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The Dawn of Everything 2021
The Dawn of Everything is a 2021 book written by the anthropologist David Graeber and the archaeologist David Wengrow. The book tells a new story about early human societies, challenging conventional views of history as a straight line from primitive times to modern civilization. Rather than seeing progress as inevitable, it argues that humans long lived in large, intricate, yet decentralized communities. It proposes that understanding this past more accurately—through recent findings in science, anthropology, and archaeology—can help us rethink social freedom.
Graeber and Wengrow completed the book around August 2020. The American version contains 704 pages, including a 63-page bibliography. It was initially released in the United Kingdom on 19 October 2021 by Allen Lane, which is an imprint of Penguin Books.
The book gained wide attention from both mainstream and academic media, becoming an international bestseller and being translated into over thirty languages. It was nominated for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2022 and won the Wenjin Book Prize, awarded by the National Library of China and regarded as one of the country’s top literary awards. In 2025, The Dawn of Everything was honored with the J.I. Staley Prize from the School for Advanced Research for its outstanding contribution to anthropological thought.
Details
- Publisher
- Allen Lane
- ISBN
- 9780241402429
- Pages
- 704
