Who Dares to Rewrite 40,000 Years of History?

This episode was first released in November 2021.

In their bestselling book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, archaeologist David Wengrow and the late anthropologist David Graeber offer a radically different story of our social evolution.

Drawing on groundbreaking research gathered over a decade of collaboration, the book challenges just about everything we thought we knew about human nature and society, as enshrined by Hobbes and Rousseau, and about the origins of farming, property, slavery, democracy and civilisation.

In this episode, Wengrow tells Eleanor Penny about the 10-year gestation of the book, his collaboration with Graeber, and what their heretical conclusions mean for our understanding of humankind.

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Donate one hour’s wage per month—or whatever you can afford—today.