The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

In this chapter, subtitled “Why Canadian foragers kept slaves and their Californian neighbors didn’t; or the problem with ‘modes of production,” the authors grapple with the stark distinctions between two neighboring 18th-century forager societies: the Northwest Coast groups and the Californian groups (specifically the Yurok).

They begin by addressing the processes that lead to cultural distinctions, which many anthropologists attribute to ethno-linguistic differences. The authors argue, instead, that there are various reasons for how and why different groups, living relatively close to one another, might distinguish themselves—and, indeed, develop entirely different systems of cultural values and social organization. Primarily, they argue that schismogenesis—the process of defining one’s own group as different from another—plays a crucial role.

The Californian tribes resolutely refused to establish agricultural practices, preferring instead to retain foraging as their primary source of sustenance, though they did plant tobacco and other plants for ritual usage suggesting that they appreciated agricultural practices in specific instances. Partly, their rejection of agriculture is related to “reflected questions about values, about what humans really are (and consider themselves to be), and how they should properly relate to one another” (175). The Yurok preferred not even to fish, instead relying on acorns and other tree nuts, because stockpiling fish left them vulnerable to raids. In contrast, the Northwest Coast groups fished and raided. They also enslaved people, which the Yurok did not. The authors argue that the cultural values held by the respective groups led to these very distinct practices.

The Yurok are described as a nearly “puritanical” and abstemious group that valued spirituality, as evidenced by sweat lodge rituals and abstaining from indulgence of any kind. They valued wealth as a means to an end, and consequently, they also emphasized the importance of hard work. In contrast, the Northwest Coast peoples indulged in hedonistic excess, regularly holding elaborate potlatches that encouraged overeating, theatrical contests, and immoderate consumption of all kinds.

This leads the authors to consider the matter of slavery. While the Yurok did, in fact, take captives, they did so in keeping with the general spirit of Amerindian slavery across the Americas. The captives would be cared for, educated in the ways of the Yurok, and eventually allowed to achieve free status once they became fully Yurok. The Northwest Coast peoples, in contrast, enslaved people in perpetuity and made slavery an inheritable condition which was rare among Amerindian tribes.

This practice was the result of their value system. The Northwest Coasters developed an elaborate aristocracy which, in turn, fostered a common population dedicated to the artistic endeavors that accompanied the potlatches and other cultural expressions. The aristocracy itself was beholden to the common population for the retention of their titles, so there was a continuous negotiation as to what the commoners’ role should be. Thus, the raiding, capturing, and enslaving of other peoples served the purpose of providing the menial labor that both the aristocracy and their subjects found unsavory.

The Yurok instead elevated menial tasks “into a solemn public duty,” like collecting and chopping wood for the sweat lodge ceremonies (200). The authors employ this extended example as a model for what they intend to prove with the book as a whole: “that human beings have more collective say over their own destiny than we ordinarily assume” (206). Both the Yurok and the Northwest Coast peoples determined, collectively speaking and over time, their own set of values—against one another, in large part—which then delineated the shape their relative cultures took, the behaviors they displayed, and their relationship to broader concepts like hierarchy, property, and most importantly, freedom.

In this chapter, subtitled “The revolution that never happened: how Neolithic peoples avoided agriculture,” the authors address the issue of farming, challenging the conventional notion that an “Agricultural Revolution” during the Neolithic period is what paved the way for modern civilization.

They begin by relaying a metaphorical story told by Plato about the gardens of Adonis. Plato suggests that these gardens, cultivated merely for their beauty and speed of production, are unworthy of the investment of time and energy; they produce no food, nothing of use. The authors argue that early farming could, in fact, be more like the gardens of Adonis than a supposed Agricultural Revolution. The evidence reveals that for thousands of years many Neolithic settlements used farming only as a supplement to more established hunting and foraging practices. If the advent of agriculture was truly revolutionary, then it would not have languished in the background of other food-procuring activities for so long.

Using the settlement of Catalhoyuk in Turkey as an example, the authors discuss the many female figurines found at such sites: these were once considered fertility goddesses, but this assumption has fallen out of academic favor in the last few decades. However, the authors suggest, perhaps these figures do tell a story of female empowerment. That is, they might be viewed as symbols of matriarchal authority.

Later in the chapter, the authors link this idea to the slow, steady birth of agriculture. It was likely women who innovated in this arena, and not merely regarding the production of food. The advent of farming was more likely the result of the need for other items, like straw for baskets, chaff for construction, the creation of textiles and other household items, etc. Thus, the discovery of numerous female figurines—“their forms revealing an interest in female elders” (220)—at proto-farming communities indicates the importance of women in the development of agriculture.

It would also appear that these communities, like Catalhoyuk, provide “no evidence for central authority” (221). This could indicate that these Neolithic residents lived in what might be termed an egalitarian society—contrary to most scholarly assumptions that farming gave rise to social inequality.

Farming did not come about to replace hunting and foraging activities. In fact, farming was secondary to such subsistence activities for thousands of years. The authors argue that like villages who specialized in bead-carving or shell-processing, farming was also a specialized industry: “Farming itself seems to have started in precisely this way, as one of so many ‘niche’ activities or local forms of specialization” (227). Far from being a revolutionary discovery that inescapably altered the lives of early humans and their societies, farming was just another activity that both aided in trade and contributed to ceremonial practices.

In addition, the ways in which the people at Catalhoyuk, and presumably other early settlements, practiced farming was casual, at best. It relied on a technique known as flood-retreat farming which “requires little central management” and has “a kind of inbuilt resistance to the enclosure and measurement of land” (235). Thus, not only was early farming a casual activity, rather than the crucial vector at which “primitive” foraging societies became models for modern city-states, but it was also a communal activity, not the catalyst for the amassing of private property. In other words, foragers and farmers are not two distinct, directly opposed groups of early humans. Rather, they are often the same groups of people, practicing different methods of social organization at different times of the year.

The authors also discuss how, within the Fertile Crescent, there were two distinct swaths of arable land, with two distinct cultural groups living within them. The lowland residents of settlements like Catalhoyuk, with an apparently decentralized organizational structure, followed a different cultural path than the upland residents of the stone settlement at Gobekli Tepe, with its stratified society.

Again, the authors point to the process of schismogenesis to explain this: “The more that uplanders came to organize their artistic and ceremonial lives around the theme of male predatory violence, the more lowlanders tended to organize theirs around female knowledge and symbolism—and vice versa” (245).