There was much lamentation at the untimely passing of David Graeber last week - theorist of the Occupy movement, coiner of their phrase “the 99%”, definer of the category of “bullshit jobs”, and liberator from the oppression of “debt” in modern society. (A/UK’s co-initiator Pat Kane devoted his National column to his work). Graeber didn’t much like the label, but “anarchist anthropologist” is a useful way to describe his approach to history, politics and much else.

It’s this approach which may become Graeber’s ultimate legacy, as his last major work seems to be nothing less than a redefinition of human history itself - a celebration of its non-hierarchical and grassroots continuity, based on much recent anthropological discovery. Graeber announced this project in a 2018 Eurozine article, co-written with archaeologist David Wengrow.

But this week Wengrow took up the task of fleshing out their argument on the Aeon website. His theme was, “a history of true civilisation is not one of monuments”. So what is it? Wengrow expands below, in this excerpt:

…There have always been other ways of understanding ‘civilisation’. The 20th-century French anthropologist Marcel Mauss thought that civilisation should not be reduced to a list of technical or aesthetic achievements. Nor should it represent a particular stage of cultural development (‘civilisation’ versus ‘barbarism’, and so on).

Civilisation could be found in material things, but above all it referred to a potential in human societies. In Mauss’s view, civilisation is what happens when discrete societies share morally and materially across boundaries, forming durable relationships that transcend differences…

…When people use the term ‘early civilisation’, they are mostly referring to Pharaonic Egypt, Inca Peru, Aztec Mexico, Han China, Imperial Rome, Ancient Greece or other ancient societies of a certain scale and monumentality.

All of these were deeply stratified societies, held together mostly by authoritarian government, violence and the radical subordination of women.

Sacrifice is the shadow lurking behind this concept of civilisation; the sacrifice of freedoms, of life itself, for the sake of something always out of reach – an idea of world order, the mandate of heaven, blessings from those insatiable gods.

There is something wrong here. The word ‘civilisation’ stems from a very different source and ideal. In ancient times, civilis meant those qualities of political wisdom and mutual aid that permit societies to organise themselves through voluntary coalition.

The modern Middle East provides many inspiring examples. In the summer of 2014, a coalition of Kurdish units broke the siege of Mount Sinjar in Iraq to provide safe passage, food and shelter for thousands of displaced Yazidis. Even as I write, the population of Mosul is raising to life a new city from the war-torn rubble of the old, street by street, with minimal government support.

Mutual aid, social cooperation, civic activism, hospitality or simply caring for others: these are the kind of things that actually go to make civilisations. In which case, the true history of civilisation is only just starting to be written.

It might begin with what archaeologists call ‘culture areas’ or ‘interaction spheres’, vast zones of cultural exchange and innovation that deserve a more prominent place in our account of civilisation.

In the Middle East, they have deep roots that become visible towards the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 BCE. Thousands of years before the rise of cities (around 4000 BCE), village communities already shared basic notions of social order across the region known as the ‘fertile crescent’.

Physical evidence left behind by common forms of domestic life, ritual and hospitality shows us this deep history of civilisation. It’s in some ways much more inspiring than monuments.

The most important findings of modern archaeology might in fact be these vibrant and far-flung networks, where others expected to find only backward and isolated ‘tribes’.

These small prehistoric communities formed civilisations in the true sense of extended moral communities. Without permanent kings, bureaucrats or standing armies, they fostered the growth of mathematical and calendrical knowledge; advanced metallurgy, the cultivation of olives, vines and date palms, the invention of leavened bread and wheat beer.

“The Standard of Ur” (peace side), from Harvard

They developed the major textile technologies applied to fabrics and basketry, the potter’s wheel, stone industries and bead-work, the sail and maritime navigation. Through ties of kinship and commerce, they distributed these invaluable and cherished qualities of true civilisation.

With ever-increasing accuracy, archaeological evidence allows us to follow the founding threads of this emerging fabric of civilisation, as it crosses the plains of lowland Iraq, weaves back and forth between the shores of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, through the foothills of the Taurus and Zagros mountains, and down to the marshy head of the Persian Gulf.

Civilisation, in this new sense, forms a cultural tapestry of startling complexity and grandeur, centre-less and open-ended, woven from a million tiny social bonds.

A moment’s reflection shows that women, their work, their concerns and innovations are at the core of this more accurate understanding of civilisation.

Tracing the place of women in societies without writing often means using clues left, quite literally, in the fabric of material culture, such as painted ceramics that mimic both textile designs and female bodies in their forms and elaborate decorative structures.

To take just one example, it’s hard to believe that the kind of complex mathematical knowledge displayed in early cuneiform documents, or in the layout of urban temples, sprang fully formed from the mind of a male scribe, like Athena from the head of Zeus.

Far more likely, these represent knowledge accumulated in preliterate times, through concrete practices such as the applied calculus and solid geometry of weaving and beadwork.

What until now has passed for ‘civilisation’ might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation – by men, etching their claims in stone – of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its centre.

From such a starting point, we can see the true history of living civilisation. It reaches back far beyond the earliest monarchies or empires, resisting even the most brutal incursions of the modern state.

It’s a civilisation we really can recognise when we see it, taste it, touch it, even in these darkest hours. There can be no justification for the wanton destruction of ancient monuments [the opening section of this article talks about the destruction of momuments at Palmyra - ed]. But let’s not confuse that with the living pulse of civilisation, which often resides in what at first glance seems small, domestic or mundane.

There we will find it, beating patiently, waiting for the light.

More here.

“The living pulse of civilisation resides in what at first glance seems small, domestic or mundane”: Graeber & Wengrow redefine human history