The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Sometimes, when you encounter a piece of scholarship so complex, well researched and challenging, it is hard to explain how you felt about it, let alone what it was about.

This book is multifaceted. Not only does it detail the lives of our ancestors, but it also critiques the enlightenment analysis that has been anachronistically imposed on them—an analysis that is so deeply ingrained in Western society.

One of the most rewarding things about this book is that it requires you to change how you see the world. In fact, from the very first chapter onward I kept finding myself debating with friends about its content. In doing so, as the authors allude to, it became apparent how the Hobbesian and Rousseauian ideas of the past are the default mindset of all those who think about it, and in my circle, there was no exception. Everyone, it seems, believes that our ancestors were either violent chimp-like savages or naïve and peaceful bonobo-like ignoramuses with no in-between.

The issue, particularly with the Hobbesian analysis, is that if you believe your ancient ancestors (or the Indigenous people met by European colonialists) were, in fact, violent savages, no different to sub-human chimps, then you can then justify against them all manners of evil. One thing I thought this book did exceptionally well was to introduce an Indigenous critique of these worldviews. Moreover, it details how the Western enlightenment did not originate here in Europe but in the Americas by Amerindians.

It is very difficult to read into and learn about the peoples of the past, especially those without written histories. However, I feel the analysis presented in this book is consistent, logical, and thorough, and the case presented is more accurate than many others I have read. I feel this book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in history, at least so one can be aware of the critiques against much of Western scholarship on the topic.

I only gave this book 4 out of 5 because it is a hard read. It is so dense with scholarship that I found it slow to digest. As such, I had to put it down regularly to think about what was being presented and to cross-reference with other scholarship on the matter. In doing so it took me a month to finish. However, I wonder if a piece of scholarship as radical as this could be put in any other way?