It has often been claimed that "monsters"--supernatural creatures with bodies composed from multiple species--play a significant part in the thought and imagery of all people from all times. The Origins of Monsters advances an alternative view. Composite figurations are intriguingly rare and isolated in the art of the prehistoric era. Instead it was with the rise of cities, elites, and cosmopolitan trade networks that "monsters" became widespread features of visual production in t...

Comparing early phases of urban development in four regions – the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica – this essay offers a global perspective on the origins of civic life. While we may never be able to reconstruct the unwritten constitutions of these earliest cities, or the reforms undergone in their first centuries, we can hardly doubt that these existed. Consideration of archaeological and written evidence from across the four areas suggests in every case, that significant...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER AND BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEARFINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2022'Pacey and potentially revolutionary' Sunday Times'Iconoclastic and irreverent ... an exhilarating read' The GuardianFor generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - eithe...

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocen...

Brought to you by Penguin.For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a reaction to indigenous critiques of European society, and why they are wro...

"An all-encompassing treatise on modern civilization, offering bold revisions to canonical understandings in sociology, anthropology, archaeology and political philosophy that led to where we are today." - The New York TimesA dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and rev...

Neste clássico instantâneo e best-seller internacional, David Graeber e David Wengrow propõem uma nova versão de nossa história — do desenvolvimento da agricultura e das cidades às origens do Estado, da democracia e da desigualdade.Durante séculos, nossos ancestrais foram considerados primitivos e infantis, sendo divididos em duas categorias: iguais, livres e inocentes ou guerreiros e brutais. Com base no pensamento de Jean-Jacques Rousseau e de Thomas Hobbes, a id...

Cognition Switch: An Artefact for the Transmission of New IdeasIssue #2: January 2019Featuring Ideas by:Michael Shermer, Peter Staudenmaier, Sabine Hossenfelder, Kate Raworth, Benjamin G Martin, Noah Charney, David Wengrow, Kimberley Brownlee, Tali Sharot, Robert Simpson, Thea Bechshoft, Martin Rees, Jon Butterworth, Bill Nye, Huw Price, and Henry Cowles

David Graebers och David Wengrows storverk The Dawn of Everything kommer på svenska hösten 2022 med titeln Början på allt – En ny historia om mänskligheten. Det är en bok som i grunden förändrar vår förståelse för människans historia och samtidigt presenterar visionära idéer om frihet och framtidens samhällen.I generationer har vi betraktat människans avlägsna förfäder som barnsliga eller primitiva. Vi ser dem antingen som fria, jämlika och oskuldsfulla primater, eller som tjuvakti...

Why read non-fiction? Is it just to find things out? Or is it for pleasure, challenge, adventure, meaning? Here, in seventy new pieces, some of the most original writers and thinkers of our time give their answers.From Hilton Als on reading as writing's dearest companion to Nicci Gerrard on reading for her life; from Malcolm Gladwell on entering the minds of others to Michael Lewis on books as secret discoveries; and from Lea Ypi on the search for freedom to Slavoj...

Two anthropologists, David Graeber and David Wengrow, offer an invitation to an intellectual feast: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, N.Y.). Unfortunately, David Graeber dies in 2020, shortly before publication.The menu follows a semitic textual structure. In greek textual structure, a topic is covered systematically. Opinions are raised, examined then discarded. One possible explanation is left standing. In semitic textual structure...

THEMATIC ISSUE: RETHINKING URBANIZATION AND ITS LIVING LANDSCAPES FROM THE INSPIRING PERSPECTIVE OF A GREAT “MAESTRO” Edited by Marcella Frangipane and Linda Manzanilla INTRODUCTION. THE MANY DIMENSIONS OF THE “CITY” IN EARLY SOCIETIES Marcella Frangipane THE ORIGINS OF CIVIC LIFE – A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE David Wengrow MESOPOTAMIA AND NEIGHBOURING REGIONS SIXTY YEARS AFTER CITY INVINCIBLE, SURVEYS AND THE URBAN REVOLUTION IN QUESTION Pascal Butterlin THE CITY OF URUK AND ITS HINTERLAND Hans ...