This is a good article that reveals some of the arguments in the hot selling book, The Dawn of Everything. Two of Graeber’s most important points are that hunter-gatherers organized at a regional level (not just local), and that simpler societies did not always choose complexity once they had the technology. The author contrasts the Dawn of Everything to the work of Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari. I have not read Harari’s work but I have read Jared Diamond and Marvin Harris. It is very inaccurate to lump them in with 19th century unilinear theories of cultural evolution. Their theories of the materialist foundation for socio-cultural change is a loose determinism, not some iron-clad law of history.
Read in CounterPunch
