ENGL 3860: Unfreezing the Ice Age (FA22)

Chauvet Cave Paintings, National Geographic
The dawn of everything
Unfreezing
The ice age
ENGL 3860 | Nathaniel A. Rivers | saint louis university | fall 2022

For most of our evolutionary history, we did indeed live in Africa—but not
just the eastern savannahs, as previously thought […] Some of those
populations remained isolated from each another for tens or even hundreds
of thousands of years, cut off from their nearest relatives by deserts and
rainforests. Strong regional traits developed. The result probably would
have struck a modern observer as something more akin to a world
inhabited by hobbits, giants and elves than anything we have direct
experience of today, or in the more recent past. Those elements that make
up modern humans—the relatively uniform “us” referred to above—
seem only to have come together quite late in the process.
Graeber and Wengrow | The Dawn of Everything | 81

What evolution does not look like.

What evolution might look like.

They were far, far more physically diverse than
humans are today; and presumably their social
differences were even greater than their physical
ones. In other words, there is no ‘original’ form of
human society.
Graeber and Wengrow | The Dawn of Everything | 82

We have to picture our ancestors moving between relatively
enclosed environments, dispersing and gathering, tracking the
seasonal movements of mammoth, bison and deer herds.
While the absolute number of people may still have been
startlingly small, the density of human interactions seems to
have radically increased, especially at certain times of year.
And with this came remarkable bursts of cultural expression.
Graeber and Wengrow | The Dawn of Everything | 85

In conversation, we can hold thoughts and reflect on problems
sometimes for hours on end. This is of course why so often, even if
we’re trying to figure something out by ourselves, we imagine
arguing with or explaining it to someone else. Human thought is
inherently dialogic. Ancient philosophers tended to be keenly aware
of all this: that’s why, whether they were in China, India or Greece,
they tended to write their books in the form of dialogues. Humans
were only fully self-conscious when arguing with one another,
trying to sway each other’s views, or working out a common
Graeber and Wengrow | The Dawn of Everything | 94

Tomb of Isocrates, Athenian Orator, Jean-Jacques Lequeu
With this faculty we both contend
against others on matters which are
open to dispute and seek light for
ourselves on things which are unknown;
for the same arguments which we use
in persuading others when we speak
in public, we employ also when we
deliberate in our own thoughts; and,
while we call eloquent those who are
able to speak before a crowd, we
regard as sage those who most skillfully
debate their problems in their own
minds.
Isocrates | antidosis | 327-29

What we’d now call political consciousness was
always assumed to come first.
Graeber and Wengrow | The Dawn of Everything | 94

[A]rchaeological evidence is piling up to suggest that in the highly
seasonal environments of the last Ice Age, our remote ancestors
were behaving much like the Inuit, Nambikwara or Crow. They
shifted back and forth between alternative social arrangements,
building monuments and then closing them down again, allowing the
rise of authoritarian structures during certain times of year then
dismantling them—all, it would seem, on the understanding that
no particular social order was ever fixed or immutable.
Graeber and Wengrow | The Dawn of Everything | 111

The same individual could experience life in what looks to us
sometimes like a band, sometimes a tribe, and sometimes like
something with at least some of the characteristics we now
identify with states.
With such institutional flexibility comes the capacity to
step outside the boundaries of any given structure and
reflect; to both make and unmake the political worlds we live
in.
Graeber and Wengrow | The Dawn of Everything | 111

Experience
Experiment

In other words, there is no single pattern. The only
consistent phenomenon is the very fact of alteration,
and the consequent awareness of different social
possibilities. What all this confirms is that searching
for “the origins of social inequality” really is asking
the wrong question.
Graeber and Wengrow | The Dawn of Everything | 115

Perhaps all these questions blind us to what really
makes us human in the first place, which is our
capacity—as moral and social beings—to negotiate
between such alternatives.
Graeber and Wengrow | The Dawn of Everything | 118