A Scholarly Challenge to Determinism
This course examines The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021) by David Graeber and David Wengrow—a long-overdue scholarly response to the environmental determinism and inevitability narratives of bestsellers like Guns, Germs, and Steel, Sapiens, and Steven Pinker’s work. Graeber and Wengrow demonstrate that Indigenous peoples exercised political imagination and choice throughout history, challenging fatalistic accounts that treat inequality and domination as inevitable.
Rather than simply celebrating this corrective, we engage it rigorously: investigating their evidence, exploring scholarly responses, and asking how we can strengthen the case against determinism. See the complete YouTube lecture playlist:
History of Humanity: Outline
Hobbes vs Rousseau: Escaping the Inevitability Trap
Why both “people are good” and “people are bad” narratives lead to the same conclusion: hierarchy is inevitable.
- Chapter 1, “Farewell to Humanity’s Childhood” (1-11)
The Human Nature Debate: Pinker, Chagnon, and Cherry-Picked Evidence
How Pinker and Chagnon cherry-pick archaeological evidence to support predetermined conclusions about violence and human nature.
- Finish chapter 1 (11-26)
The Indigenous Critique: Where Enlightenment Ideas About Freedom Came From
How Indigenous intellectuals systematically challenged European hierarchy and introduced radical ideas about equality and freedom.
- Chapter 2, “Wicked Liberty” (27-48)
Kandiaronk & the Myth of Economic Stages
How the “hunter→herder→farmer→civilization” framework was invented specifically to counter Indigenous political philosophy.
- Finish chapter 2 (48-77)
Ice Age Societies: Complex Before Agriculture
Ice Age societies built monuments, created art, and had diverse political arrangements—all before farming existed.
- Chapter 3, “Unfreezing the Ice Age” (78-98)
Seasonality in Human Societies: Knowledge Anthropology Forgot
Societies shifted between egalitarian and hierarchical forms seasonally—then anthropology forgot this crucial insight.
- Finish chapter 3 (98-120)
Egalitarian Societies: What Does Equality Actually Mean?
Examining formal versus substantive freedom and why Ice Age social worlds were larger than ours.
- Chapter 4, “Free People, the Origin of Cultures, and the Advent of Private Property” (120-140)
The Original Affluent Society: Sahlins & Beyond a Single State
Marshall Sahlins’ challenge to progress myths and why there was no single “original” state of humanity.
Poverty Point: Forager Monumentality & the Origins of Property
How hunter-gatherers built sophisticated cities without farming and how colonial myths shaped property theory.
- Finish chapter 4 (141-163)
Culture Areas & Political Choice: Rejecting Agricultural Determinism
Why Pacific Coast peoples rejected agriculture despite knowledge and conditions, choosing political alternatives instead.
- Chapter 5, “Many Seasons Ago” (164-185)
Schismogenesis: How Neighboring Societies Become Opposites
How neighboring societies consciously chose opposite values about slavery, work, and social organization.
- Finish chapter 5 (186-209)
Gardens of Adonis: Agriculture as Playful Experimentation
What if farming began as play, not survival? Çatalhöyük and the academic no-go zone of matriarchies.
- Chapter 6, “Gardens of Adonis” (210-229)
Farming and Hierarchy: Why Agriculture Didn’t Cause Inequality
Fertile Crescent evidence shows early agriculture was egalitarian—violence came from hunters, not farmers.
- Finish chapter 6 (229-248)
Ecology of Freedom: Why Early Farming Wasn’t Destiny
Early farmers chose diverse pathways—some thrived, others failed. Agriculture was experimental choice, not inevitable destiny.
- Chapter 7, “The Ecology of Freedom” (249-275)
Egalitarian Cities: Urban Life Without Kings or Bureaucrats
Ukrainian mega-sites housed thousands without palaces or police, proving urban scale doesn’t require authoritarian control.
Democracy Before Kings: Mesopotamia and Indus Valley
The earliest cities had collective assemblies, not monarchs—and the burden of proof has shifted.
Teotihuacan Democracy: From Pyramids to Apartment Complexes
Teotihuacan demolished its pyramids to build housing for thousands—and Indigenous allies made Spanish conquest possible.
- Chapter 9, “Hiding in Plain Sight” (328-358)
The Shape of Time: Why States Have No Single Origin
Violence, bureaucracy, and charisma emerged separately and combined differently—there’s no universal state origin.
- Chapter 10, “Why the State Has No Origin” (359-391)
Divine Kingship: Absolute Power That Doesn’t Travel
Divine kings could kill at will but couldn’t extend power beyond their presence—sovereignty without states.
- Chapter 10 (392-418)
Civilization Without the State: Bureaucracy, Freedom, and Minoan Crete
Bureaucracy began as equality technology in Syrian villages. Minoan Crete shows civilization flourished without patriarchal states.
- Finish chapter 10 (418-440)
Golden Age of Barbarians: Living Beyond State Control
From 3000 BCE to 1600 CE, most of Earth was beyond state control—people could escape government domination.
- Chapter 11, “Full Circle” (441-471)
Smoking Democracy: Indigenous Councils and Enlightenment Salons
Indigenous councils using tobacco for political debate preceded European Enlightenment salons by centuries.
- Finish chapter 11 (471-492)
Loss of Social Imagination: Why We Can’t Picture Alternatives
How warfare, patriarchy, and Roman law combined to steal our ability to even imagine different social arrangements.
- Chapter 12, “Conclusion” (493-514)
Roads Not Taken: Alternative Possibilities for Human Society
People organized complex societies without hierarchy for millennia—these roads not taken show possibilities remain greater than we think.
- Finish chapter 12 (514-526)
A Scholarly Response to Diamond, Harari, and Pinker
For years, works like Guns, Germs, and Steel, Sapiens, and Steven Pinker’s evolutionary narratives have dominated popular understanding of human history with accounts that minimize human agency and Indigenous political creativity. These bestsellers present inequality and domination as inevitable outcomes of geography or evolution—narratives with, as Graeber and Wengrow note, “dire political implications”: if hierarchy is inevitable, why challenge it?
The Dawn of Everything represents something anthropology desperately needed: a scholarly challenge to determinism that’s accessible to educated general readers. David Graeber (1961-2020, author of Debt: The First 5000 Years) and archaeologist David Wengrow demonstrate that Indigenous peoples exercised sophisticated political imagination throughout history, that societies experimented with egalitarian alternatives, and that inequality is a historical choice rather than an evolutionary inevitability.
While this book hasn’t reached the massive audiences or speaker fees of Diamond or Harari, it offers something potentially more valuable: serious scholarship that challenges their narratives. The book has garnered support from intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and sparked important debates within anthropology and archaeology.
Course Approach: Rigorous Engagement to Strengthen the Case
After decades of Diamond, Harari, and Pinker dominating popular narratives with environmental determinism and inevitable hierarchy, The Dawn of Everything offers a scholarly counterweight. This course examines how to build on their challenge:
- Assess the evidence: Where is their case against determinism strongest? Where might it need additional support?
- Research scholarly responses: Students investigate how other scholars have received, critiqued, and built upon Graeber and Wengrow’s arguments
- Identify potential vulnerabilities: Where might critics dismiss or undermine their arguments? How can we strengthen those points?
- Connect to anthropological debates: How does this work relate to longstanding discussions about agency, structure, progress narratives, and historical silencing?
- Consider strategic impact: What makes this challenge to determinism effective? What can we learn about making anthropological insights accessible without oversimplifying?
Anthropology supports challenging determinism—which is exactly why we examine their work carefully. The best way to support a necessary corrective is to ensure it’s as rigorous and defensible as possible.
Graeber & Wengrow’s Project: Truth, Politics, and Engagement
The authors present three explicit reasons for rewriting human history:
- “Previous accounts simply aren’t true” (3)—They’re challenging Diamond and Harari’s environmental determinism with evidence of Indigenous political creativity and human choice
- “Dire political implications” of existing narratives—Fatalistic stories that treat inequality as inevitable undermine efforts to imagine alternatives
- Making the past less “needlessly dull”—Human history is full of political experimentation and creativity, not just evolutionary inevitability
These priorities—challenging false narratives, addressing political stakes, and making history engaging—align with anthropology’s best traditions. But they also require us to be especially careful: Where is the evidence strongest? Where might they overreach? How can we strengthen arguments against determinism through rigorous scholarship?
Connections to Living Anthropologically Hubs
The Dawn of Everything engages themes that cut across anthropological subfields. This course connects to several other areas explored on Living Anthropologically:
- Global Transformations: Challenging evolutionary narratives and progress myths that dominate popular accounts of human history
- Environmental Engagements:: Rethinking agriculture, domestication, and human-environment relationships beyond Diamond’s environmental determinism
- The Americas: Indigenous political creativity, intellectual contributions, and the “Indigenous critique” of European society that challenges Eurocentric narratives
- Power Analysis: Origins and alternatives to inequality, domination, hierarchy, and state power—showing these are choices, not inevitabilities
- Human Origins: Ice Age societies, human variation, and challenging the linear evolutionary narratives that underpin determinism
By situating The Dawn of Everything within these broader anthropological conversations, we can better understand both its contributions and how to strengthen arguments against determinism.
What Makes This Course Different
Many people read The Dawn of Everything as revelation. This course takes a different approach—not dismissive, but rigorously supportive:
- Evidence-based evaluation: We investigate the archaeological and ethnographic evidence to understand where arguments are strongest and where they might need reinforcement
- Scholarly context: The book engages decades of anthropological debates—we explore those connections to understand the full landscape
- Multiple perspectives: Students research and present scholarly responses, creating a more complete picture of how anthropologists have engaged with these arguments
- Strategic thinking: We ask not just “is this true?” but “how can we make the case against determinism as strong as possible?”
This approach models how scholars should engage with important works: taking them seriously enough to examine them rigorously, supporting their goals while ensuring their arguments are bulletproof.
Why This Challenge to Determinism Matters
This course develops essential skills for engaging with how anthropological knowledge circulates in public discourse. The Dawn of Everything demonstrates what’s at stake:
What it gets right: Bringing crucial debates about human freedom, inequality, and political possibility to broader audiences. Challenging fatalistic narratives that treat hierarchy as inevitable. Showcasing Indigenous intellectual traditions and political creativity. Demonstrating that humans have always had choices about how to organize society.
Where we can help: Identifying where evidence needs strengthening, where arguments might be vulnerable to critique, and how anthropological insights can be made accessible without losing nuance. By engaging rigorously with both strengths and potential weaknesses, we learn to be better advocates for challenging determinism.
These skills matter far beyond this course. In a world where Diamond, Harari, and Pinker shape public understanding with narratives of inevitability, the ability to present compelling counter-narratives backed by solid evidence is crucial. We’re developing skills to strengthen arguments through careful examination, not skeptics who dismiss everything.
Course Resources
- Book: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow
- Video Lectures: Complete YouTube playlist with chapter-by-chapter analysis
- Additional Resources: Explore related themes through the Teaching Anthropology hub
Complete Video Lecture Series
See all lectures on YouTube: