The idea that our modern Western social order is inexorably the goal of social evolution should be dismissed.
In the book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity the scholars David Graeber and David Wengrow question the commonly taught theories of the linear development of human societies.
The linear concept of human development from prehistoric, egalitarian groups of hunter-gatherers, gradually shifting to agriculture and to private ownership, developing through technological innovations and urbanization into modern, complex, hierarchical social systems (in which power and property are concentrated in the hands of few) does not match with reality.
As anthropologist Graeber ja archaeologist Wengrow show in their massive work, there has always been a huge variety of ways to create social order.
Early communities, regarded as "primitive" by Western science, could in fact be politically aware and able to shape the structures of their societies. This idea of political awareness in ancient non-European communities has been totally ignored in history books. Yet, some written sources dating as far as year 1541 refer to the native community of Tlaxcala in the "New World" as a democracy, this being just one example.
Europeans just would not like to admit that the concepts of freedom and equality could have been born elsewhere, and even much earlier than in the Era of Enlightenment and the French Revolution. On the other hand, Graeber and Wengrow by no means maintain that societies that are regarded as "primitive" would have been perfect: they just represent an amazing variety of social orders.
It is also intriguing to read how Native Americans since the 1600s strongly criticized the European (French) social system. It is the condescending attitude of Western historians that has prevented them from seeing the intellectual validity of the criticism.
The best part of Graeber and Wengrow's work is how they reveal the vast diversity of realities in human societies through history, ignored in school history lessons. The book can revolutionize one's whole way of thinking: if early societies were once able of political awareness and thus capable of creating new social orders, isn't that still possible? And as the linear thinking from "primitive" to "civilization" does not apply, we are not trapped in inevitable patterns.
David Graeber & David Wengrow: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. 2021.
Photo Pixabay, anonymous photographer
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