The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber

These new findings show that archaeologists still have much to find out about the distribution of the world’s first cities. They also indicate how much older those cities may be than the systems of authoritarian government and literate administration that were once assumed necessary for their foundation. Similar revelations are emerging from the Maya lowlands, where ceremonial centres of truly enormous size – and, so far, presenting no evidence of monarchy or stratification – can now be dated back as far as 1000 BC: more than 1,000 years before the rise of Classic Maya kings, whose royal cities were notably smaller in scale.20 This, in turn, raises a fascinating but difficult question. What held the earliest experiments in urbanization together, other than reeds, fibres and clay? What was their social glue?