Jan D’s Reviews > The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity > Status Update

Now, the Daves wrap it up and go back the the dawn of everything that was written in this book, that is the indigenous critique of european societies.

"It is no coincidence that arable wheat-farming – though long familiar in the valley and delta of the Nile – was only refined and intensified around this time, at least partly in response to the new demands of the dead"

Some interesting ideas on cities being not that different than living "in nature"; even for people in the city, the "city" is more of an imaginary, one experiences mostly one’s neighbourhood (as one did experice one’s valley or whatever). Also, non-city-people probably experienced more of the world as they were more mobile (in contrast to today’s ideas of cities being diverse, countryside being local and homogenous)

Now we get cities! And cities that are not goverend by central rulers nor priests nor a combination of both (double-power!).

Also props to pointing out that language=culture=ethnicity is not necessarily so.

Instead of farming vs. hunter gatherer the authors suggest that these are not the two only ways to have food: People have used bricolage-y, not-reliant-on-bureaucracy forms to grow plants with the help of yearly floods and redistribution of access to these areas.

"Domination first appears on the most intimate, domestic level. Self-consciously egalitarian politics emerge to prevent such relations from extending beyond those small worlds into the public sphere"

Nobles did not lack workers, they lacked workers they could *control*, workers who would not go to work for someone else if they treated them badly

Novels did not lack workers, they packed workers they could control, who would not go to work for someone else if they treated them badly