site of Huron OnhoĂŒa Chetek8e aka the Wendake Huron Village, near Loretteville, QuĂ©bec City
Was he assassinated?? Poisoned?
I need this book in pdf please
Check lib gen. Its online already. :)
Egalitarian lies are still being perpetuated so even if the books dismantles earlier egalitarian vs in-egalitarian distinction it again perpetuates false claims of Egalitarianism {which has never existed}.
Maybe there are examples of indigenous 'non-extractive care of the land', but the totem thing certainly isn't one: that's just a random religious taboo. And the notion that anthropology is supposed to be the science that looks for guidance and 'teaching' from indigenous peoples about how we should organise modern societies doesn't sound like 'good science' and 'getting the facts right'. It sounds like a new ideology being constructed with 'indigenous' people as objects of worship, and if the facts don't lend themselves to that, so much the worse for the facts. I feel sorry for scholars in that area.
I also feel uncomfortable about it. It just sounds too neat, too tidy. At this point I'm not convinced.
view 8,217
8,970 two days after -today- it was featured in DN!, hopefully creating a wave that draws attention to this work.
I like to define domestication as the caring for living organisms with an intent of exploitation. Slavery is the domestication of humans. Humans embarked on this after leaving Africa and it was introduced subsaharan later. Is there any evidence to the contrary?
Domestication involves selective breeding and culling of non-docile animals. In dogs, cats, horses and other domesticated mammals, docility and friendliness is associated with low testosterone levels which also cause white fur. That and reduced average size. We've never put another human population through a selective breeding process over many generations. Arguably the trans-Atlantic slave trade produced stronger genes, not weaker genes, by obtaining captives through warfare ie. strong young people found in enemy armies, and through the trauma of transportation and abuse by plantation owners. Anecdotally Jamaica overperforms compared with other populations in producing world class academics, artists and athletes. We have selectively bred each other not through enslavement but through romance, with the species as a whole perhaps becoming less personally violent, because women prefer guys who don't beat them up and kill each other, and the ones who don't kill each other are still around to be fathers.
@@patrickholt2270 Domestication began with plants that were cared for with natural resources. The caring for animals could only be undertaken when there was surplus food for them. No subsaharan animal was domesticated. What you are narrating occured long after domestication was brought south.
@@casiandsouza7031 Interesting. I don't see plant domestication as an applicable analogy for our development. They're virtually inanimate. Animals make a better analogy because they experience fear, pain and anger and can control their own movement. They have some agency which we have to manage and reduce to domesticate them. The point of domestication isn't just food, it's also companionship and curiosity. Love is involved. Wolves helped us hunt and stay safe at night, and eventually helped us babysit our kids. The story I hear about early human society is that there was always surplus food ever since cooking just because of high biomass and biodiversity and low human population density. Persistent hunger and the need to work long hours all year came from agriculture and permanent settlement, when people could no longer migrate around to graze the environment.
@@patrickholt2270 you are down in the weeds. At a high level, domestication is caring for living things to get something in return. At the very least you have to care for it to get anything out of it. Plants can be cared for with just earth and air. Only when we have a surplus of plants to feed animals we can care for animals. Predated animals come before predators.
@@casiandsouza7031 There has never been a scarcity of plants. Food supply only became a problem for humans after adopting agriculture. Domestication of dogs predates agriculture. Dogs assisted with perseverating hunting in the tracking of fleeing animals, as well as with human emotional and psychological well-being as empathic social mammals.
I hope this time the other half of the humanity is inâŠ. until now itâs only male historyâŠ. YES!!! Finaly!! Marija Gimbutas called this societys were Materlinier, not Matriarchy. Because they were egalitarian not hierarchy, - but with focus on birth and many aspects of the female body., wich is tabu even in our time. Breast, buttocks and swollen vulvas - and this was not sexual
1. Public buildings *are* a requisite for a city, just like common organs are a requisite for an organism. And they do not equal hierarchy. There is nothing circular here.
2. The fact that hunter-gatherer social structures have changed and varied for whatever reason doesnât prove that there was some kind of constant underlying constitution giving people the right and the freedom to consciously and deliberately change them. For one thing, a Tlingit slave obviously had no such right and freedom.
3. Even if hunter-gatherer societies have varied for whatever reason, the fact remains that early city civilisations with writing havenât - it does look very deterministic. Writing off the mode of production seems hasty.
4. People caring about freedom and not about economic inequality sounds just like what a Wyandot invented or - as would be expected - very heavily edited by an upwardly mobile 18th-century French bourgeois would say. And what an upwardly mobile 21th-century Western bourgeois would happily quote him as saying, for that matter. European bourgeoisie got the ideology European bourgeoisie needed. Crediting BIPOC and acknowledging their 'copyright' on European liberalism is very trendy and very useless.
5. A lot of these plot holes look like very anarchist plot holes.
when we have food we build pyramids. When we don't we throw people off the top of pyramids
Did you skip you part where they said any theory you can state in two sentences is obviously wrong. :-P
He missed the whole video and tried to sound profound
@@ThunderFire101
..it was my Phd .
Never humorous in a million years for sure.
Is this supposed to be a critique, because the thesis is about the limitations of material analysis.
@@user-ci5it7gw1d it's humour. Lord save us.
If anything at all, the only proof that is given is that society continued on the road to solipsism of objective truth due to increasing pseudo-individualization....thanks Heidegger
He's an anarchist who downplays the importance of hierarchies in human civilization. Enough said.
This is absolutely NOT what David Wengrow, a professor of archeology, who bases his conclusions on contemporary research, does.
Wow, this comment should get an award for being one of the dumbest takes on CZcams. What a truly idiotic response.
@@kyivstuff Speculative nonsense with a shallow veneer of "science" to back it up. He's the current posterboy for abysmal "contemporary research."
@@MrJustSomeGuy87 That he's not an anarchist? That he doesn't downplay the importance of hierarchies in the evolution of human civilization?
Please inform me which of these observations are incorrect.
@@charlesnwarren Have you even read the research? David Wengrow and David Graeber backed every statement with real archeological and anthropological facts. Their book has 60 pages of bibliography. They even changed the topic of their research - the beginning of inequality - because it didnât correlate with the facts. They do not downplay anything, they disprove the old sociological mythology with hard facts. And the emotionality of your comments show that you have a psychological investment in your unwillingness to fairly consider this new information - i.e. youâre biased, not the anarchist authors.