About the author
David Graeber was an American anthropologist and political activist whose work challenged familiar accounts of debt, bureaucracy, labor, and social hierarchy. He brought academic evidence into arguments written for readers well outside the university.
David Graeber and David Wengrow draw on archaeology and anthropology to assemble a less linear record. Hunter-gatherers changed political arrangements by season; early farmers abandoned agriculture; large settlements existed without obvious kings; centralized societies later moved in other directions.
Where to start
Start with The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. David Graeber and David Wengrow challenge the familiar story that farming led inevitably to hierarchy, cities, and the state.
