The graves may hold individuals who were accorded special status, at least at times of the year when mobile groups formed large communities and built large structures, the authors speculate. Scattered discoveries of elaborate graves for apparently esteemed individuals ( SN: 10/5/17) and huge structures made of stone ( SN: 2/11/21), mammoth bones and other material dot Eurasian landscapes. Many Late Stone Age hunter-gatherers similarly assembled and dismantled social systems on a seasonal basis, evidence gathered over the last few decades suggests. In summers, aristocratic courts disbanded, and clans with less formal social ranks fished along the coast. For example, each winter, Canada’s Northwest Coast Kwakiutl hunter-gatherers built wooden structures where nobles ruled over designated commoners and enslaved people, and held banquets called potlatch. About a century ago, researchers observed that Indigenous populations in North America and elsewhere often operated in small, mobile groups for part of the year and crystallized into large, sedentary communities the rest of the year. Hunter-gatherers have a long history of revamping social systems from one season to the next, the authors write. The big question - one the authors can’t yet answer - is why, after tens of thousands of years of social flexibility, many people today can’t conceive of how society might effectively be reorganized. Others emphasized decentralized, collective decision making. Some social systems featured ruling elites, working stiffs and enslaved people. For most of that time, the authors argue, humans have tactically alternated between small and large social setups. Their research synthesis - which extends for 526 pages - paints a more hopeful picture of social life over the last 30,000 to 40,000 years. Neither scenario makes sense to Graeber and Wengrow. If so, early states may have represented attempts to corral our selfish, violent natures. Or perhaps murderous alpha males dominated ancient hunter-gatherer groups. Then an agricultural revolution about 12,000 years ago fueled population growth and the emergence of tribes, then chiefdoms and eventually bureaucratic states. Such stages, according to conventional wisdom, began with humans living in small hunter-gatherer bands where everyone was on equal footing.

Using examples from past societies, the pair also rejects the popular idea that social evolution occurred in stages. In The Dawn of Everything, anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow challenge the assumption that bigger societies inevitably produce a range of inequalities. Societies have scaled up for thousands of years, which has magnified the distance between the wealthy and those left wanting. The bigger the crowd, from this perspective, the more we need power brokers to run the show. Many scholars explain growing gaps between the haves and the have-nots as partly a by-product of living in dense, urban populations. Concerns abound about what’s gone wrong in modern societies.

Dawn of man review 2020