Thinking books · Human nature & society · David Graeber & David Wengrow, 2021

The Dawn of Everything — the big ideas

An argument that the standard story of human social evolution is largely wrong.

Free — no account needed to read

The big ideas

It challenges the idea of a single progression from bands to states, arguing the archaeological record shows far more variety and deliberate experimentation than the story allows.

Its most useful move is showing that societies sometimes chose their arrangements, and changed them seasonally — which means current arrangements are choices too.

It is contested by specialists and deliberately polemical. Its value is as a counter-narrative that makes the standard one visible as a narrative.

Practise it — no need to have read it

Take something in your organisation described as inevitable or "how it works". Write who decided it and when.

A hint: Often nobody can answer, which is itself the answer.

Where it shows up in real life

• Challenging inevitability
• Organisational change
• Questioning a standard narrative

Described in our own words with the source named — never quoted, and not a substitute for reading the book.