Introduction to the Book Forum on The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Abstract

Anthropology human’ other (American things, has as Anthropological ‘the been study described, of what Association makes amongst us 2023), ‘the science of human beings’ (Merriam–Webster Dictionary 2023), and ‘the comparative study of common sense’ (Herzfeld 2001: x). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021), offers us an important suggestion of what ‘being human’ means: being creative and curious. Their argument is also common-sensical in that it brings to the fore something which is incredibly obvious when stated out loud, namely, that things—politics, economics, or society at large—do not have to be the way they are. Inequality, coercion, and hierarchy are unnecessary. That history of humanity is one of experimentation, polyphony, and imagination is, at the same time, a bold and much-needed argument at a time of seeming inevitability, of imminent ecological disaster, the mass extinction of species, dramatic world-wide disparities in wealth, health, and security, and a global political hegemony which gives us very little hope for something better.