Introduction
David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book The Dawn of Everything is a radical attempt to reframe human history. The authors reject the evolutionary myth that societies inevitably progress from simple groups to hierarchical states. Instead of linear progress, they propose a vision of history as a laboratory of social experimentation. The key to understanding this perspective lies in two triads: the three forms of domination and the three fundamental freedoms that have shaped human agency within a dynamic field of tension for millennia.
Evolutionism and the Three Freedoms: Foundations of Stateless Order
The authors reject the evolutionary model because it strips humans of their agency, suggesting that hierarchy is the inevitable price of civilizational complexity. History, however, is a space of conscious choices. The foundation of ancient societies rested on three freedoms: the freedom to move away, the freedom to disobey, and the freedom to create social relationships.
Mobility allowed people to escape tyranny—the ability to leave was the most effective safeguard against oppression and centralization. The freedom to disobey, observed among groups like the Wendat (Huron), meant the absence of a coercive apparatus; the authority of chiefs relied on persuasion rather than punishment. Most important, however, was the plasticity of structures—the ability to consciously experiment with social organization. This is evidenced by the mega-sites in Ukraine, where large groups functioned without permanent hierarchies, often shifting their management models depending on the season.
Violence, Bureaucracy, and Charisma: The Triad of Domination
The mechanisms of power rest on three pillars. The first is sovereignty, or the monopoly on violence. Historically, however, this was fragile—a ruler’s reach ended where his sight did, and legitimacy was built through ritual. The second pillar is bureaucracy and the control of information. Although record-keeping systems initially served mutual aid, states like the Inca Empire transformed them into tools for surveillance and making society "legible" to those in power.
The third element is personal charisma, visible in heroic cultures (such as the Olmecs), where power was an emanation of spectacle and courage. The modern state is a fusion of these three forms: it combines a monopoly on force, bureaucratic record-keeping, and charismatic political theater. Today, this dominance is mutating toward algorithms, where digital surveillance and predictive models replace the physical presence of an official, creating a new form of panopticism in which control occurs in real time.
Hobbes, Rousseau, and the Anarchist Tradition
Graeber and Wengrow challenge the myths of Hobbes (the war of all against all) and Locke (the naturalness of private property). They argue that the state of nature was a sphere of practical freedom, not of fear or resource conflict. Even Rousseau, while appreciating egalitarianism, erred by assuming the inevitability of civilizational decline and the necessity of a top-down "general will."
The book's theses resonate with the anarchist tradition (Kropotkin), indicating that mutual aid and self-organization are immanent human traits. Archaeology proves that people do not need a state to create stable communities. History does not have to be seen as a one-way road to the "iron cage" of bureaucracy, but rather as a collection of open possibilities still waiting to be reclaimed.
Social Imagination: The Key to Structural Change
In summary, the current state model is not the inevitable finale of evolution. Mega-sites and settlements like Çatalhöyük show that large communities can endure without property hierarchies, and that material egalitarianism can coexist with complex social structures. The greatest obstacle to reclaiming freedom is the atrophy of the social imagination—the belief that we can no longer live differently.
Reclaiming agency requires realizing that freedom is not a luxury of late modernity, but a primal human capacity to create alternatives to any form of domination. As the authors suggest, the political future of the community depends on our ability to imagine new forms of relationships.
📄 Full analysis available in PDF