In The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow return “full circle” to the Indigenous critique of European civilization that opened their book. This class examines chapter 11’s first half, tracing how that powerful critique prompted a European backlash—one that created the evolutionary classifications we still use today—and exploring North American political experiments from Hopewell to Cahokia that fundamentally challenge narratives of inevitability.
The Indigenous Critique Returns
Graeber and Wengrow revisit the Indigenous critique of civilization, originating from the Americas and aimed squarely at European social arrangements. This critique questioned European practices around money and inequality, the imposition of Christian faith and claims to exclusive religious truth, hereditary power, women’s rights, and especially personal freedoms—the freedom to move, to disobey, and to reform social relationships (441). The critique was powerful precisely because it emphasized liberty in ways that made European society appear rigid and oppressive.
The Jesuits, as Graeber and Wengrow note, were particularly hostile to these ideas of personal freedom, condemning them outright. Today, everyone claims to champion freedom, but in the 17th and 18th centuries, European intellectuals were willing to explicitly argue against it. The Indigenous critique was influential enough to prompt not just disagreement but a systematic intellectual backlash (442).
The Evolutionary Narrative as Backlash
One key response to the Indigenous critique was the development of classification systems based on subsistence—a schema that persists today. This evolutionary narrative categorizes societies as hunter-gatherers (bands), herders (tribes), agriculturalists (chiefdoms), leading finally to states, with each stage associated with specific population sizes and forms of governance (447-448). The system links culture itself to agriculture—the very word “culture” contains “agriculture”—implying that only agricultural societies can achieve true civilization.
These categories echo ideas from Adam Smith and Turgot in the 18th century. Though anthropologists have extensively criticized this schema, particularly its evolutionism and rigid classifications, it remains embedded in archaeological discourse and popular understanding. Cultural anthropologists often view it as “a quaint relic from their discipline’s past, which no one today could possibly take seriously” (449), yet archaeologists continue using these terms because no comprehensive alternative has replaced them. The schema persists as a one-paragraph summary of human history—flawed but ubiquitous.
The Problem with “Civilization”
Graeber and Wengrow highlight a fundamental contradiction: we use “civilization” to mean positive attributes like civility and democracy, yet we apply it to history’s most oppressive societies. Ancient civilizations built monuments and pyramids, yes, but they were often patriarchal, violent, and profoundly unequal (443). Meanwhile, we ignore or marginalize societies like Teotihuacan and Minoan Crete, where obvious signs of kingship are absent. These exceptions don’t fit the standard narrative of civilization’s ascent, so they become curiosities rather than central examples.
James C. Scott and the Golden Age of Barbarians
Drawing on James C. Scott’s Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, Graeber and Wengrow explore how early states arose in specific ecological niches where they could exploit durable, portable grains like wheat and rice for taxation (444). These above-ground crops could be easily seen, counted, divided, and stored—making them ideal for state extraction. This limited states to particular ecological zones.
Scott calls the people living beyond these zones “barbarians”—not pejoratively, but to describe those operating outside state control, often in more anarchist social arrangements (445). These groups lived in symbiosis with states, raiding agricultural settlements but retreating to areas beyond state reach. From roughly 3000 BCE to 1600 CE, this was a “golden age of barbarians”—thousands of years when most of Earth’s surface remained beyond state control, and people could choose to live without government domination or easily escape it (446).
The implication is profound: state control wasn’t inevitable. For millennia, alternatives existed, and people had choices. Something changed around 500 years ago, leading to our current situation where virtually all humans live under state bureaucracy. As Graeber and Wengrow provocatively suggest, “something has gone terribly wrong.”
Comparing Eurasia and the Americas
To test whether Eurasian patterns represent universal human development, Graeber and Wengrow propose comparing the connected landmasses of Africa and Eurasia with pre-invasion Americas (451). Both developed agriculture, but because they were disconnected, they offer genuine comparative data. Key questions emerge: Is monarchy inevitable? Does agriculture always lead to power differentials and bureaucracy?
Their claim is bold: the Americas “defies all such assumptions” (451). Rather than following predictable evolutionary stages, North American societies present a picture of political experimentation and diversity that challenges deterministic narratives.
Indigenous Intellectual Traditions
Graeber and Wengrow argue for taking Indigenous intellectual traditions seriously, even without written records. They draw a striking parallel between Indigenous dream interpretation and Freudian psychoanalysis—both traditions analyze dreams to reveal innermost desires and properties of the soul (454-455). The similarity isn’t evidence of influence but of independent sophisticated thinking, demonstrating that intellectual depth doesn’t require European forms of textual production. Political philosophy, social theory, and psychological insight flourished in the Americas long before European contact.
The Hopewell Interaction Sphere
The Hopewell culture, centered in Ohio from approximately 100 BCE to 500 CE, produced massive geometrically precise earthworks aligned astronomically—among the most sophisticated earthen constructions in world history (457). Yet Hopewell deliberately avoided large-scale agriculture and urban concentration. Instead, people maintained small social units most of the time—perhaps five or six close companions—but periodically connected with a vast network spanning the entire North American continent (460).
The contrast with Mesopotamian developments is stark. While the Ubaid culture celebrated standardization and conformity, Hopewell celebrated individual brilliance and difference. Each person could have their own distinctive hairstyle, their own artistic expression (462). The extensive trade networks brought exotic materials—copper from the Great Lakes, shells from the Gulf Coast, obsidian from the Rockies—but these weren’t controlled by centralized authority. Hopewell represents a continental-scale interaction sphere without states, kings, or agricultural dependency.
Around 500 CE, Hopewell wound down. Graeber and Wengrow speculate that perhaps its work was done—having established networks, clan systems, and diplomatic protocols across Turtle Island (as some Indigenous groups call North America), the intensive ceremonial center was no longer needed (463).
The Rise and Fall of Cahokia
Between 400 and 800 CE, maize agriculture intensified across North America, accompanied by increasing armed conflict and urban development. By around 1000 CE, Cahokia emerged as “the greatest city in the Americas north of Mexico” (464), located near present-day St. Louis. At its height, Cahokia featured massive earthen pyramids (Monks Mound remains the largest prehistoric earthwork in the Americas), complex urban planning, and the widespread game of chunkey—rolling a stone disc and throwing spears to land near it, a game that spread across much of the continent.
But Cahokia also featured disturbing elements: human sacrifice, spectacular violence, and what Graeber and Wengrow call a “second-order regime” fusing control over violence with heroic politics. The city combined the competitive, game-based hierarchies they associate with “heroic politics” (like chunkey tournaments) with brutal displays of domination—reminiscent of Classic Maya civilization. This fusion nearly incorporated the third element of their domination typology: control over secret knowledge and bureaucracy, bringing Cahokia close to what we recognize as a state.
Then Cahokia collapsed. The reasons remain debated—ecological crisis? Climate change? Agricultural failure? Graeber and Wengrow favor a social explanation: people rejected the entire system. Rather than simply declining, Cahokia became a “vacant quarter,” an area people avoided, possibly for generations (469). This wasn’t ecological necessity but mass defection—people choosing to leave and deliberately not return.
Visiting Cahokia Today
Today, Cahokia presents a jarring contrast between ancient grandeur and modern development. Interstate highways run immediately alongside Monks Mound, and the sound of semi-trucks punctuates any attempt at historical contemplation. This isn’t unique—similar incongruities exist at Hopewell earthworks in Ohio, some incorporated into golf courses. While this preserved the physical structures, it raises questions about respecting and understanding these sites’ cultural significance. An Indigenous activist was even arrested for praying on one of these mounds during a golf game, highlighting ongoing tensions over sacred space and historical memory.
New Forms of Indigenous Politics
Cahokia’s collapse opened space for new political formations emerging around 1500-1600 CE—explicitly reacting against what Cahokia represented. In Indigenous traditions, “moving to a new country” was equivalent to creating a new social constitution or government (469). Social movements weren’t metaphorical; they were literal movements. If you disagreed with the current system, you didn’t protest—you physically left and established new political arrangements elsewhere.
Some groups attempted to resurrect Cahokian symbolism and authority on smaller scales—the Natchez, for example, maintained monarch-like figures. But the broader trend was toward new political experiments that explicitly rejected hierarchical violence and centralized control. These formations became the basis for what Europeans would encounter as the Indigenous critique of civilization—the sophisticated political philosophy that Kandiaronk and others would articulate, challenging European assumptions about monarchy, hierarchy, and freedom.
Conclusion: Against Inevitability
Graeber and Wengrow’s analysis challenges us to reconsider assumptions about societal progress and state formation. The story of North American societies—from Hopewell’s continental networks without cities to Cahokia’s spectacular rise and rejection—demonstrates that human political development isn’t a simple linear progression but a complex tapestry of choices, experiments, and deliberate rejections.
The Indigenous critique of civilization wasn’t naive or unsophisticated. It emerged from thousands of years of political experimentation, from societies that had tried monarchy and rejected it, that had developed agriculture but chose not to become dependent on it, that had built cities and decided to abandon them. When Indigenous intellectuals challenged European assumptions about hierarchy and freedom, they spoke from deep experience with alternative possibilities.
For most of human history—and most of Earth’s surface until just 500 years ago—state control was not inevitable, and alternatives were accessible. This was the golden age of barbarians. The question Graeber and Wengrow pose isn’t whether states were inevitable, but why one particular system came to dominate globally, and whether that dominance represents progress or a narrowing of human political possibilities.