Our book recommendation: Beginnings – A New History of Humanity

For thousands of years, long before the Age of Enlightenment, every imaginable form of social organization was invented and the pursuit of freedom, knowledge, and happiness. In their work, Graeber and Wingro show how powerful an Indigenous perspective can influence Western thinking and how important it is to restore it. They dynamically and persuasively encourage us to defend a different future for humanity with greater courage and determination and to change it through our actions.

One of the most important thesis put forward by David Graeber and David Wingro in their book is that prehistoric ancestors were not simple, no-brainers, but self-confident and distinct social organizers, who lived through a “carnival procession of political forms”. We might use terms like “anarchist,” “communist,” “authoritarian,” or “egalitarian” to describe their activities, but this language does not do justice to the utterly bizarre nature of the actual case studies: large cities without central government or agriculture (Göbekli Tepe), and tribal states that span Across continents (Cahokia), social housing projects (Teotihuacan), populations that alternate between equality and tyranny from time to time (Nambikwara, Winnebago, Nuer). Over the course of 40,000 years, humans have moved between different forms of equal and unequal social structures, building and dismantling hierarchies, suggests archaeologist Wingro, anthropologist and anarchist activist Graeber. The authors argue that people in stateless societies were not less politically self-aware than people today, but much more. How can we stumble like this and not move forward? This is the question that remains unanswered after reading the book.

Everything but the line

For Graeber and Wengrow, the assumption of “Paleolithic politics” means that humans have long experienced self-regulation and that the path of social change is not at all linear. Indeed, one of the book’s most daring arguments is its rejection of a teleological view of our present conditions: that the first 300,000 years present humanity with a past that is more diverse, more violent, more hopeful—and more interesting—than we have made, and that may be true for our future. The hypothesis is exciting and only its implications are being considered. The sweeping conclusions that Graber and Wingro draw from their sources have been challenged by scholars like Kwame Anthony Appiah, but frankly, that doesn’t matter. The book’s optimism is itself a provocation in the face of looming climate catastrophe, political polarization, and social collapse.

To take notes:

David Graeber, David Wingro: The Beginnings. A new history of mankind. Published by Klett-Cotta Verlag, Stuttgart 2022.

Mario Galgano review.

(Vatican News)