Table of Contents
David Wengrow, coauthor with David Graeber of The Dawn of Everything, tells Novara Media that the usual chart of prehistory is a bad summary with political bite. It runs from foraging to farms and only then to cities and states. The digs, he says, will not keep that order. Ice-age communities were already organized across huge distances. Monuments and farming are not one switch. Stonehenge shows early skill with measure and the sky, worked differently from later mathematics. Foragers, farmers, and herders can live side by side, and he treats the mix as a choice, including the choice to design a society rather than wait for the next stage. In North America he describes a vast pre-Columbian city of monuments and regional power that is not a simple empire. He rejects the idea that once dense populations have rank, the rank can never be undone, a claim he ties to a European habit of counting politics as real only when Europe does it. The interview is that argument. It is not a ranking of peoples.
Key points
- David Wengrow says the ladder from foraging to farming to cities does not match the archaeological record.
- He describes ice-age societies as already organized across very large areas.
- Stonehenge, for him, shows early mathematical and astronomical skill of a kind different from modern practice.
- Neighboring ways of life were choices, including deliberate experiments in how to arrange a society.
- A great pre-Columbian city in North America shows monuments and regional power without fitting a simple imperial script.
- He rejects the idea that hierarchy, once it appears among large populations, can never be reversed.
Short quotes
consciously planning and designing societies according to different sets of values
David Wengrow, David Wengrow on early human history
He treats early social arrangements as chosen designs, not as automatic stages. Watch at 7:43
more than capable of developing very sophisticated mathematical geometrical understandings in different ways to the way we do it now
David Wengrow, David Wengrow on early human history
Stonehenge-era building, in his view, shows real mathematical skill on its own terms. Watch at 14:33
the largest indigenous settlement in North America and it has these great monuments
David Wengrow, David Wengrow on early human history
He uses a huge pre-Columbian city to show complex urban life outside the usual European sequence. Watch at 40:08
once hierarchy sets in in those kind of settings it is irreversible whereas here we seem to have a situation where there is a reversal
David Wengrow, David Wengrow on early human history
He sets the textbook claim that rank can never be undone against a case where it came apart. Watch at 51:03
Video by Novara Media. Watch on YouTube.