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Perhaps the authors should consider that when they find an anthropologist like Christopher Boehm, who on the surface agrees with them, his conclusion that early hunter-gatherers were largely egalitarian and that we merely have the social tools to be in spite of a hierarchical basis, they should trust the intellect of the anthropologist. Such authors, unlike Graeber, specialize in our early history.

The end of chapter 2 is bemusing: Graeber and Wengrow act baffled as to what "equality" could even mean. They act as if there are too many definitions to determine what it could possibly mean. When people are talking about equality politically, they mean it in terms of decision-making and often, in tandem, resources. The detailed dive into indigenous critiques of Europe was phenomenal, but this conclusion is odd.

In candor, some of these pages are the most important to understanding the foundations of our modern world; liberty, the concepts and ideals of it anyway, come from the very same people we annihilated, whose deaths were justified for not knowing our God whose ideals they practiced better than us. "I do not believe there are any people freer than they," wrote Father Lallemant; our ideals of "freedom" do not compare.

Thus far, the book is fascinating in its depth; congruently, it is fascinating how the authors managed to completely miss core components of the works of their ACTUAL contemporaries. While it is good to knock some sense into popular pop anthropologists, such as Pinker 🤡 and Harari, Graeber and Wengrow become the new pop anthropologists in doing so. And the consequences may very well be disastrous.