Human Nature Debate: Pinker, Chagnon, and Cherry-Picked Evidence
Reading the second part of chapter 1, “Farewell to Humanity’s Childhood” in The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, a 2021 book by David Graeber and David Wengrow. This deepens the historical understanding previewed in the previous class, examining the human nature debate and examining Napoleon Chagnon, Steven Pinker, Max Weber, and Adam Smith.
From African Foragers to Fierce People
The Rousseau versus Hobbes debate shaped how anthropologists approached fieldwork. Those leaning Rousseauian—believing humans are naturally cooperative—gravitated toward studying African foragers like the !Kung, Hadza, and Pygmies. Richard Lee’s research suggested the !Kung were essentially egalitarian, worked minimal hours, and lived peacefully without a state—what Marshall Sahlins would call the original affluent society. This evidence supported Jared Diamond’s claim that agriculture was “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.” (For more on Diamond’s argument and its problems, see Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.)
On the Hobbesian side, Napoleon Chagnon’s work with the Yanomamö of South America portrayed pre-state life as violent and conflict-ridden. His book The Fierce People and the film “The Ax Fight” became standard anthropology curriculum for decades. Yet as Graeber and Wengrow point out, careful viewing of “The Ax Fight” reveals extensive social controls regulating behavior—undermining the simple narrative of unregulated violence.
Chagnon remains one of anthropology’s most controversial figures. Mentioning his name can still start arguments in the discipline today. For a comprehensive assessment of Chagnon’s work and the Yanomamö controversy, see Brian Ferguson on Napoleon Chagnon.
Steven Pinker and the Cherry-Picking Problem
Steven Pinker burst onto the intellectual scene attacking anthropologists and others who emphasized cultural variation over fixed human nature. His book The Blank Slate accused teachers (especially anthropologists like Boas, Benedict, and Mead) of “poisoning the youth” by denying human nature exists.
Pinker’s later bestseller, The Better Angels of Our Nature, argues violence has declined throughout history thanks to state governments. He loves Max Weber’s 1918 definition: the state is “the human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Without states, Pinker argues, societies fall into the “Hobbesian trap”—endless revenge cycles between kin groups. (For more on problems with Pinker’s violence decline thesis, see Pinker Violence Decline Critique).
But Pinker has been accused of archaeological cherry-picking. He highlights Ötzi the Iceman (killed by arrow = violence!) while ignoring Romito 2 (person with severe disabilities who was cared for = compassion!). Both are real archaeological evidence. Both show human complexity. Neither proves a universal theory about human nature.
As the class discusses, if you want to argue humans are naturally good, you pick Romito 2. If you want to argue humans are naturally bad, you pick Ötzi. The examples can always be found to support whatever position you’ve already chosen.
The Puzzle of Captive Colonists
Graeber and Wengrow make a striking claim: settlers captured or adopted by indigenous societies in the Americas “almost invariably” chose to stay when given the choice, while indigenous people taken into European societies usually fled back home. They cite examples like Helena Valero, who preferred life with the Yanomamö to life among Europeanized Brazilians.
This claim has been contested. Daniel Immerwahr’s review in The Nation argues the evidence is more complex—many captured settlers did return, and acculturation depended heavily on age at capture. The class addresses this critique directly, noting that while the pattern wasn’t absolute, the key insight remains: if the Hobbesian view were correct (indigenous life as violent chaos), we’d expect zero defections from European to indigenous societies. Yet we see the opposite pattern.
Even a 50/50 split would undermine Pinker’s narrative. People who experienced both worlds often preferred indigenous societies—a fact incompatible with claims about pre-state life being universally “nasty, brutish, and short.”
Adam Smith and the Myth of Natural Markets
The chapter concludes by examining how Adam Smith’s ideas have distorted archaeological interpretation. Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations (1776) that humans naturally “truck, barter, and exchange,” and that market competition—guided by an “invisible hand”—produces optimal outcomes. This became the justification for market capitalism as inevitable and natural.
But as Graeber and Wengrow demonstrate, the archaeological record tells a more interesting story. Yes, objects traveled long distances. Yes, people exchanged goods across vast networks. But to call all of this “trade” and treat it as proto-capitalism misses the wild diversity of reasons things moved around:
- The Kula ring documented by Bronisław Malinowski in Argonauts of the Western Pacific—armbands and shell necklaces circulating in opposite directions with no relation to market economics
- Vision quests requiring travel and exchange of possessions
- Traveling healers and entertainers
- Women gambling objects that ended up halfway across continents
- Gift exchanges tied to social relationships, not profit
Assuming everything equals “trade” makes history “needlessly dull” by forcing human creativity into a single narrative trajectory toward modern capitalism. The reality is far more interesting and varied.
Why This Matters: Escaping the Binary
Whether you start from Rousseau (people were good) or Hobbes (people are bad), both paths lead to the same conclusion: hierarchy and state control are inevitable for modern society. The debate itself forecloses alternatives by making us argue about human nature rather than examining actual human experiments with social organization.
Graeber and Wengrow want to shift the conversation. Instead of asking “Are people fundamentally good or evil?” they ask “What different ways have humans organized themselves?” History becomes a catalog of social experiments rather than a theological exercise about essential human nature.
This sets up their two-part project for the rest of the book. First, they’ll bring new archaeological and ethnographic evidence showing the true diversity of human social arrangements. Second, they’ll turn to indigenous intellectuals who were themselves theorizing about society, freedom, and the good life—voices that have been systematically excluded from “the history of ideas.”
Critical Reception and Debate
In Beyond the State, Daniel Immerwahr wrote a September 2021 review for The Nation praising the book’s project while contesting specific claims. On the captured colonists question, Immerwahr writes:
Certainly, the part closest to my area of expertise raises questions. In arguing that people hate hierarchies, Graeber and Wengrow twice assert that settlers in the colonial Americas who’d been “captured or adopted” by Indigenous societies “almost invariably” chose to stay with them. By contrast, Indigenous people taken into European societies “almost invariably did just the opposite: either escaping at the earliest opportunity, or–having tried their best to adjust, and ultimately failed–returning to indigenous society to live out their last days.”
Big if true, as they say, but the claim is ballistically false, and the sole scholarly authority that Graeber and Wengrow cite–a 1977 dissertation–actually argues the opposite. “Persons of all races and cultural backgrounds reacted to captivity in much the same way” is its thesis; generally, young children assimilated into their new culture and older captives didn’t.
This class addresses the critique head-on. The 1977 dissertation does argue that acculturation depended on age regardless of direction. However, there remains substantial evidence that adults who experienced both worlds often expressed preferences for indigenous societies—a pattern that shouldn’t exist at all if the Hobbesian view were accurate. The debate continues, but the core challenge to simple narratives about “civilized” versus “savage” life stands.
What’s Next
Chapter 2, “Wicked Liberty,” introduces indigenous intellectuals and their critiques of European society. These thinkers influenced Enlightenment philosophers but have been written out of intellectual history. Graeber and Wengrow aim to restore their voices and show how indigenous theories about freedom and social organization challenged European assumptions.
Continue: Chapter 2 – Wicked Liberty: The Indigenous Critique
Previous: Chapter 1 Part 1 – In the Beginning
Full course: The Dawn of Everything series