You're so right I can see old BBC docs on RUclips and they are extrordinarie ! Here in LA I stopped watching the boob tube a decade ago it's a waste land of political brainwashing ! Cheers
@@stananders474you’re just not interested. In fact, he’s talking about the very things I, and I’m sure many others, have discussed with friends and relatives in late night bs sessions over the years. But he’s far more introspective, and uniquely educated, than I to examine these things at a deep level. For me, anything but boring. Flip on the telly
The discussions between the two Davids must have been mind-blowing. What a shame they couldn't both be here to be interviewed. But thank you Aaron, for introducing us to this intelligent, softly spoken, and insightful author and academic.
@@shandytorok259 If you want a more useful criticism, you can borrow this one: "Graeber and Wengrow, with Dawn of Everything, have consummated in an epic gish gallop of both naivete and arrogance in pretending to be anthropologists, misrepresenting and mischaracterizing the actual body of work and scholars in the field to such an extent as to completely destroy their own credibility forevermore. While pretending to take a liberal stance on "options for governance" they jettison the condition-based analysis of primitive societies in favor of post-modernist perspectives on freedom of choice in governance, an oxymoron of colossal proportions. Whether the intention was to author a new Bible for fascists or merely line their pockets I have little doubt that they have left their souls impoverished as a consequence. (RIP Mr. Graeber, I pray your intents exceeded your efforts, regardless of moral direction.) Unfortunately, those unfamiliar with the field will be courted endlessly by their rigorous contempt for authentic scholarship, painting experts as unilaterally patriachal (except for, Thank Marx, them), and such readers will undoubtedly swoon in their ignorance and hypnotic effect under such sophistry... as I was... before getting a friendly bump towards more experienced research and analysis." ~me and definitely not ChatGPT
In a world of uncouth loud braying, it's always so refreshing to hear nuanced, carefully tuned replies full of empathy towards opposing viewpoints. Many scientists even fail to embue their criticism with such grace.
You'll find the "uncouth braying" we collectively give out (at least, the worst of us) is a 'design' or the result of malicious designs that disassembled what should have been graceful conversation, but has been reduced to political pop-media madness. This 'design' or set of designs are inclined to all things horrible like greed lust egoism selfishness etc... we don't worship the loved one or even the self, we worship the pleasure and the dollar.
As a retired History and Politics teacher I am happy to say that I have rarely enjoyed a discussion so much. I ordered a copy of the. Book this morning and it arrived tonight. Sorry, I should have visited an independent book shop but I could not wait. Very inspirational. Thank you.
@@ct-gt2dt I'm pretty sure you don't understand supply and demand. You don't think printers estimate how many books people are going to buy before they do a run? Your argument is like saying when you buy a computer at the shop it's already been built in runs in a factory, so we can ignore the plastics and metals used and the carbon dioxide that's been released to the atmosphere. It's an idiotic argument.
Thank you Mr Bastani and Novara Media for this excellent interview. Great work Mr Wengrow, and heartened to hear you speak of David Graeber. Many of us miss his presence and intellect and are glad his remembrance lives on.
The Dawn of Everything has been recommended to me by my Tutor in Archaeology and Ancient History. It’s my second undergraduate degree in Archaeology, the first was in Australian Prehistory. Well before the publication of Dark Emu, there was a burgeoning of evidence that our concept of simple Hunter gatherers trapped in some primitive, as yet unevolved, state was simply not sustainable. I I’m so glad that the big questions are finally being asked archaeologists.
There’s just so little material evidence from those times that it’s all speculation, and often outright fantasy. People have always been really clever though; to be human is to be sophisticated.
This discussion reminds me of a story Buckminster Fuller related. Per Fuller, when Europeans first encountered Polynesians the islanders were mocked because their number system only contained two numbers (yet they navigated great distances between islands). Of course the laptop I'm typing on works on two numbers as well.
On this topic but implicating indigenous australians, 'Australian Aboriginal and Islander mathematics' (John Harris, 1987) is a great read and is interesting both from a linguistic and anthropological perspective !! should be freely available
Richard Buckminster Fuller, 7/12/1895 - 7/1/1983, an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher and futurist, developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome.
For hundered of years we in the West have killed, tortured and enslaved other humans. We have totally destroyed other human cultures, their language, their Gods and even their food and clothes. The Bible, McDonalds and jeans was told to be the superior. We were told we constantly mooved forward to something better. Meanwhile aboriginal australiens say they were healthy, satisfied and lived good lives before their continent was invaded by "the superior" culture. How many people in the West are satisfied (=dont want more, more more goods/money/sex etc)
I am reading it right now, and I am not impressed. The whole narrative comes off as very arrogant, i.e. 'Everything We Think We Know About Early Human History is Wrong'. The first few chapters are devoted to attacking anyone who has written on this topic in the last 400 years. There are definitely interesting tidbits here and there, but they often contradict themselves, and make conclusions based on shacky assumptions and anecdotal evidence. They admonish others for making assumptions about ancient hunter gathers based on modern hunter gatherers, then they do the same thing. They assume Life among the Amazon Tribes must be better than modern society based on a sample size of one girl who was kidnapped by the Yanomami, then escaped 20 years later, could not adapt to modern life, so went back to the Yanomami. They then back this up with more anecdotal evidence from Benjamin Franklin. They do have good points to make, but their approach has been a turn off for me.
I've been reading Graeber's writings, and have already gotten my copy of His work with Wengrow. I found this interview stimulating, and thought that the host was exceptionally good - he offered great questions and kept an interesting conversation all the more so. Moreover, I found that not only does David Wengrow present himself as an excellent scientist, and teacher - but he is also a humble and wise soul as well. Such a well spent evening listening to this. Thank you for sharing - liked and subscribed!!
@@izmirtolga2625 rispondo in italiano: sono rimasta delusa dalle domande molto superficiali, ma credo debba essere così. Questo tizio? Si avrei gran piacere a parlarci e condividere pensieri.
From what I read and hear archaeologists are finding new information, often using modern tech, and moderating what they think. Its what makes science such fun.
It is a science. It's not a bunch of people digging holes and talking about how pretty the pottery is, there is a whole process to try and eliminate ideas that are unsupported by evidence, build new ideas based on the evidence, and make predictons based on the theories they have built etc.
@@kredonystus7768phew … thanks for saying this. some of the comments here are extremely suspicious and close minded, almost fearful, and sometimes angry. But I suppose there’s precedent for this kind of reaction whenever new perspectives are suggested based on evidence that has been ignored, discarded or simply eliminated because it didn’t comport with the received wisdom and acceptable ideologies traditionally disseminated by western scholarship. Try reading the book. It challenges the status quo and gets ya thinking. Plus it’s a good read. Don’t worry, it won’t bite. And no one is requiring you to believe it. But man … the reaction … “he’s saying bad words, he’s saying bad words! La la la la la la, I can’t hear you !!”
I feel something missing here is that farming does indeed seem to appear around 12 kya. But we have a lot of evidence for horticulture, and "garden farming", subsistence, small scale styles of food cultivation etc. happening for thousands and thousands of years before that.
Not that I'm aware of. What crops were these "garden farmers" growing? We've got evidence of the transition and the beginnings of domestication and selection of crops in the thousands of years before farming really gets started, which might be what you're thinking of. Basically still gathering, but starting to change the crops with some tending or incidental selective dispersal of preferred seeds.
I think the point is that "plow agriculture" isn't somehow the pinnacle of food cultivation. (Actually it depletes the soil.) People experimented with cultivating crops in many places and using many methods that don't fit the kind of agriculture, often considered a more advanced "stage" of civilization, seen in Europe ~12000 BCY. The stageist view is: first agriculture, then cities. The archaeological record shows a far more complex picture, with many sites that have very large populations before the so-called agricultural revolution.
@@paintsilj for example the sites of the Cucuteni-Trypillia. An old-european (pre-PIE) culture that had no signs of organised farming. in fact they had no signs of social stratification at all. and they had communities the size of the Mesopotamian city-states, thousands of years before.
We were alot smarter in prehistorical times than modern academia would like us to believe. There are just too many out of place artifacts, and monoliths that can't be properly dated, explained, or duplicated even today.
You have schizophrenia. We can replicate every single ancient monolith found so far, including pyramids or underground caves. If you're willing to finance me with multiple million dollars, I'd even organize and replicate them in your own backyard.
@dagfinissocool explain nukes then? Strip mining? Nuclear waste and chemical dumps near important water sources? Clear cutting arborial forests? Etc. Etc. We aren't as smart as our master claim we are as a civilization either. I DOUBT ANY OF OUR MONUMENTS WILL LAST AS LONG AS THE ANCIENTS . Unless we build like they did.
This is a fallacy, there are plenty of examples of modern production that is as complex or difficult as these ancient things you mention. Just because people don't make them doesn't make them impossible to make
I was watching this while ironing, had to stop the ironing and watch this fascinating discussion. Congratulations on this, out to get the book later today. Wonderful stuff!
The problem with theories like this that radically depart from the conventional wisdom is that almost everyone reacts to them in the wrong way. There are some that jump on immediately wholeheartedly and a a lot who reject out of hand. Most of these types of theories will turn out to be incorrect, but some will be true and the only way we can tell which these are is to interact with and discuss them without immediately jumping on one side or the other.
Yes, we should react to them with skepticism and an open mind. Before you we accept radical ideas that align with our politics we should try as hard as we can to prove them wrong. David Graeber posited a lot of unconventional ideas about human history. I am not convinced because he didn't give much evidence or discussion his methodology so I can judge how rigorous it was.
It is ironic that a video entitled "Everything We Think We Know About Early Human History is Wrong" wonders why RUclips viewers are attracted to "pseudoarcheology" videos whose premise is that everything we know about early human history is wrong.
Yes, the thumbnail is somewhat ironic. Maybe the difference is more subtle ? 'What we think .....' meaning : How academia in general have been changing it's perspective on hunter gatherer society over the last decades , while the general public hasn't caught up yet. Pseudo archaeology are more about ' 'THEY won't tell you the truth about early history '
@@spiritualanarchist8162 I think it’s the opposite. I think the people know that science is full of shit when it comes to the true history of humanity. It’s a scientist that haven’t caught up to public opinion.
What was thoughtprovoking in this discussion? There was nothing new at all? No new ideas, not even a hint to the controversy in Egyptology going on these days.
@@perjanuschas8050 Well, it provoked my thoughts. And perhaps Wengrow finds that he doesn't need to refer to Egyptology to make his arguments. Have you actually read his book?
@@timhallas4275 I’m curious, what’s the purpose of a comment like this? Attempting to open an honest dialog? Defending an orthodoxy? Troll? Who benefits from presenting false choices?
20:00 traditional political theories not based in reality 29:00 native societies much more democratic 35:00 native impact on enlightenment 37:40 idea of democracy and freedom attributed to native Americans by enlightenment writers 39:40 native mounts 48:40 Aztec republic 54:40 four species of humans
This was a very fascinating and thought-provoking interview. I will read his book. Though not entirely convincing, it certainly made some very valid points to be debated - and challenged - further. One of the recurring themes observed over my lifetime is that the study of history (in its widest sense) moves towards conclusions that chime with the cultural and political themes of a given time. Hypotheses emerge that reflect contemporary debate and this discussion was, at least to an extent, an example of this. Thank you Novara for this excellent content.
Yes facinating and some truth but what u say about historical analysis gelling with current ideology ,so true. I am very interested in end of Roman Britain and advent of the Saxon's etc. Yes the Victorian invasion and slaughter no longer seen as valid but now it's the other extreme where there was no violence at all ,being pushed. And clearly improbable.
To me it's a natural development, as we take hold of those pieces of information that seems interesting to us in the problem solving that we are currently at. The rest of the available information is too much to have a grasp on, so we let it be.
Great comment. Most facts of history are totally accurate but the overall narrative is largely false. We live in a short term medium age, not as dark as some times, but we are not the most advanced human civilization to have walked the earth
I loved the book. These issues are crucial and absolutely need to be included in our current discussion about how we want to live as a society. The simple idea that there are choices...
@@PazLeBon Yes. All that is pushed top down. We have no clue or way to roll out a better way. But we do know a lot of the individuals pushing it down and do nothing to eliminate them.
why are we still stuck. intellectually in the 1700's? A: our history is written as a means of control, not an actual accounting, universities are where knowledge goes to die and become embalmed, when they say; " the birth of agriculture" it means the start of commercial, large scale, artificial agriculture. indigenous peoples were always planting, tending and harvesting, just not in a monoculture grid.
@@alexwolfe9895 I would love to go back to the 1700s. The Age of Enlightenment. Yes there were universities back then, but they accepted intellectual debate, innovations, insight, and writings from those that did not go to universities. The close mindedness that experts come from universities is a post ww2 phenomenon in general.
With what we’re learning of global cataclysms, it is hard to rule out the possibility that there have been periods of advanced human development, perhaps multiple times, over the past several hundred thousand years.
Nothing like our current civilization. You will be able to see our mark on the planet forever. A billion years from now some future evolved species will dig down through the geological reccord and find the compressed boundry layer of our civilization marking the start of the 6th mass extinction.
Not really that hard to exclude that possibility when we have no evidence for it ...be very hard to have such Ana danced civilization that you disassembled your entire city and any evidence of it or of the systems nessisary to support it during a cataclysm!
Thank you so much for this fascinating interview with David Wengrow. A wise and humble man who has decided to impart his wisdom upon others. Students are fortunate to have a dedicated and knowledgeable teacher. The homage to David Graeber at the end of the interview was truly sad. RIP.
It is a product of deduction based on evidence. Nothing is written in stone .. either metaphorically or literally. As long as you realise that there is a certain amount of political bias in the interpretation. The facts remain material. But it is at best, "disingenuous" to imply it is merely "manufactured" and risks wild and far fetched flights of fancy the like of which we see in those uncertain and darkest flung corners of the Internet today. And only goes to fuel the ever increasing propagation of the post truth society.
I mean it can't not be manufactured. People can only see so far as their axioms allow them. If your axiom of truth starts eith the idea that you are gods chosen people or some such funky idea its going to be very hard to see beyond that. If you grow up believing money has inherent value its going to be difficult to see somone not asking for money for their work to be mad ..and everyone is always coming from some perspective nobody is robotically aware of all the facts even in one small domain to logically appriase those facts without a perspective being overlaid.
Well yes, it’s difficult to see how it could be done any other way. (Journalism too, in the best of faith.) One can assemble a priori evidence but as soon as you then use that to produce an interpretation, you are inventing a narrative. It might even be “true” in the traditional sense of the word but it’s still a manufacturing process.
@stpancraschapel2136 literally everything is manufactured. Mathematics english literature history our vision when we look out of our eyeballs ...everything in your head is manufactured from a limited apprehension of reality into a story of what it is you're looking at.
Ikr, for everything we experience, we manufacture personal beliefs based on our limited knowledge, which we then often forget to review and test for accuracy.
We have come a long way in a couple thousand years. It’s not unreasonable to think there were other civilisations that came and went in the previous 100K years.
Made me wonder why he seemed to disparage pseudo archeology. After all, the evidence comes via photographs from space rather than a dig, or from stone experts who say archaeologists explanations for how someone made of fine vase out of granite don't stack up...
One theory is that because of previous eras of more intensive farming, there was soil depletion by the time of the construction of Stonehenge. So, people may have been forced to partially abandon farming practices, as opposed to voluntarily giving them up.
We might also have a wrong idea of hunter gatherer societies because most of the ones around today (or in recent times) were pushed to less productive ecosystems (at least for humans). In fact, even in historical times there were some hunter-gatherer (or fisher-gatherer) societies which lived a semi-sedentary life. For example in the Pacific-Northwest.. they had villages in which they lived a good part of the year, going to other sites on a seasonal basis to exploit certain maritime resources. They had hereditary chiefs, slaves, etc.
Not sure if you're referencing the book, but this is discussed in the early chapters of the book. That we assume hunter gatherers in history lived in rubbish places, because thats where they live now.
Another example could be Papua New Guinea where a plane flying over the island's highlands in the 1930's discovered the existence of stone age people no one had any idea were there. And not just a couple of sparse bands, but the population was estimated to be as high as a million! With those numbers, impossible everyone was purely nomadic, and indeed there was some agriculture and interaction among groups.
Yes. The “set” of cave symbols that are more numerous in caves than animal images - only a couple of dozen symbols but spread over at least two or three continents - definitely shows a shared stream of culture. There are other places where a fairly sedentary hunter-gatherer life was possible. More recently the people living on the banks of the Danube, catching enormous sturgeon at certain times of year, weaning their children in fish roe, and hunting in forested hinterland.
As a forager, bushcrafter with a huge facination in deep time and the intelligence and ingenuity of "hunter-gatherer" peoples ... this was hugely self-indulgent of me! Lots and lots confirming my intuition but very happy to hear the details and confirmations. I'm enjoying the book very much already too =) Lots to talk about tracking, memory, etc ... I'm only halfway through the interview too thought so I'll not pre-empt too much ;) I do hope Wengrow is on Bluesky.
Cereal growing in a fairly damp environment in the UK would most likely have led to a lot of failed harvest and famine, heavy rainfall destroys cereal crops, damp causes toxic moulds etc, I think it was dropped because it didn't work, saying that I think the book is extremely interesting and enjoyed this interview immensely
I reckon They ate loads of hazelnuts meat , fish and mushrooms over winter.... the cereals came later for bread and beer and forage and bedding for the animals geese etc... if it was a good year for cereals it was a bonus. Storing grain would have been a lot more difficult so came a lot later, initially cereals must have been a bonus nothing more, unless you lived in more predictable weather. Rust on cereals can be controlled with milk products though
I can't quite tell when this is supposed to have happened either. There was a migration of Indo-Europeans into Britain somewhere in that period that may have affected the shift as well. And evidence of a shift more to pastoralism than back to hunting and gathering. Which might fit with descendants of steppe nomads moving in.
it could have been a result of climate cooling after the Holocene climate optimum peak (the warmest period during the current interglacial, warmer then today) which forced the inhabitants to switch to pastoralism, coupled with the yamnaya-derived invasion of the first (pre-Celtic) Indo-Europeans, who appear to have largely replaced the previous population (of mostly Neolitic farmers with some WE hunter-gatherers) based on genetic evidence
@@pavelandel1538 That's why a time would be useful. That climate optimum seems to have been ending about the right time. There was also a big population decline across Europe, generally attributed to plagues, over roughly the same timespan. And then migrations off the steppes. Somewhere in there, this supposed switch away from cereal agriculture. Without knowing which bits came first, it's really hard to talk about why. If agriculture continued right up until the pastoralists arrived, that's one answer. If it's associated with a big climate change or with population drops due to disease, those are others. But if you ignore all the other things going on, it's easy to reinforce the idea that "sometimes they just decide to stop doing agriculture". (And even then to imply it was back to HG, rather than to herding.)
Grain suffered the same in medieval Europe which had periods of colder, wetter weather followed by outbreaks of ergot poisoning with horrific consequences.
All it would take is one year with a failed crop for a group of people to decide that's a bad way to collect food, then revert to hunting and gathering.
@@dumbvedeoz David Wengrow is a professor at one of the world's top universities and you are ....? If you want to disect his arguments then articulate your views and formulate a compelling argument. A one line "BS" dismissal is not enough.
Great video and I personally feel it’s insulting to our forefather's to think they just sat on the ass and picked berries for 200,000 years. I wonder how many advanced civilizations have come and gone over that timeframe.
let's say that there were several iterations of technological human waves throughout history. and let's say that there are plausible reasons why there isn't compelling evidence of these waves. why are we the first wave to exploit crude oil, not to mention electricity exploitation. like we have presently?
The most important nonfiction book in my lifetime (58 years). All credit to Wengrow, but Graeber changed my life. That he died so young is unutterably tragic. Graeber's book on this history of debt is equally awesome.
. Really enjoyed this interview. A pleasure to hear such eloquence. It's a sublime book. Mind blowing. The work of two beautiful minds . Two beautiful Davids. Thanks Aaron , great interview (your mind's also equally beautiful, of course)
What we "know" in the West isn't "received wisdom," but rather received speculation based on specious assumptions, most notably that of materialistic monism.
Fascinating interview, I am going to order that book right now. It reminds me of debates I have had about Aboriginal Australia. There is a continuity of art and culture lasting 60,000 years. I have found many people are irritated when I call this a "civilization" but what we call "civilization" in Australia is less than 300 years old, 0.1% as old as Aboriginal civilization. Manifestly, our "civilization" is rapidly destroying the planet and will not last for another 100 years, perhaps not even 50, or at least not without complete transformation. We are unable to think about deep time. Our modern obsession with novelty and a dogma of constant progress and economic growth has blinded us.
Yes. It goes back to how the West was developed. It unanimously abandoned the cultures and traditions of ancestors for religious ones, then it abandoned those for material ones, and it is destroying them as the world begins to change against the circumstances that allowed that development. You can see it every time they encounter a people that has those cultures and traditions, because they know those peoples, and they are all over the world, will survive this change, and they will never be in this dominating position again once the collapse is completed.
"Obsession with novelty and a dogma of constant progress and economic growth has blinded us". Don't you see the eloquence of Bush Economic Plan of post 9/11; Shop til one drops! Don't you shop?
The world is empirically better in almost every way than it was 50 years ago. Habitat destruction is about the only thing that’s gotten considerably worse.
Exponential growth cannot be sustained on a finite planet with a declining population. The "appearance of exponential growth" can be extended by using propaganda and disinformation to fool an ignorant, uninterested and "asleep" population. Allowing the Top 1% to extract more of the valuable resources and capital until the whole civilization collapses. Probably very rapidly accompanied by the collapse of the rule of law. And a revolution and bloody fighting until new governments are formed.
I left uni despite getting firsts in political philosophy because it drove me crazy that no one would acknowledge that it was built on nonsense. I even got called ‘disruptive’ for constantly questioning! How can you be a disruptive thinker in a university?
Because the professor can’t give you answers unless they’re written down in a book written by someone else. Most just want you to follow the same thought processes they did.
Scholarship is built on "disrupting" established thinking. But you do need to convince others of the strength of your ideas through meticulous published research. Sorry you didn't stay long enough to learn that. But it's okay. Academia is insanely competitive and underpaid. You would never make it by simply being disagreeable. That's not enough. You can get away with being disagreeable after you've persuaded some of your opponents through the strength of your research. But most scholars prefer the easier route: be agreeable while quietly working at alternate theories until you get there.
On the pseudo archeology topic. I think that part of it is a difference in interest. In this interview the interest is sociological, what were the habits behaviors and social structures of prehistory and how can we learn from them. If your interest is technology you may focus on buildings structure monuments and speculate specifically about them and how they were done. The difference in interests leads to the difference in focus and a desire towards alternative interpretations of history.
Aboriginal oral histories from all over the world have been saying this for hundreds of years. It's nice that open-minded people are finally understanding it to some degree and doing further research. Anyone interested in this should look into the writing of John Mohawk.
If you think about the British Isles, the reason they would “turn their back” on agrarian farming is pretty obvious: where wheat was bred, there’s ten times less rainfall. Even in the south of France, you don’t need too much adaptation. But by the time you get to the Atlantic coast, you’re getting significantly different rainfall and light/dark conditions and much less predictable weather. A single weather event like three days of gusty, heavy rain would wipe out the whole crop of “naked” wheat & barley they had then. (They eventually bred much more sturdy type that need to be forcibly separated from the stalk when ripe.). The farmers who spread from Anatolia or the fertile crescent were growing things like lentils and dates which even now aren’t feasible for much of northern and western Europe.
I agree. Western Britain has a lot of rain and dark, and as we all know, much of Scotland can get very cold and snow covered. However, oats can be grown more successfully than wheat, and root vegetables can be grown even in Sweden.
For that reason do you suppose if there was agrarian farming with organic tools pre younger dryas in the warm latitudes where they were effectively farming sea bed, would there be any evidence left at all?
The problem is, how do you support the new, larger population if you revert to hunting and gathering? Cereal agriculture supports a lot more people on a given amount of land, and by the time Neolithic farmers showed up Britain had been inhabited for several thousand years and had probably reached somewhere near its carrying capacity for hunter-gatherers - not to mention that rather than the farmers assimilating the hunter-gatherers, which is what all the evidence indicates, if the farmers had fairly quickly given up farming the assimilation would be the other way around since the earlier inhabitants would have much better knowledge of how best to live off that land.
Wonderful interview! I love these in depth discussions (I loved the Chris Packham and Oliver Bullough ones too), and this one especially, as I read the Davids' book Dawn of Everything this summer past, so it was great to hear a discussion of the book's main topics. I keep recommending the book to people, but am now able to share this, which is a much better recommendation!
I so badly wanted David Graeber on the JRE. Me and my brother talk about it all the time. He truiy had an extraordinarily beautiful mind. This is the first time I came across David Wengrow and it was a really nice experience, I would love to hear more from him. And if possible make it so that he goes on JRE too. And I swear the tonality of voice of both of them is so similar, I can only imagine how beautiful their conversations when writing the book must have been.
Having done farming, hunting, and wild crafting I am convinced that success at farming requires more knowledge and skill than any other livelihood but hunting gathering.
David Wengrow is an amazing scholar, studied his work at univeristy and it is some of the most detailed and careful research i read. His book The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, c.10,000 to 2,650 BC is incredibly beautifully illustrated and suprisingly readable for an academic work. It will totally change the way you think about Ancient Egypt.
@@professorrhyyt3689 - Another favorite scholar of mine is the psychologist Julian Jaynes. He left academia for a while to work as a playwright. It was maybe his non-academic experience that led him to a larger perspective. He quickly lost interest in behaviorism research and ended up writing a book that looked far beyond conventional psychology, including studying the evidence about the early humanity.
@@ario4795 But ironically you use the term European. Were the Greeks “European” or Middle Eastern? Asian isn’t a race either. I imagine you don’t consider Nubia, Kush or modern Sudan, Eritrea/Ethiopia to be “African” either. Strange aroma coming from your comment.
This was an excellent conversation, really enjoyed it. Really helped me re-frame a lot of really basic understanding about our history and origins. I've always suspected some of the presented perspectives, that mankind didn't just "suddenly" become civilized and that is was a much longer process than originally thought.
I took a module in my history degree about pre-Columbian and Spanish America. We learned about how Tlaxcala had only recently been subjugated by the Aztecs, so was very happy to use the Spanish conquistadors to attack their hated enemy. But I don't remember it being mentioned that they were a republic, had a parliament, or were a democracy. Would love to read more on the subject.
Wait, did I just find out that, around the time stone henge was built, the UK rejected farming practices from Europe and went back to foraging? Like a Neolithic proto-brexit?
With the exception being that they where probably well informed about what they where doing, rather than led by a bunch of anarcho-capitalist billionaires to cut their own noses off!
In the Paleolithic Levant, 23,000 years ago, cereals cultivation of emmer, barley and oats has been researched near the sea of Galilee by the Ohalu II.
still can't get over David Graeber's passing, we're missing such a brilliant mind. I cried the day I found out he passed. Good on Dabid Wengrow for bringing their amazing book's idea forward!
spectacular deflection on the age of the sphinx question... TWICE. After all but spelling out Hancock's name... ''some of the things you see on Netflix''. Maybe that ought to be the guy that should publicly debate Hancock on JRE, if he's such a competent representative of the academic consensus.
Really enjoyed this! (Nerdy confession: I watched it twice.) David Wengrow is a very engaging speaker. I got The Dawn of Everything for Xmas last year and loved it. So refreshing to hear alternative theories of history that are well-researched and supported by ample evidence.
So sad and very very strange, David Graeber in his prime, only 40 or 50, so insightful, deeply humble genuinely really nice guy.super intelligent. A sudden shocking loss, the two Davids were just great together in interview
The last glacial period started about 115k years ago. Now, considering modern man has been around for 200k to 300k years, whose to say a stone age civilization didn't exist before this time, and was simply ground into dust by the mile high ice sheets? I find this particularly interesting as you can find precision megalithic stone work in places that the glaciers never touched, such as Peru. If you look at the ancient cities of Uruk and the like in Iraq, there is hardly anything but dust left. These cities are a mere 5-7k years old and were never glaciated. So...what might happen to a city after 100k years and smashed by glaciers?
In general people seem to have a real struggle understanding how people even lived through an ice age to begin with which has always made me scratch my head. We pre-dated the ice age and it wasn't just suddenly no ice age *NOW ICE AGE* pew pew barren frozen wasteland everywhere in an instant. We had tools, systems and infrastructure in place before it, we just adapted to a changing environment. It shouldn't be complicated to think about. And the vast swathes of the Earth that were unaffected... Modern people are so dense.
David Wengrow. You are doing such excellent work. Graeber he’s looking down from on high, applauding and bowing to you. Your clarity and ability to communicate such beautiful and subtle nuance behind these revolutionary commonsense human theories it’s so important, edifying and calming. Your gentle incredibly well informed ministration of these lofty topics is such a gift to all of us, to all of humanity. Thank you, sincerely. Bravo. Onward. Thankful 👏👏👏😌🙏❤️ Great Job, Aaron !
Graeber and Wengrow made an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of human history. As an always interested person in history, archeology and anthropology, these fresh, "out of the box" ideas makes me so happy, since I had always struggled with the mainstream theories. Thank you very much to give us a hope that we may re-write history in a much real way❤
1:02:10 - How disappointing- I was hoping you weren't taking a swipe at Graham Hancock but you clearly are.... In the next sentence you go on to say how EASY it is to refute Hancock's ideas...and then move swiftly on without doing so.....Sad to see that you are so uninclusive of what amounts to being a different theory, based on real fieldwork and the exact same evidence that you would claim is only available to or recognized by or respected by people with a university job. Sad that you have been allowed claim to have an easy way to refute Hancock - but Bastani hasn't even mustered the courage to ask you to put it into words. After spending a whole hour explaining in great depth your own ideas. 1:02:37 is just disgraceful... we have to ask how spaces open up for theories other than the university-approved ones???? Do we??? Is that so that we can have a University-approved government-funded revolution??? And then suggesting that someone like Hancock's ideas are based in racism....That's just so disgusting, it's a really contemptible way for an academic to behave....So you're an Archeologist who just passed up the opportunity to refute Hancock's ideas with your vast sea of knowledge of archeology....But you're happy to imply that he's racist instead. While Bastani doesn't even hold you to account. This is just hack journalism supported by pseudo-lefties who are helping to prop up the establishement.
Would you be interested in hearing Hancock's theories being almost completely destroyed in a couple of hours by more competent people than our two friends here? You just have to let me know.
@@Dischordian There is this one for starters. I don't link directly, because the algorithm usually deletes these posts. (Channel) World of Antiquity "What Graham Hancock Gets WRONG about Flood Myths"
@@nwogamesalert Miano is a laughable clown. His narrow field of history is something he's very good with but when he branches out into things like geology, linguistics, anthropology and astronomy he frequently looks like an absolute clown. He doesn't have to have separate degrees in these things, it could be taken on it's own merit if he put the work in to study the fields himself but he doesn't. He over-reaches far too often. Hancock actually does learn about other fields and collaborates with others because he recognizes he's not perfect at every facet.
Not exciting to listen to the slow vocals, but indeed blowing in the intellectual study of culture. I could listen for many hours and still become more excited. Thanks to you both.
Fascinating. Subbed. Can't wait to see what other conversations are on this channel, if this was anything to go by... 1:00:22 - While I am inclined to accept expert information (once I've assessed the source for myself), to have lived on this world over the last 4 years and still be able to blindly accept people labelling themselves "Expert" and using religious mantras like "Follow the Science", would be nothing short of foolish.
Maybe the reason why very little happened from the origin of homo sapiens and the begin of agriculture (~12,000 years ago) is because there was a glacial age between them, that lasted more than 100,000 years
It's really fascinating that you're going to work with Forensic Architecture. Really looking forward to see the project you're doing together on Ukraine. I'll definitely go check their conference in Germany that you mentioned. Their work is just fantastic!
I believe a culture he may have been referring to in that context would be 'Cucuteni', whose geographical footprint went beyond current day Ukraine. If memory serves me, they've never found any weapons, yet material remains are abundant. Stefan Milo did a video on it if you'd like to get some foreknowledge. Stefan's a good vulgarizer, not a pseudo-archeologist and has no pretentions in that sense.
What a triumph for this word salad ninja. Identified a lucrative audience, ran them a warm, craftily-worded bath of confirmation bias bubbling in speculative theories framed as scientific truth, rocketing his tome of contrivances into the bestseller list. Well done!
Very odd comment. He makes it extremely clear that he is speculating and more to the point is merely poking holes in traditional views and narratives, which themselves have very little evidence to back them up. Also your comment is no less "word salad" than the interview - to me the language used was pretty simple and easy to understand and I have no background in these issues!
@@mileskennedy7770 My argument is clearly underscored in the original comment. He's a 21st Century snake oil salesman. Take it or leave it, no amount of debate will convince me otherwise. As for your telltale profile pic: Lose the shades, Marx was never that cool. Bye-bye now.
Once in a while I have privilege of witnessing work of great individuals who make me proud to be human. Sorry for your loss and thank you for your work and effort
The guest speaks very slowly. I’m playing back at 1.25 and it feels a lot livelier. He’s making some excellent, much needed observations about the collective intellectual fallacies that have shaped our views about very early human history. I think he’s spot on!
Yeah but u can’t prove they weren’t geniuses that were completely free of ego and reading this each other’s mines and more advanced than even we are now. Logically then, shouldn’t we assume it’s true?
Thank you for shining a light on this book and interviewing David. The moment I was done listening to this book I listened to it again and then again. I'm going for my fourth read because I am going to memorize every wonderful story and point they make. What a time to be a human! Despite the message that we humans don't change up our government like we did in the old days - in fact - it is more flexible than ever, for people who have the means and the knowledge. But that is another story ...
Could listen forever. Brilliant discussion & bang on the money to enhance my modern history teachings here in France. Quoting Rousseau is always a great quick fix to get students neurones dancing, I shall definitely be finding a copy of the book and no doubt quoting David in future years. Thank you !
@@TeaParty1776 Pot was nuts: but the kind of nuts that American foreign policy likes, reducing the populace to the level of workers without any say in policy. It's the same old same old; Europeans have this Immense Egotistical Need to disguise their infantile need for control under some 'ism' label while imposing their childish desires upon everyone possible. Sometimes through willing agents. Hey, how _DID_ a guy in a nation that didn't produce guns, bullets _OR_ tanks or bombs manage to shoot & bomb his way into power & maintain it anyway? Oh, right, that second thing I said.
@@choosecarefully408 > Pot was nuts: but the kind of nuts that American foreign policy likes, reducing the populace to the level of workers without any say in policy. Evasion causes stupidity needed to rationalize the evasion. The claim that the communist, Pot, was consistent w/the anti-communist US foreign policy is beyond bizarre. Ideas are the basic cause of politics. Evading ideas encourages conspiracy theories.
@@TeaParty1776 I'm not sure what you're saying here because I'm not referring to anyone's isms. I never do because experience has shown me that people choose what they want, then try to rationalize that through isms, not the other way 'round. You're right about the last part. Most people feel a desperate need to 'know' everything & when they feel that they're being lied to, they start seeing everything said by those they feel are lying as lies. This is perfectly childish. It's what we all go through in our teens with our parents. (I'm constantly stunned that I've never read of any cultural practice that brings us out of this). But this doesn't apply to me. I'm not saying that I have _NO_ preconceived notions, simply that I am usually aware of them & have the ability to set them aside. I'm a terrible researcher, though Noam Chomsky has referred to pro-Pol Pot statements made in the press by various U.S. foreign policy figures & at least one president. Then there is the "who armed him" question that I raised indirectly. It's the same thing as in Africa: out of nowhere a rebel army armed well enough to take out the reigning government appears even though that reigning government does not leave such things lying around or to be purchased at your local K-Mart or Crazy Eddy's Discount Arms Emporium. A little logic helps one realize that someone is supplying arms to the person or people using them. Isms need not apply.
@@choosecarefully408 > I'm not sure what you're saying here because I'm not referring to anyone's isms I'm not sure what you're saying here > people choose what they want, then try to rationalize that through isms, not the other way 'round. Yes, people choose first. But ideology is political and social philosophy split from the fundamental branches of philosophy. Ideology is a need of the minds function in guiding survival action. Contra Pragmatism, man needs an intellectual framework, if only primitive myth, for the use of his mind. A disintegrated mind cannot guide survival action. Of course, many ideologies are false. > Most people feel a desperate need to 'know' everything & when they feel that they're being lied to, they start seeing everything said by those they feel are lying as lies. When people are ignorant of any ideas that guide history and politics, they use conspiracy. Conspiracies exist, of course, but,relative to ideas, their influence is tiny. But a false explanation is better than intellectual chaos, thus, religion, traditionalism, communism, etc. Conservatism , despite its weaknesses, is sustainable. Subjectivism is not. Thus, eg, Roman Stoicism was replaced by Christianity. DIM Hypothesis-Leonard Peikoff; Western history as basically the effect of various philosophical methods of using the mind. >I'm not saying that I have NO preconceived notions So you know reality prior to knowing reality?! As Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating!" >[I] have the ability to set them aside. Youre psychotic or a brute, instinctual animal?! Fascinating! >Noam Chomsky has referred to pro-Pol Pot statements made in the press by various U.S. foreign policy figures & at least one president. I have never heard of this. However, post-WW2, US foreign policy (and maybe earlier), has been a short-range, anti-ideological, contradictory, Pragmatist chaos. So who knows?! Biden supports Ukraine w/no principled defense. Trump told North Korea's, Kim, that he "loved" him. As 60s rocker, Marianne Faithfull, so tartly warbled, "We''ve been trying to get high without having to pay." Europe's anti-energy policies required Russian energy, thus funding the foreseeable, Ukraine invasion. The US didnt predict the forseeable Russian attack on Ukraine utilities. Im assuming it was not a perverse policy. US WW2 bombing of German utilities seriously hurt German defenses and morale. Dont forget Shermans march thru Georgia. Your comment about Africa is obscure. On the other hand, why is the US fighting in Africa?! Do they have long-range, nuke spears?! Inquiring minds want to know. Its a damned good thing that the US military is globally dominant. Our foreign policy is...wait, we dont have a policy. Even the Pragmatist, Kissinger, said that all we had was a "response to cables," ie, to unpredicted emergencies. Wikipedia lists many post-Soviet wars to regain lost territories. Ukraine was predictable. Hell, Pearl Harbor was predictable from 1930s newspaper headlines screaming war. The lack of US intell coordination was trivial. May you live in interesting times...
No. Just the one overarching climate problem that inhbited long term stability and growth. Put down the bible and step slowly away from it. Real life cataclysms don't work that way. Way back before we had large nations bound by an overarching control (monarchy or empire) the largest singular entities were city states like Uruk or Shuruppak. Within that kind of structure a single bad river flood could destroy the whole thing and disperse its population along the river basin - which is almost certainly the origin of the original Mesopotamian flood myth from which the Noah and Gilgamesh flood myths are derived. Less well known is that all of Canaan was in fact a neighbor of Mesopotamia, and further back during the times of the Akkadian empire it was actually part of its territory - so the spread of that ancient river flood myth to Canaan and its associated cultures like Israel and Judea is very likely. Contrary to how the bible/Torah presents it the kingdom of Israel was in fact a Canaanite nation from the outset, just as its language that persists to this day is in fact Canaanite in origin.
Giving up agriculture isn't as surprising as it sounds. Compared with hunting and gathering, agriculture allows a lot higher densities of population at the cost of much more labour. It's not something people adopt because it makes them happy, but something they adopt to stave off mass starvation for a while. If population levels got greatly reduced by some kind of disaster, or if climate change made it easier to live by hunting and gathering, then you can imagine agriculture becoming temporarily unattractive.
@@IntergalacticDustBunny Well our intelligence and knowledge has continued to develop so it makes sense that eventually we will value all life as equally precious
The lighting and the shirt keeps making me think I'm watching an early episode of Star Trek.
Haha... same thought as soon as I saw it. Fortunately not red. They tend to not last the full duration.
Ensign Tiberius Pike
LOL. My first impression also.
also the content, specially for og star trek haha
He better hope he doesn't beam down with Kirk, spock and bones...cause if he does, he ain't coming back
BBC used to do good stuff like this. They may still do but BBC NEWS and politics have damaged their reputation. I don't switch the TV on
You're so right I can see old BBC docs on RUclips and they are extrordinarie ! Here in LA I stopped watching the boob tube a decade ago it's a waste land of political brainwashing ! Cheers
LoL I gaved mine away.
No TV ever again.
No radio.
Skipping all adds
Really choosing what I listen to.
Absolutely, me too.
100% spot on
With one exception.....I do like some sports. Otherwise TV is nearly unwatchable.
Man, when a fantastic interviewer has a brilliant and erudite subject, you never want it to end. What a great conversation
What ? He is so boring I fell asleep.
@@stananders474Ah, now I see...troll😂
@@stananders474you’re just not interested. In fact, he’s talking about the very things I, and I’m sure many others, have discussed with friends and relatives in late night bs sessions over the years. But he’s far more introspective, and uniquely educated, than I to examine these things at a deep level. For me, anything but boring. Flip on the telly
@@stananders474 Turned off after 10 minutes. More than boring.
@@stananders474then you’re easily bored. What does that say about you?
The discussions between the two Davids must have been mind-blowing. What a shame they couldn't both be here to be interviewed. But thank you Aaron, for introducing us to this intelligent, softly spoken, and insightful author and academic.
Yeah, they blew each others' minds....so no mind left.....damn..........such a pity............
@@shandytorok259 If you want a more useful criticism, you can borrow this one: "Graeber and Wengrow, with Dawn of Everything, have consummated in an epic gish gallop of both naivete and arrogance in pretending to be anthropologists, misrepresenting and mischaracterizing the actual body of work and scholars in the field to such an extent as to completely destroy their own credibility forevermore.
While pretending to take a liberal stance on "options for governance" they jettison the condition-based analysis of primitive societies in favor of post-modernist perspectives on freedom of choice in governance, an oxymoron of colossal proportions.
Whether the intention was to author a new Bible for fascists or merely line their pockets I have little doubt that they have left their souls impoverished as a consequence. (RIP Mr. Graeber, I pray your intents exceeded your efforts, regardless of moral direction.)
Unfortunately, those unfamiliar with the field will be courted endlessly by their rigorous contempt for authentic scholarship, painting experts as unilaterally patriachal (except for, Thank Marx, them), and such readers will undoubtedly swoon in their ignorance and hypnotic effect under such sophistry... as I was... before getting a friendly bump towards more experienced research and analysis."
~me and definitely not ChatGPT
_"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently."_ - the late great David Graeber
Aaaa hahaha aaaahaaa
Quite frankly this was just plain boring...
The great awakening of the people is close and the world will be very different once that occurs. The deceived will rise against their deceivers.
@@m1tanker391 🥱
FALSE "all the ways of a fool are right in his own eyes"
In a world of uncouth loud braying, it's always so refreshing to hear nuanced, carefully tuned replies full of empathy towards opposing viewpoints. Many scientists even fail to embue their criticism with such grace.
You'll find the "uncouth braying" we collectively give out (at least, the worst of us) is a 'design' or the result of malicious designs that disassembled what should have been graceful conversation, but has been reduced to political pop-media madness.
This 'design' or set of designs are inclined to all things horrible like greed lust egoism selfishness etc... we don't worship the loved one or even the self, we worship the pleasure and the dollar.
@@shripperquats5872that was so eloquent… and beautiful.
I JUST FARTED
@@jackcassedy9961truly
@@Dan-mm1yl Thanks bro.
As a retired History and Politics teacher I am happy to say that I have rarely enjoyed a discussion so much. I ordered a copy of the. Book this morning and it arrived tonight. Sorry, I should have visited an independent book shop but I could not wait. Very inspirational. Thank you.
Buy another one at the local bookshop and return that one to the multinational.
@@lvr5266 Where I live, one can also borrow books from libraries and save trees.
@@lettersquash close them all down nowadays
@@ct-gt2dt I'm pretty sure you don't understand supply and demand. You don't think printers estimate how many books people are going to buy before they do a run? Your argument is like saying when you buy a computer at the shop it's already been built in runs in a factory, so we can ignore the plastics and metals used and the carbon dioxide that's been released to the atmosphere. It's an idiotic argument.
I knew a guy named piss balloon.
Thank you Mr Bastani and Novara Media for this excellent interview. Great work Mr Wengrow, and heartened to hear you speak of David Graeber. Many of us miss his presence and intellect and are glad his remembrance lives on.
The Dawn of Everything has been recommended to me by my Tutor in Archaeology and Ancient History. It’s my second undergraduate degree in Archaeology, the first was in Australian Prehistory. Well before the publication of Dark Emu, there was a burgeoning of evidence that our concept of simple Hunter gatherers trapped in some primitive, as yet unevolved, state was simply not sustainable.
I I’m so glad that the big questions are finally being asked archaeologists.
You forgot to mention that Dark Emu was BS and Pascoe is not aboriginal."Farmers or Hunter-gatherers?: The Dark Emu Debate'+ Dark emu exposed....
There’s just so little material evidence from those times that it’s all speculation, and often outright fantasy. People have always been really clever though; to be human is to be sophisticated.
@@Asecretcountry666 i was going to say the exact same thing. Dark emu is a work of historical fiction
@@yuuka926 it's both funny and sad that australian archaeological drama is 100x easier to find than actually detailed Australian archaeology
Ah man! you done and did it, reading "The dawn of everything' at the mo and it's game changing. Great shout with getting David on!
This talk made me think deeper than I have in awhile. Thank you for your work. RIP David Graeber
If two scientists disagree on dark matter , does it make one of them a conspiracy theorist?
@@DrewBodsq
@@MartinMcAvoy my first thought...
Don't go too deep though, there is no way back when you go too deep............
@@MartinMcAvoy What is a jibbyjabby? Is that cockney slang?
This discussion reminds me of a story Buckminster Fuller related. Per Fuller, when Europeans first encountered Polynesians the islanders were mocked because their number system only contained two numbers (yet they navigated great distances between islands). Of course the laptop I'm typing on works on two numbers as well.
On this topic but implicating indigenous australians, 'Australian Aboriginal and Islander mathematics' (John Harris, 1987) is a great read and is interesting both from a linguistic and anthropological perspective !! should be freely available
Richard Buckminster Fuller, 7/12/1895 - 7/1/1983, an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher and futurist, developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome.
The eljebra works with zero and one think to an arab mathematician called elkhawarzmi
@@AintImRitegood….good bot?
Beep bop bee boo bop. 🤣
I'm looking forward to this. I'm reading 'The dawn of everything' at the moment. A Wengrow fan via David Graeber.
For hundered of years we in the West have killed, tortured and enslaved other humans. We have totally destroyed other human cultures, their language, their Gods and even their food and clothes. The Bible, McDonalds and jeans was told to be the superior. We were told we constantly mooved forward to something better. Meanwhile aboriginal australiens say they were healthy, satisfied and lived good lives before their continent was invaded by "the superior" culture. How many people in the West are satisfied (=dont want more, more more goods/money/sex etc)
Just ordered the book. Fascinating conversation. More of this please, Novara.
I am reading it right now, and I am not impressed. The whole narrative comes off as very arrogant, i.e. 'Everything We Think We Know About Early Human History is Wrong'. The first few chapters are devoted to attacking anyone who has written on this topic in the last 400 years. There are definitely interesting tidbits here and there, but they often contradict themselves, and make conclusions based on shacky assumptions and anecdotal evidence. They admonish others for making assumptions about ancient hunter gathers based on modern hunter gatherers, then they do the same thing. They assume Life among the Amazon Tribes must be better than modern society based on a sample size of one girl who was kidnapped by the Yanomami, then escaped 20 years later, could not adapt to modern life, so went back to the Yanomami. They then back this up with more anecdotal evidence from Benjamin Franklin. They do have good points to make, but their approach has been a turn off for me.
I've been reading Graeber's writings, and have already gotten my copy of His work with Wengrow. I found this interview stimulating, and thought that the host was exceptionally good - he offered great questions and kept an interesting conversation all the more so. Moreover, I found that not only does David Wengrow present himself as an excellent scientist, and teacher - but he is also a humble and wise soul as well. Such a well spent evening listening to this. Thank you for sharing - liked and subscribed!!
You praise the man, but say nothing about the subject. Do you accept this as true?
If you want to go further you are humble.
@@timhallas4275 there is also much more about this. It is very deep, I was decept about the questions.
@@tamo3041 "decept" ? what do you mean sir?
@@izmirtolga2625 rispondo in italiano: sono rimasta delusa dalle domande molto superficiali, ma credo debba essere così. Questo tizio? Si avrei gran piacere a parlarci e condividere pensieri.
From what I read and hear archaeologists are finding new information, often using modern tech, and moderating what they think. Its what makes science such fun.
Moderating is the problem.
It is a science. It's not a bunch of people digging holes and talking about how pretty the pottery is, there is a whole process to try and eliminate ideas that are unsupported by evidence, build new ideas based on the evidence, and make predictons based on the theories they have built etc.
@@kredonystus7768phew … thanks for saying this. some of the comments here are extremely suspicious and close minded, almost fearful, and sometimes angry. But I suppose there’s precedent for this kind of reaction whenever new perspectives are suggested based on evidence that has been ignored, discarded or simply eliminated because it didn’t comport with the received wisdom and acceptable ideologies traditionally disseminated by western scholarship. Try reading the book. It challenges the status quo and gets ya thinking. Plus it’s a good read. Don’t worry, it won’t bite. And no one is requiring you to believe it. But man … the reaction … “he’s saying bad words, he’s saying bad words! La la la la la la, I can’t hear you !!”
I feel something missing here is that farming does indeed seem to appear around 12 kya. But we have a lot of evidence for horticulture, and "garden farming", subsistence, small scale styles of food cultivation etc. happening for thousands and thousands of years before that.
Not that I'm aware of. What crops were these "garden farmers" growing?
We've got evidence of the transition and the beginnings of domestication and selection of crops in the thousands of years before farming really gets started, which might be what you're thinking of. Basically still gathering, but starting to change the crops with some tending or incidental selective dispersal of preferred seeds.
I think the point is that "plow agriculture" isn't somehow the pinnacle of food cultivation. (Actually it depletes the soil.) People experimented with cultivating crops in many places and using many methods that don't fit the kind of agriculture, often considered a more advanced "stage" of civilization, seen in Europe ~12000 BCY. The stageist view is: first agriculture, then cities. The archaeological record shows a far more complex picture, with many sites that have very large populations before the so-called agricultural revolution.
@@spencerharmon4669 I'm still curious what agricultural crops are being talked about pre-12,000 BCY.
@Spencer Harmon what archaeological sites are you referring to and what sizes were they in terms of populations?
@@paintsilj for example the sites of the Cucuteni-Trypillia. An old-european (pre-PIE) culture that had no signs of organised farming. in fact they had no signs of social stratification at all. and they had communities the size of the Mesopotamian city-states, thousands of years before.
Downstream is Aarons schtick, long form one on one interviews addressing historical perspectives and putting them straight. ✨
We were alot smarter in prehistorical times than modern academia would like us to believe. There are just too many out of place artifacts, and monoliths that can't be properly dated, explained, or duplicated even today.
You have schizophrenia. We can replicate every single ancient monolith found so far, including pyramids or underground caves. If you're willing to finance me with multiple million dollars, I'd even organize and replicate them in your own backyard.
not true, just because we can do something doesn't mean we do it. Like telling 200 people to smash down a mountain, it's just not done anymore
@dagfinissocool explain nukes then? Strip mining? Nuclear waste and chemical dumps near important water sources? Clear cutting arborial forests? Etc. Etc. We aren't as smart as our master claim we are as a civilization either. I DOUBT ANY OF OUR MONUMENTS WILL LAST AS LONG AS THE ANCIENTS . Unless we build like they did.
This is a fallacy, there are plenty of examples of modern production that is as complex or difficult as these ancient things you mention. Just because people don't make them doesn't make them impossible to make
@hayleyandchriscarrington2897 eat my shorts bot. Duplicate them then, prove it, or stfu with the insults about fallacy.
I was watching this while ironing, had to stop the ironing and watch this fascinating discussion. Congratulations on this, out to get the book later today. Wonderful stuff!
The problem with theories like this that radically depart from the conventional wisdom is that almost everyone reacts to them in the wrong way. There are some that jump on immediately wholeheartedly and a a lot who reject out of hand. Most of these types of theories will turn out to be incorrect, but some will be true and the only way we can tell which these are is to interact with and discuss them without immediately jumping on one side or the other.
*hypotheses*
Iraqi dinar
You tell which ones are true by looking at the evidence. That has been done.
Yes, we should react to them with skepticism and an open mind. Before you we accept radical ideas that align with our politics we should try as hard as we can to prove them wrong.
David Graeber posited a lot of unconventional ideas about human history. I am not convinced because he didn't give much evidence or discussion his methodology so I can judge how rigorous it was.
The conventional wisdom is oftentimes wrong. You still believe a certain God passed down the words in the Bible through inspirations?
It is ironic that a video entitled "Everything We Think We Know About Early Human History is Wrong" wonders why RUclips viewers are attracted to "pseudoarcheology" videos whose premise is that everything we know about early human history is wrong.
Why are you offended?
@@awoodmann1746 I am not offended in the least. I just think his choice of title is ironic.
Yes, the thumbnail is somewhat ironic. Maybe the difference is more subtle ? 'What we think .....' meaning : How academia in general have been changing it's perspective on hunter gatherer society over the last decades , while the general public hasn't caught up yet. Pseudo archaeology are more about ' 'THEY won't tell you the truth about early history '
@@spiritualanarchist8162 I think it’s the opposite. I think the people know that science is full of shit when it comes to the true history of humanity. It’s a scientist that haven’t caught up to public opinion.
That was a fascinating and thought-provoking discussion. Many thanks to you both.
Just another con....nothing fascinating about it.....
What was thoughtprovoking in this discussion? There was nothing new at all? No new ideas, not even a hint to the controversy in Egyptology going on these days.
@@perjanuschas8050 Well, it provoked my thoughts. And perhaps Wengrow finds that he doesn't need to refer to Egyptology to make his arguments. Have you actually read his book?
This is quality content. Thank you Novara for opening up this vein in my brain.
Oh no! Listening to this podcast gave you a stroke? Heal up quick!
Quality content? So you think this guy is right?
@@timhallas4275 I’m curious, what’s the purpose of a comment like this? Attempting to open an honest dialog? Defending an orthodoxy? Troll?
Who benefits from presenting false choices?
Ponderously slow
@@stvbrsn My comment was directed to the op... troll.
20:00 traditional political theories not based in reality 29:00 native societies much more democratic 35:00 native impact on enlightenment 37:40 idea of democracy and freedom attributed to native Americans by enlightenment writers 39:40 native mounts 48:40 Aztec republic 54:40 four species of humans
As a fellow archaeologist, the book is incredible. Highly recommended.
What a coincidence. Started his book this week. Incredible stuff! Thanks for this. :)
Super fascinating. Eloquent presentation and critique as well. Thanks!
This was a very fascinating and thought-provoking interview. I will read his book. Though not entirely convincing, it certainly made some very valid points to be debated - and challenged - further. One of the recurring themes observed over my lifetime is that the study of history (in its widest sense) moves towards conclusions that chime with the cultural and political themes of a given time. Hypotheses emerge that reflect contemporary debate and this discussion was, at least to an extent, an example of this. Thank you Novara for this excellent content.
Yes facinating and some truth but what u say about historical analysis gelling with current ideology ,so true. I am very interested in end of Roman Britain and advent of the Saxon's etc. Yes the Victorian invasion and slaughter no longer seen as valid but now it's the other extreme where there was no violence at all ,being pushed. And clearly improbable.
To me it's a natural development, as we take hold of those pieces of information that seems interesting to us in the problem solving that we are currently at. The rest of the available information is too much to have a grasp on, so we let it be.
Great comment. Most facts of history are totally accurate but the overall narrative is largely false. We live in a short term medium age, not as dark as some times, but we are not the most advanced human civilization to have walked the earth
You can read Billy Meier's writings for free.
I loved the book. These issues are crucial and absolutely need to be included in our current discussion about how we want to live as a society. The simple idea that there are choices...
religious differences, class differences, financial differences. No way thngs will ever change for the better
@@PazLeBon Yes. All that is pushed top down. We have no clue or way to roll out a better way. But we do know a lot of the individuals pushing it down and do nothing to eliminate them.
So good, so interesting and important, too...and as a bonus, pure ASMR. Thank you for doing this interview - and sharing it.
why are we still stuck. intellectually in the 1700's? A: our history is written as a means of control, not an actual accounting, universities are where knowledge goes to die and become embalmed, when they say; " the birth of agriculture" it means the start of commercial, large scale, artificial agriculture. indigenous peoples were always planting, tending and harvesting, just not in a monoculture grid.
for real
The amazon diversity is the result of that
Look into how big oil conquered the world by Corbett report
@@alexwolfe9895 I would love to go back to the 1700s. The Age of Enlightenment. Yes there were universities back then, but they accepted intellectual debate, innovations, insight, and writings from those that did not go to universities. The close mindedness that experts come from universities is a post ww2 phenomenon in general.
Very true. Opposing views are often seen as stupid and discarded if they have not gone through university research and question.
Aaron is one of the best journalists ever. It's always a pleasure to watch an ITW led by him.
With what we’re learning of global cataclysms, it is hard to rule out the possibility that there have been periods of advanced human development, perhaps multiple times, over the past several hundred thousand years.
Yet, we have never found anything "advanced" hundred of thousand years old.
Nothing like our current civilization. You will be able to see our mark on the planet forever. A billion years from now some future evolved species will dig down through the geological reccord and find the compressed boundry layer of our civilization marking the start of the 6th mass extinction.
YOU havent found anything. Grow up@@PATRICKJLM
Not really that hard to exclude that possibility when we have no evidence for it ...be very hard to have such Ana danced civilization that you disassembled your entire city and any evidence of it or of the systems nessisary to support it during a cataclysm!
I concur
Main lesson for me: question everything! And look for new information.
Thank you so much for this fascinating interview with David Wengrow. A wise and humble man who has decided to impart his wisdom upon others. Students are fortunate to have a dedicated and knowledgeable teacher. The homage to David Graeber at the end of the interview was truly sad. RIP.
I had a professor in college say similar things. That our history was manufactured.
It is a product of deduction based on evidence. Nothing is written in stone .. either metaphorically or literally.
As long as you realise that there is a certain amount of political bias in the interpretation. The facts remain material. But it is at best, "disingenuous" to imply it is merely "manufactured" and risks wild and far fetched flights of fancy the like of which we see in those uncertain and darkest flung corners of the Internet today. And only goes to fuel the ever increasing propagation of the post truth society.
I mean it can't not be manufactured. People can only see so far as their axioms allow them. If your axiom of truth starts eith the idea that you are gods chosen people or some such funky idea its going to be very hard to see beyond that. If you grow up believing money has inherent value its going to be difficult to see somone not asking for money for their work to be mad ..and everyone is always coming from some perspective nobody is robotically aware of all the facts even in one small domain to logically appriase those facts without a perspective being overlaid.
Well yes, it’s difficult to see how it could be done any other way. (Journalism too, in the best of faith.) One can assemble a priori evidence but as soon as you then use that to produce an interpretation, you are inventing a narrative. It might even be “true” in the traditional sense of the word but it’s still a manufacturing process.
@stpancraschapel2136 literally everything is manufactured. Mathematics english literature history our vision when we look out of our eyeballs ...everything in your head is manufactured from a limited apprehension of reality into a story of what it is you're looking at.
Ikr, for everything we experience, we manufacture personal beliefs based on our limited knowledge, which we then often forget to review and test for accuracy.
We have come a long way in a couple thousand years. It’s not unreasonable to think there were other civilisations that came and went in the previous 100K years.
Come a long way?! The civilisation of Simone de Boulevard......😵
Previous 100M years.
Made me wonder why he seemed to disparage pseudo archeology. After all, the evidence comes via photographs from space rather than a dig, or from stone experts who say archaeologists explanations for how someone made of fine vase out of granite don't stack up...
@@simonruszczak5563 Homo homo sapiens are 200,000 years old.
@@jamesragsdale8202 Humans have evolved and gone extinct many times over tens of millions of years, our civilisation and species is not special.
People like this raise my hopes on Humanity. Thank you both for this interview!
really? they keep you colonized...
money addicts are *NOT* "humanity" ...quite the opposite, actually.
One theory is that because of previous eras of more intensive farming, there was soil depletion by the time of the construction of Stonehenge. So, people may have been forced to partially abandon farming practices, as opposed to voluntarily giving them up.
The soil was held together by tree roots but all the trees were cut down for smelting during the copper, bronze and iron age.
This is one of the most fascinating interviews I've ever watched.
We might also have a wrong idea of hunter gatherer societies because most of the ones around today (or in recent times) were pushed to less productive ecosystems (at least for humans). In fact, even in historical times there were some hunter-gatherer (or fisher-gatherer) societies which lived a semi-sedentary life. For example in the Pacific-Northwest.. they had villages in which they lived a good part of the year, going to other sites on a seasonal basis to exploit certain maritime resources. They had hereditary chiefs, slaves, etc.
Not sure if you're referencing the book, but this is discussed in the early chapters of the book. That we assume hunter gatherers in history lived in rubbish places, because thats where they live now.
Another example could be Papua New Guinea where a plane flying over the island's highlands in the 1930's discovered the existence of stone age people no one had any idea were there. And not just a couple of sparse bands, but the population was estimated to be as high as a million! With those numbers, impossible everyone was purely nomadic, and indeed there was some agriculture and interaction among groups.
Yes. The “set” of cave symbols that are more numerous in caves than animal images - only a couple of dozen symbols but spread over at least two or three continents - definitely shows a shared stream of culture. There are other places where a fairly sedentary hunter-gatherer life was possible. More recently the people living on the banks of the Danube, catching enormous sturgeon at certain times of year, weaning their children in fish roe, and hunting in forested hinterland.
You can only poop in one place for so long without sewer systems before you have to move somewhere else.
@@bearthalamas9241 Wrong.
As a forager, bushcrafter with a huge facination in deep time and the intelligence and ingenuity of "hunter-gatherer" peoples ... this was hugely self-indulgent of me! Lots and lots confirming my intuition but very happy to hear the details and confirmations.
I'm enjoying the book very much already too =)
Lots to talk about tracking, memory, etc ... I'm only halfway through the interview too thought so I'll not pre-empt too much ;) I do hope Wengrow is on Bluesky.
This is fantastic, more like this please and thanks
Cereal growing in a fairly damp environment in the UK would most likely have led to a lot of failed harvest and famine, heavy rainfall destroys cereal crops, damp causes toxic moulds etc, I think it was dropped because it didn't work, saying that I think the book is extremely interesting and enjoyed this interview immensely
I reckon They ate loads of hazelnuts meat , fish and mushrooms over winter.... the cereals came later for bread and beer and forage and bedding for the animals geese etc... if it was a good year for cereals it was a bonus. Storing grain would have been a lot more difficult so came a lot later, initially cereals must have been a bonus nothing more, unless you lived in more predictable weather. Rust on cereals can be controlled with milk products though
I can't quite tell when this is supposed to have happened either. There was a migration of Indo-Europeans into Britain somewhere in that period that may have affected the shift as well. And evidence of a shift more to pastoralism than back to hunting and gathering. Which might fit with descendants of steppe nomads moving in.
it could have been a result of climate cooling after the Holocene climate optimum peak (the warmest period during the current interglacial, warmer then today) which forced the inhabitants to switch to pastoralism, coupled with the yamnaya-derived invasion of the first (pre-Celtic) Indo-Europeans, who appear to have largely replaced the previous population (of mostly Neolitic farmers with some WE hunter-gatherers) based on genetic evidence
@@pavelandel1538 That's why a time would be useful. That climate optimum seems to have been ending about the right time. There was also a big population decline across Europe, generally attributed to plagues, over roughly the same timespan. And then migrations off the steppes. Somewhere in there, this supposed switch away from cereal agriculture. Without knowing which bits came first, it's really hard to talk about why. If agriculture continued right up until the pastoralists arrived, that's one answer. If it's associated with a big climate change or with population drops due to disease, those are others.
But if you ignore all the other things going on, it's easy to reinforce the idea that "sometimes they just decide to stop doing agriculture". (And even then to imply it was back to HG, rather than to herding.)
Grain suffered the same in medieval Europe which had periods of colder, wetter weather followed by outbreaks of ergot poisoning with horrific consequences.
All it would take is one year with a failed crop for a group of people to decide that's a bad way to collect food, then revert to hunting and gathering.
Absolutely brilliant guest. David Wengrow is a joy to listen to.
he didn't say anything this was BS!!!
@@dumbvedeoz David Wengrow is a professor at one of the world's top universities and you are ....? If you want to disect his arguments then articulate your views and formulate a compelling argument. A one line "BS" dismissal is not enough.
Great video and I personally feel it’s insulting to our forefather's to think they just sat on the ass and picked berries for 200,000 years. I wonder how many advanced civilizations have come and gone over that timeframe.
Lol...I never thought of it as insulting, just felt some envy.
let's say that there were several iterations of technological human waves throughout history. and let's say that there are plausible reasons why there isn't compelling evidence of these waves.
why are we the first wave to exploit crude oil, not to mention electricity exploitation. like we have presently?
Open your mind .
@@gppizza8979necessity. In pre anthropocene eras there was more than enough game and resources to not need agriculture or a combustion engine
if they had any foresight they would have
The most important nonfiction book in my lifetime (58 years). All credit to Wengrow, but Graeber changed my life. That he died so young is unutterably tragic. Graeber's book on this history of debt is equally awesome.
Another great interview. So interesting. Thanks Novara.
. Really enjoyed this interview. A pleasure to hear such eloquence. It's a sublime book. Mind blowing. The work of two beautiful minds . Two beautiful Davids. Thanks Aaron , great interview (your mind's also equally beautiful, of course)
What we "know" in the West isn't "received wisdom," but rather received speculation based on specious assumptions, most notably that of materialistic monism.
I suggest you move out of the west, let go of western innovations, and live as people did five hundred years ago. No one is stopping you.
@@Galdring Why should I move? Do ideas incongruous with your own threaten you? Are you really that small-minded?
@@GaldringYou just proved your ignorance .
LOL, how "clever" of you. Just goes to show you know nothing about western culture, history or civilization.
@@arsartium108 Nonsensical posturing.
Brilliant! Thanks for bringing this guest!
Fascinating interview, I am going to order that book right now. It reminds me of debates I have had about Aboriginal Australia. There is a continuity of art and culture lasting 60,000 years. I have found many people are irritated when I call this a "civilization" but what we call "civilization" in Australia is less than 300 years old, 0.1% as old as Aboriginal civilization. Manifestly, our "civilization" is rapidly destroying the planet and will not last for another 100 years, perhaps not even 50, or at least not without complete transformation. We are unable to think about deep time. Our modern obsession with novelty and a dogma of constant progress and economic growth has blinded us.
Yes. It goes back to how the West was developed.
It unanimously abandoned the cultures and traditions of ancestors for religious ones, then it abandoned those for material ones, and it is destroying them as the world begins to change against the circumstances that allowed that development.
You can see it every time they encounter a people that has those cultures and traditions, because they know those peoples, and they are all over the world, will survive this change, and they will never be in this dominating position again once the collapse is completed.
"Obsession with novelty and a dogma of constant progress and economic growth has blinded us". Don't you see the eloquence of Bush Economic Plan of post 9/11; Shop til one drops! Don't you shop?
The world is empirically better in almost every way than it was 50 years ago. Habitat destruction is about the only thing that’s gotten considerably worse.
Exponential growth cannot be sustained on a finite planet with a declining population.
The "appearance of exponential growth" can be extended by using propaganda and disinformation to fool an ignorant, uninterested and "asleep" population.
Allowing the Top 1% to extract more of the valuable resources and capital until the whole civilization collapses. Probably very rapidly accompanied by the collapse of the rule of law.
And a revolution and bloody fighting until new governments are formed.
But he's having people think Aborigines had knowledge of the rest of the world. They really don't.
Listening from Cahokia IL USA 👋
I left uni despite getting firsts in political philosophy because it drove me crazy that no one would acknowledge that it was built on nonsense. I even got called ‘disruptive’ for constantly questioning! How can you be a disruptive thinker in a university?
Critical thinking and universities have been mutually exclusive for almost a decade.
Because the professor can’t give you answers unless they’re written down in a book written by someone else. Most just want you to follow the same thought processes they did.
have you heard of the 5 monkys experiment ? @@Whoishere2333
Scholarship is built on "disrupting" established thinking. But you do need to convince others of the strength of your ideas through meticulous published research.
Sorry you didn't stay long enough to learn that. But it's okay. Academia is insanely competitive and underpaid. You would never make it by simply being disagreeable. That's not enough.
You can get away with being disagreeable after you've persuaded some of your opponents through the strength of your research. But most scholars prefer the easier route: be agreeable while quietly working at alternate theories until you get there.
There's ways of going about things. Don't forget the Kruger-Dunning effect.
You should include a reading list in the description of these dialogues. Very insightful.
Thanks to this interview just received my copy of Every Thing We Think We Know…And look forward to an exciting new view of human history.
On the pseudo archeology topic. I think that part of it is a difference in interest. In this interview the interest is sociological, what were the habits behaviors and social structures of prehistory and how can we learn from them. If your interest is technology you may focus on buildings structure monuments and speculate specifically about them and how they were done. The difference in interests leads to the difference in focus and a desire towards alternative interpretations of history.
Seemed like a basic conversation for the time we live in
Wasn't impressed
Was saying the video was basic! Your comment was more interesting 😊
Aboriginal oral histories from all over the world have been saying this for hundreds of years. It's nice that open-minded people are finally understanding it to some degree and doing further research. Anyone interested in this should look into the writing of John Mohawk.
I don't trust oral history. No one should trust oral history. Not for scientific purposes at least.
@@VicenteMReyes-vs9nh that's more than a bit short-sighted in my opinion
This was a very interesting interview, thankyou.
If you think about the British Isles, the reason they would “turn their back” on agrarian farming is pretty obvious: where wheat was bred, there’s ten times less rainfall. Even in the south of France, you don’t need too much adaptation. But by the time you get to the Atlantic coast, you’re getting significantly different rainfall and light/dark conditions and much less predictable weather. A single weather event like three days of gusty, heavy rain would wipe out the whole crop of “naked” wheat & barley they had then. (They eventually bred much more sturdy type that need to be forcibly separated from the stalk when ripe.). The farmers who spread from Anatolia or the fertile crescent were growing things like lentils and dates which even now aren’t feasible for much of northern and western Europe.
I agree. Western Britain has a lot of rain and dark, and as we all know, much of Scotland can get very cold and snow covered. However, oats can be grown more successfully than wheat, and root vegetables can be grown even in Sweden.
For that reason do you suppose if there was agrarian farming with organic tools pre younger dryas in the warm latitudes where they were effectively farming sea bed, would there be any evidence left at all?
The problem is, how do you support the new, larger population if you revert to hunting and gathering? Cereal agriculture supports a lot more people on a given amount of land, and by the time Neolithic farmers showed up Britain had been inhabited for several thousand years and had probably reached somewhere near its carrying capacity for hunter-gatherers - not to mention that rather than the farmers assimilating the hunter-gatherers, which is what all the evidence indicates, if the farmers had fairly quickly given up farming the assimilation would be the other way around since the earlier inhabitants would have much better knowledge of how best to live off that land.
Wonderful interview! I love these in depth discussions (I loved the Chris Packham and Oliver Bullough ones too), and this one especially, as I read the Davids' book Dawn of Everything this summer past, so it was great to hear a discussion of the book's main topics. I keep recommending the book to people, but am now able to share this, which is a much better recommendation!
I loved every minute of this podcast ❤
Wonderful session. More like this please :-)
This was incredible Aaron and Novara. I could listen to David Wengrow all day. Amazing content guys! Keep up the good work!
How old is this video?
I so badly wanted David Graeber on the JRE. Me and my brother talk about it all the time. He truiy had an extraordinarily beautiful mind. This is the first time I came across David Wengrow and it was a really nice experience, I would love to hear more from him. And if possible make it so that he goes on JRE too. And I swear the tonality of voice of both of them is so similar, I can only imagine how beautiful their conversations when writing the book must have been.
Having done farming, hunting, and wild crafting I am convinced that success at farming requires more knowledge and skill than any other livelihood but hunting gathering.
boooooo
You should have tried aerospace engineering, or brain surgery perhaps. Pretty sure they need a fair bit of "knowledge and skill".
David Wengrow is an amazing scholar, studied his work at univeristy and it is some of the most detailed and careful research i read. His book The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, c.10,000 to 2,650 BC is incredibly beautifully illustrated and suprisingly readable for an academic work. It will totally change the way you think about Ancient Egypt.
I believe him studying theater has helped him tremendously with communication.
@@professorrhyyt3689 - Another favorite scholar of mine is the psychologist Julian Jaynes. He left academia for a while to work as a playwright. It was maybe his non-academic experience that led him to a larger perspective. He quickly lost interest in behaviorism research and ended up writing a book that looked far beyond conventional psychology, including studying the evidence about the early humanity.
@@ario4795 What do you mean "ambiguos"? Egypt is located in Africa.
@@ario4795
But ironically you use the term European.
Were the Greeks “European” or Middle Eastern?
Asian isn’t a race either.
I imagine you don’t consider Nubia, Kush or modern Sudan, Eritrea/Ethiopia to be “African” either.
Strange aroma coming from your comment.
@@NoLefTurnUnStoned. , they not Africa is continent not gene. Cushitic people and native middle eastern share dna and linguistic.
This was an excellent conversation, really enjoyed it. Really helped me re-frame a lot of really basic understanding about our history and origins. I've always suspected some of the presented perspectives, that mankind didn't just "suddenly" become civilized and that is was a much longer process than originally thought.
I took a module in my history degree about pre-Columbian and Spanish America. We learned about how Tlaxcala had only recently been subjugated by the Aztecs, so was very happy to use the Spanish conquistadors to attack their hated enemy.
But I don't remember it being mentioned that they were a republic, had a parliament, or were a democracy.
Would love to read more on the subject.
Tell us about their individual rights.
You have the right to sacrifice a child, if you cannot afford a child one will be provided for you.
@@cannaroe1213Nailed!
@@cannaroe1213😂 that sounds like the Phoenicians too
@@cristianpopescu78Nailed what?
Wait, did I just find out that, around the time stone henge was built, the UK rejected farming practices from Europe and went back to foraging? Like a Neolithic proto-brexit?
lmao, then half the population died of mushroom fever having only ever tried the magic ones previously
With the exception being that they where probably well informed about what they where doing, rather than led by a bunch of anarcho-capitalist billionaires to cut their own noses off!
In the Paleolithic Levant, 23,000 years ago, cereals cultivation of emmer, barley and oats has been researched near the sea of Galilee by the Ohalu II.
They realised carnivore was superior!
They brexited bevore it was cool
still can't get over David Graeber's passing, we're missing such a brilliant mind. I cried the day I found out he passed. Good on Dabid Wengrow for bringing their amazing book's idea forward!
The Dawn of Everything is amazing, it touches on so many other subjects.
love it when Aaron does history
spectacular deflection on the age of the sphinx question... TWICE. After all but spelling out Hancock's name... ''some of the things you see on Netflix''. Maybe that ought to be the guy that should publicly debate Hancock on JRE, if he's such a competent representative of the academic consensus.
Really enjoyed this! (Nerdy confession: I watched it twice.) David Wengrow is a very engaging speaker. I got The Dawn of Everything for Xmas last year and loved it. So refreshing to hear alternative theories of history that are well-researched and supported by ample evidence.
He mumbles
So sad and very very strange, David Graeber in his prime, only 40 or 50, so insightful, deeply humble genuinely really nice guy.super intelligent. A sudden shocking loss, the two Davids were just great together in interview
Always the best are taken early while the gouls linger on to torment us. Trump and Kissinger still going strong. There is no God.
@@NocturnalDoom exactly. We all need to be skiing that question!
@@tofty21 Oh dear - skiing questions? Never got the hang of how to slalom one of those about archeology!
@@MartinMcAvoy lol
@@MartinMcAvoy not the time or place for this.
The last glacial period started about 115k years ago. Now, considering modern man has been around for 200k to 300k years, whose to say a stone age civilization didn't exist before this time, and was simply ground into dust by the mile high ice sheets? I find this particularly interesting as you can find precision megalithic stone work in places that the glaciers never touched, such as Peru. If you look at the ancient cities of Uruk and the like in Iraq, there is hardly anything but dust left. These cities are a mere 5-7k years old and were never glaciated. So...what might happen to a city after 100k years and smashed by glaciers?
In general people seem to have a real struggle understanding how people even lived through an ice age to begin with which has always made me scratch my head. We pre-dated the ice age and it wasn't just suddenly no ice age *NOW ICE AGE* pew pew barren frozen wasteland everywhere in an instant. We had tools, systems and infrastructure in place before it, we just adapted to a changing environment. It shouldn't be complicated to think about. And the vast swathes of the Earth that were unaffected... Modern people are so dense.
David Wengrow. You are doing such excellent work. Graeber he’s looking down from on high, applauding and bowing to you. Your clarity and ability to communicate such beautiful and subtle nuance behind these revolutionary commonsense human theories it’s so important, edifying and calming. Your gentle incredibly well informed ministration of these lofty topics is such a gift to all of us, to all of humanity. Thank you, sincerely. Bravo. Onward. Thankful 👏👏👏😌🙏❤️ Great Job, Aaron !
Can you imagine where we the conversation would be if everyone had the opportunities shown here!!
Graeber and Wengrow made an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of human history. As an always interested person in history, archeology and anthropology, these fresh, "out of the box" ideas makes me so happy, since I had always struggled with the mainstream theories. Thank you very much to give us a hope that we may re-write history in a much real way❤
1:02:10 - How disappointing- I was hoping you weren't taking a swipe at Graham Hancock but you clearly are.... In the next sentence you go on to say how EASY it is to refute Hancock's ideas...and then move swiftly on without doing so.....Sad to see that you are so uninclusive of what amounts to being a different theory, based on real fieldwork and the exact same evidence that you would claim is only available to or recognized by or respected by people with a university job. Sad that you have been allowed claim to have an easy way to refute Hancock - but Bastani hasn't even mustered the courage to ask you to put it into words.
After spending a whole hour explaining in great depth your own ideas.
1:02:37 is just disgraceful... we have to ask how spaces open up for theories other than the university-approved ones???? Do we??? Is that so that we can have a University-approved government-funded revolution??? And then suggesting that someone like Hancock's ideas are based in racism....That's just so disgusting, it's a really contemptible way for an academic to behave....So you're an Archeologist who just passed up the opportunity to refute Hancock's ideas with your vast sea of knowledge of archeology....But you're happy to imply that he's racist instead. While Bastani doesn't even hold you to account. This is just hack journalism supported by pseudo-lefties who are helping to prop up the establishement.
I don't let a Amazon delivery driver repair my car and If I want to know about archeological evidence I ask an archeologist.
Would you be interested in hearing Hancock's theories being almost completely destroyed in a couple of hours by more competent people than our two friends here? You just have to let me know.
@@nwogamesalertwhy don't you just leave the link buddy? Then the entire would can be educated.
@@Dischordian There is this one for starters. I don't link directly, because the algorithm usually deletes these posts. (Channel) World of Antiquity "What Graham Hancock Gets WRONG about Flood Myths"
@@nwogamesalert Miano is a laughable clown. His narrow field of history is something he's very good with but when he branches out into things like geology, linguistics, anthropology and astronomy he frequently looks like an absolute clown. He doesn't have to have separate degrees in these things, it could be taken on it's own merit if he put the work in to study the fields himself but he doesn't. He over-reaches far too often. Hancock actually does learn about other fields and collaborates with others because he recognizes he's not perfect at every facet.
Why does this interview look like it's taking place on the USS Enterprise?
im on acid too
The shirt color. It got me too
Britts
Keith, 2 reasons: artificial lighting in an enclosed space, and shirts with out collars
Not exciting to listen to the slow vocals, but indeed blowing in the intellectual study of culture. I could listen for many hours and still become more excited. Thanks to you both.
Set the play speed to 1.25x
Fascinating. Subbed. Can't wait to see what other conversations are on this channel, if this was anything to go by...
1:00:22 - While I am inclined to accept expert information (once I've assessed the source for myself), to have lived on this world over the last 4 years and still be able to blindly accept people labelling themselves "Expert" and using religious mantras like "Follow the Science", would be nothing short of foolish.
Maybe the reason why very little happened from the origin of homo sapiens and the begin of agriculture (~12,000 years ago) is because there was a glacial age between them, that lasted more than 100,000 years
The Pleistocene lasted about 2 million years - but Ice didn’t cover the entire earth.
I'm not sure if I'm interpreting this correctly, but this is the most hilarious con job I've ever heard. Well played.
there is a lot of "must have beens" and ""raises the questions" in this presentation. Not a lot of Venus of Willendorfs to grab on to.
It's really fascinating that you're going to work with Forensic Architecture. Really looking forward to see the project you're doing together on Ukraine. I'll definitely go check their conference in Germany that you mentioned. Their work is just fantastic!
I believe a culture he may have been referring to in that context would be 'Cucuteni', whose geographical footprint went beyond current day Ukraine. If memory serves me, they've never found any weapons, yet material remains are abundant. Stefan Milo did a video on it if you'd like to get some foreknowledge. Stefan's a good vulgarizer, not a pseudo-archeologist and has no pretentions in that sense.
Watch some videos on Jon Levi RUclips channel and it will open your eyes .
I didn't click on this, and I had other stuff queued up. But this bloke is quietly compelling. Very good stuff.
What a triumph for this word salad ninja. Identified a lucrative audience, ran them a warm, craftily-worded bath of confirmation bias bubbling in speculative theories framed as scientific truth, rocketing his tome of contrivances into the bestseller list. Well done!
I won't be buying his book
Very odd comment. He makes it extremely clear that he is speculating and more to the point is merely poking holes in traditional views and narratives, which themselves have very little evidence to back them up. Also your comment is no less "word salad" than the interview - to me the language used was pretty simple and easy to understand and I have no background in these issues!
@@stephenwood2172 *I have no background in these issues*
Come back to me when you do. Wisdom grows when it drinks from many wells.
@@betweentheripples8847 do you have any actual arguments against him?
@@mileskennedy7770 My argument is clearly underscored in the original comment. He's a 21st Century snake oil salesman. Take it or leave it, no amount of debate will convince me otherwise. As for your telltale profile pic: Lose the shades, Marx was never that cool.
Bye-bye now.
Once in a while I have privilege of witnessing work of great individuals who make me proud to be human. Sorry for your loss and thank you for your work and effort
lionel messi
The guest speaks very slowly. I’m playing back at 1.25 and it feels a lot livelier. He’s making some excellent, much needed observations about the collective intellectual fallacies that have shaped our views about very early human history. I think he’s spot on!
“Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence,” Carl Sagan
Exactly. And where is this evidence? Crickets…
Yeah but u can’t prove they weren’t geniuses that were completely free of ego and reading this each other’s mines and more advanced than even we are now. Logically then, shouldn’t we assume it’s true?
That’s not how science works. If we have no evidence we need to say “we don’t know “
@@oobrocks you just don’t wanna accept aliens obviously built the pyramids or at least their knowledge did
Pleaseeeeee
Absolutely fantastic, David does a great job presenting his and David Graeber's work.
Wow, new knowledge on the horizon. Congrats & thanks!
Thank you for shining a light on this book and interviewing David. The moment I was done listening to this book I listened to it again and then again. I'm going for my fourth read because I am going to memorize every wonderful story and point they make. What a time to be a human! Despite the message that we humans don't change up our government like we did in the old days - in fact - it is more flexible than ever, for people who have the means and the knowledge. But that is another story ...
Could listen forever. Brilliant discussion & bang on the money to enhance my modern history teachings here in France. Quoting Rousseau is always a great quick fix to get students neurones dancing, I shall definitely be finding a copy of the book and no doubt quoting David in future years. Thank you !
Pol Pot, having studied Rousseau in France, murdered a third of Cambodians,including eyeglass-wearers because they may have read books.
@@TeaParty1776 Pot was nuts: but the kind of nuts that American foreign policy likes, reducing the populace to the level of workers without any say in policy. It's the same old same old; Europeans have this Immense Egotistical Need to disguise their infantile need for control under some 'ism' label while imposing their childish desires upon everyone possible.
Sometimes through willing agents. Hey, how _DID_ a guy in a nation that didn't produce guns, bullets _OR_ tanks or bombs manage to shoot & bomb his way into power & maintain it anyway? Oh, right, that second thing I said.
@@choosecarefully408 > Pot was nuts: but the kind of nuts that American foreign policy likes, reducing the populace to the level of workers without any say in policy.
Evasion causes stupidity needed to rationalize the evasion. The claim that the communist, Pot, was consistent w/the anti-communist US foreign policy is beyond bizarre. Ideas are the basic cause of politics. Evading ideas encourages conspiracy theories.
@@TeaParty1776 I'm not sure what you're saying here because I'm not referring to anyone's isms. I never do because experience has shown me that people choose what they want, then try to rationalize that through isms, not the other way 'round.
You're right about the last part. Most people feel a desperate need to 'know' everything & when they feel that they're being lied to, they start seeing everything said by those they feel are lying as lies. This is perfectly childish. It's what we all go through in our teens with our parents. (I'm constantly stunned that I've never read of any cultural practice that brings us out of this).
But this doesn't apply to me. I'm not saying that I have _NO_ preconceived notions, simply that I am usually aware of them & have the ability to set them aside.
I'm a terrible researcher, though Noam Chomsky has referred to pro-Pol Pot statements made in the press by various U.S. foreign policy figures & at least one president. Then there is the "who armed him" question that I raised indirectly.
It's the same thing as in Africa: out of nowhere a rebel army armed well enough to take out the reigning government appears even though that reigning government does not leave such things lying around or to be purchased at your local K-Mart or Crazy Eddy's Discount Arms Emporium. A little logic helps one realize that someone is supplying arms to the person or people using them. Isms need not apply.
@@choosecarefully408 > I'm not sure what you're saying here because I'm not referring to anyone's isms
I'm not sure what you're saying here
> people choose what they want, then try to rationalize that through isms, not the other way 'round.
Yes, people choose first. But ideology is political and social philosophy split from the fundamental branches of philosophy. Ideology is a need of the minds function in guiding survival action. Contra Pragmatism, man needs an intellectual framework, if only primitive myth, for the use of his mind. A disintegrated mind cannot guide survival action. Of course, many ideologies are false.
> Most people feel a desperate need to 'know' everything & when they feel that they're being lied to, they start seeing everything said by those they feel are lying as lies.
When people are ignorant of any ideas that guide history and politics, they use conspiracy. Conspiracies exist, of course, but,relative to ideas, their influence is tiny. But a false explanation is better than intellectual chaos, thus, religion, traditionalism, communism, etc. Conservatism , despite its weaknesses, is sustainable. Subjectivism is not. Thus, eg, Roman Stoicism was replaced by Christianity.
DIM Hypothesis-Leonard Peikoff; Western history as basically the effect of various philosophical methods of using the mind.
>I'm not saying that I have NO preconceived notions
So you know reality prior to knowing reality?! As Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating!"
>[I] have the ability to set them aside.
Youre psychotic or a brute, instinctual animal?! Fascinating!
>Noam Chomsky has referred to pro-Pol Pot statements made in the press by various U.S. foreign policy figures & at least one president.
I have never heard of this. However, post-WW2, US foreign policy (and maybe earlier), has been a short-range, anti-ideological, contradictory, Pragmatist chaos. So who knows?! Biden supports Ukraine w/no principled defense. Trump told North Korea's, Kim, that he "loved" him.
As 60s rocker, Marianne Faithfull, so tartly warbled, "We''ve been trying to get high without having to pay." Europe's anti-energy policies required Russian energy, thus funding the foreseeable, Ukraine invasion. The US didnt predict the forseeable Russian attack on Ukraine utilities. Im assuming it was not a perverse policy. US WW2 bombing of German utilities seriously hurt German defenses and morale. Dont forget Shermans march thru Georgia.
Your comment about Africa is obscure. On the other hand, why is the US fighting in Africa?! Do they have long-range, nuke spears?! Inquiring minds want to know.
Its a damned good thing that the US military is globally dominant. Our foreign policy is...wait, we dont have a policy. Even the Pragmatist, Kissinger, said that all we had was a "response to cables," ie, to unpredicted emergencies. Wikipedia lists many post-Soviet wars to regain lost territories. Ukraine was predictable. Hell, Pearl Harbor was predictable from 1930s newspaper headlines screaming war. The lack of US intell coordination was trivial. May you live in interesting times...
Cataclysmic events happened frequently throughout history.. Keeps bringing us back to basics.
No.
Just the one overarching climate problem that inhbited long term stability and growth.
Put down the bible and step slowly away from it.
Real life cataclysms don't work that way.
Way back before we had large nations bound by an overarching control (monarchy or empire) the largest singular entities were city states like Uruk or Shuruppak.
Within that kind of structure a single bad river flood could destroy the whole thing and disperse its population along the river basin - which is almost certainly the origin of the original Mesopotamian flood myth from which the Noah and Gilgamesh flood myths are derived.
Less well known is that all of Canaan was in fact a neighbor of Mesopotamia, and further back during the times of the Akkadian empire it was actually part of its territory - so the spread of that ancient river flood myth to Canaan and its associated cultures like Israel and Judea is very likely.
Contrary to how the bible/Torah presents it the kingdom of Israel was in fact a Canaanite nation from the outset, just as its language that persists to this day is in fact Canaanite in origin.
Giving up agriculture isn't as surprising as it sounds. Compared with hunting and gathering, agriculture allows a lot higher densities of population at the cost of much more labour. It's not something people adopt because it makes them happy, but something they adopt to stave off mass starvation for a while. If population levels got greatly reduced by some kind of disaster, or if climate change made it easier to live by hunting and gathering, then you can imagine agriculture becoming temporarily unattractive.
most of us wont personally kill an animal and a growing number wont allow others to kill for them
@@IntergalacticDustBunny Well our intelligence and knowledge has continued to develop so it makes sense that eventually we will value all life as equally precious
@@PazLeBonBETA!
@@PazLeBon Most of us dont know how to grow food
Plus a grain based diet is unhealthy.