The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

In this chapter, subtitled “On the historical foundations of the indigenous critique,” the authors return to the ideas in Chapter 2. They reexamine how the encounters between the Indigenous peoples in the Americas influenced European Enlightenment thinking.

On the one hand, the result was that ideas about individual freedom and political autonomy are transformed, leading to political and philosophical revolutions. On the other hand, there was “a backlash among European thinkers which produced an evolutionary framework for human history that remains largely intact today” (441). This casts Indigenous thinkers as “innocent children” (441) and cements the notion that history progresses in teleological fashion toward what the world looks like today.

The authors analyze the work of political scientist James Scott, whose studies on states and their opposite (the “barbarians”) reveal the weaknesses in some of the traditional ways of thinking about civilizations. When grain becomes the primary source around which a society organizes itself, people inadvertently leave themselves vulnerable: “the grain-based kingdoms were fragile, always prone to collapse under the weight of over-population, ecological devastation and the kind of endemic diseases that always seemed to result when too many humans, domesticated animals and parasites accumulated in one place” (444).

Further, during this period of history—from “about 3000 BC to AD 1600”—“it was a Golden Age for the barbarians, who reaped all the advantages of their proximity to dynastic states and empires (luxuries to loot and plunder) while themselves living comparatively easy lives” (445). After AD 1600, after the European incursions into the Americas and the rise of colonial empires, political and economic systems came under a global order. Thus, it is difficult to speculate how the processes that led to the modern nation-state could have developed otherwise—unless one investigates what occurred in the Americas prior to the arrival of the Europeans.

The authors next examine clan systems in Amerindian societies, noting that this system “appeared to be designed to maximize people’s capacity to move, individually or collectively, or for that matter to reshuffle social arrangements” (457). They use what is known as the “Hopewell Interaction Sphere” to examine how early Amerindian societies might have functioned. The vast geometrically precise mounds at Hopewell were created and occupied over centuries, but never organized into “any sort of ongoing village or town” (460). Rather, Hopewell represented a place in which ritual activities and large gatherings occurred at specific times of the year, presumably a time when clans would gather, trade information and goods, and participate in specific rituals. The archeological evidence at Hopewell reveals a variety of distinctive art forms and elaborate burials, a “celebration of difference” (462). These practices come to an end around AD 400, and according to the authors, it may be because Hopewell had served its purpose, bringing together disparate groups to forge “a shared idiom for personal diplomacy, a common set of rules for interacting with strangers” (463). The diplomatic ties between various tribes had been established, and now they were free to develop their own standardized forms of art and expression.

The authors suggest that Hopewell was the model for the emergence of later gathering places, such as Cahokia in the Mississippi Valley. They argue that Cahokia might be considered the first “state” in America, though it began much like Hopewell. However, some groups of people began to settle there, depending on maize farming for their sustenance, and gradually, these groups exhibited hierarchical social organizations; as the authors observe, “[a] few came to resemble tiny kingdoms” (464). The population of Cahokia grew exponentially around AD 1050. The surrounding communities were either engulfed by the city-state or disbursed into single homesteads; thus, the population was almost entirely under the control of Cahokia proper. As the authors observe, “[w]hat’s so striking about this pattern is its suggestion of an almost complete dismantling of any self-governing communities outside the city” (466). Further, as the power of Cahokia grew, violence became more prevalent, and by AD 1150, the city was walled in. Archeological evidence suggests that a long period of warfare and destruction began at this point, and the city was eventually abandoned within a couple of centuries. Whatever happened at Cahokia was enough to keep people away from it for centuries afterwards.

After Cahokia, Amerindian groups organized themselves into smaller, more egalitarian communities, it appears. While many scholars attribute this to “shock of war, slavery, conquest and disease introduced by the Europeans,” the authors argue that, actually, this could be “the logical culmination of processes that had been going on centuries before that” (471). That is, the lessons of Cahokia led Amerindian groups to self-consciously scale down and create societies in which individual autonomy was paramount.

Next, the authors turn to the history of the Osage, examining their complex cosmology and how it contributed to the organization of their villages and ritual gathering places. They relay an account of Osage mythology and how it reveals a desire to “neutral[ize] arbitrary power” and to view their social structure “as a series of legal and intellectual discoveries—even breakthroughs” (480).

The authors compare this to European thought, specifically the French philosopher Montesquieu and his influence on America’s Founding Fathers. Montesquieu set forth ideas about personal liberty and the idea that laws should govern rather than charismatic (and, typically, autocratic or aristocratic) men. As the authors argue, “precisely this sort of thinking was commonplace in North America well before European settlers appeared on the scene” (481).

Last, the authors insist that these complex philosophical notions and political organizations that the Osage and other Amerindian peoples demonstrated were not the result of some state of original innocence, nor were they accidental. Instead, what these tribes were engaging in were self-conscious and sophisticated ways of self-determination.

Even within the general movement away from authoritarian forms of government in Indigenous Amerindian societies, there were exceptions. There is no totalizing method that can be found anywhere. Still, the legacy of Cahokia and the tradition of thoughtful political debate among members of many Amerindian tribes dominated the landscape. And, the authors point out, the ideas expressed by Kandiaronk and others, prevailed: “It would be impossible for a European today, or anyone, really—whatever they actually thought—to take a position like that of the seventeenth-century Jesuits and simply declare themselves opposed to the very principle of human freedom” (492).

In the final chapter (subtitled “The dawn of everything”) the authors summarize their primary arguments, continue to counter long-standing assumptions, and provide a framework for optimism in imagining a new path forward for humanity.

In the opening paragraph, they point out that two myths continue to dominate discussions about the supposed “origins of inequality” within human societies: the Rousseau-esque notion of “a fall from grace” with the advent of large-scale civilizations or a Hobbesian view that, given humanity’s essentially violent nature, civilization “was itself redemptive” (493). Following that, they note that, if Western civilization had really been so attractive, there would have been no need to use brute force and systemic oppression to establish it elsewhere.

The authors go on to again confront the narrative surrounding the Enlightenment, that it represented “a fundamental break in human history”: “The Enlightenment is seen as introducing a possibility that had simply not existed before: that of self-conscious projects for reshaping society in accord with some rational ideal” (495). As they have demonstrated throughout the book, these ideas are embedded throughout human history—they are not, in fact, revolutionary ideas that happened to originate with white male Europeans—and throughout the globe. The authors work to dispel the myths that pre-Enlightenment societies and early human hunter-gatherer societies were necessarily simple and in thrall to supernatural superstitions and entrenched customs. Rather, these societies were extraordinarily diverse, complex, and self-consciously experimental.

In addition, the reason why myths about pre-Enlightenment societies persist is that the social sciences themselves are founded on the flawed premise that its proper area of study is about “the ways in which human beings are not free: the way that our actions and understandings might be said to be determined by forces outside our control” (498). Therefore, “most ‘big histories’ place such a strong focus on technology” (498). Many historians focus on the materials that were used to define an age—stone or bronze or iron, for example—or on a technological revolution that changed society—agricultural or urban or industrial, for example—rather than noting that similarities existed between societies using different materials or technologies (498-99). Knowledge was gained collectively (and, as they argue, much of it amassed by women) and incrementally, not via the achievements of sole geniuses.

The authors make the case that “ritual play” was, in fact, the foundation for many life-altering discoveries by early humans. For example, ceramics were employed as ritual decoration before they were used as practical vessels for cooking and storing; mining was originated by the need for pigments in ritual displays before it became key to extracting metals for tools and weaponry. As the authors state, they were struck by “how, time and again in human history, that zone of ritual play has also acted as a site of social experimentation” (501). Just as certain technologies had their roots in ritual play, so too did the concept of private property. It also informed the ways in which early human societies exercised an extraordinary amount of fluidity—living in vastly different social arrangements at different times of the year—and freedom of movement, of disobedience, and of self-determination.

How did societies became stuck in the current systems of hierarchical governance and the limited freedoms afforded by modern nation-states? First, the authors point to the “gradual division of human societies into what are sometimes referred to as ‘culture areas,’” wherein “[i]dentity came to be seen as a value in itself, setting in motion processes of cultural schismogenesis” (504). This eventually leads to warfare, though the authors are careful to note that warfare between societies was not inevitable and, at various points throughout human history, it seems to be absent.

In their dissection of why and how war became a relative constant, the authors look back to notions enshrined in Roman law—which can also be found in other empires, such as the Han or Aztec. Roman law states that property rights imply that owners of property have absolute rights over it—including the right to destroy such property. This conception of property has its roots in slave law, as the authors reveal in looking at the work of sociologist Orlando Patterson. Thus, rights and freedoms are viewed through the lens of domination, e.g., enslaved people are property and can be destroyed by slave holders at will. Further, this comes to define the household itself: the “very word ‘family’ shares a root with the Latin famulus, meaning ‘house slave,’ via familia, which originally referred to everyone under the domestic authority of a single paterfamilias or male head of household” (510). In this instance, the authors show that the emergence of patriarchal forms of governance, both within the household and outside in the political realm, lead to violence and warfare.

This need not be the case. The authors use an extended analogy, comparing the behavior of the Wendat peoples to the French during the 17th century. While the Wendat also engaged in torture and executions, they only did so against captives of war (and only to male captives; women and children were taken into the tribe). The Wendat noted, with horror, that the French tortured and executed their own peoples. Thus, in the West, violence and dominance are intimately bound up with domestic concerns; that is, men could dominate their wives and children, so too could the state exercise violence over its own people. This was exactly contrary to Wendat ways of thinking.

The authors then return to the conventional argument that the reason why human societies had to organize themselves into hierarchical patterns was the result of scale. When groups of humans become large enough, the reasoning goes, they must create institutions of administration and bureaucracy (institutions of control) to maintain stability and peace. However, as the authors counter, this conventional wisdom does not apply to any number of early settlements; it was simply not the case that the establishment of large urban centers necessarily engendered the need for sovereign, bureaucratic, or political control. Some urban centers relied on one (first-order regimes) or two (second-order regimes) of these forms of control, in varying combinations, but the permutations are many.

Last, the authors reflect on the fact that the reasons why these anomalies throughout human history have not been discussed more thoroughly is that scholars do not have the language with which to describe these different strands of development. Many words writers rely on to describe human relationships and societies—terms like “democracy” or “republic” or “city” or “civilization” itself—are “freighted with historical baggage” that distorts whatever they describe (522).

Thus, the authors try, instead, to ask different questions and to look at seemingly anomalous events in human history as if they were just as crucial to social development as the grand monuments, great temples, and proto-nations most often touted as the foundations of modern social and political arrangements. They end by refuting the myths that inform the understanding of modern society and global inequality.