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 the anthropologist David Graeber and the archaeologist David Wengrow.

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 book suggests that social emancipation can be found in a more accurate understanding of human history, based on recent scientific evidence with the assistance of the fields of anthropology and archaeology.

Graeber and Wengrow finished the book around August 2020. Its American edition is 704 pages long, including a 63-page bibliography. It was first published in the United Kingdom on 19 October 2021 by Allen Lane (an imprint of Penguin Books).

The Dawn of Everything received substantial attention in mainstream and academic publications, becoming an international bestseller, and was translated into more than thirty languages. It was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing (2022), and was awarded the Wenjin Book Prize, given by the National Library of China and considered one of China's highest literary honours. In 2025, The Dawn of Everything was awarded the J.I. Staley Prize by the School for Advanced Research in recognition of ‘exceptional scholarship and writing that expand the boundaries of anthropological thought.’