The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity Add a review

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity is a 2021 book by anthropologist and activist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow. It was first published in the United Kingdom on 19 October 2021 by Allen Lane (an imprint of Penguin Books).

Graeber and Wengrow finished the book around August 2020. Its American edition is 704 pages long, including a 63-page bibliography. It was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing (2022).

Describing the diversity of early human societies, the book critiques traditional narratives of history's linear development from primitivism to civilization. Instead, The Dawn of Everything posits that humans lived in large, complex, but decentralized polities for millennia.

The Dawn of Everything became an international bestseller, translated into more than thirty languages. It was widely reviewed in the popular press and in leading academic journals, as well as in activist circles, with divided opinions being expressed across the board. Both favorable and critical reviewers noted its challenge to existing paradigms in the study of human history.