Everything You Know About Early Human History is Wrong | A Bedtime History Documentary

Discover the real story of human history in this immersive narrative. The traditional story of simple hunters, the farming revolution, and the inevitable rise of inequality is well-known. This episode argues it is time for a new one, based on new archaeological and anthropological evidence.

For those seeking a deep exploration of our ancestors' complex societies, or a thought-provoking look at the roots of political freedom, this immersive narrative is crafted for you. It’s designed for deep listening – a paradigm-shifting story that challenges our most basic assumptions about human nature and hierarchy.

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For a deeper understanding and for further reading, this narrative is inspired by David Graeber and David Wengrow's book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.

In this episode, we challenge the foundations of human history. Our story begins not 10,000 years ago with farming, but 300,000 years ago, revealing Ice Age monuments built without agriculture and cities that thrived for centuries without kings. We explore the powerful indigenous critiques of European society that forced thinkers to invent the idea of "stages" of human evolution. We examine the archaeological evidence from Sunghir to Çatalhöyük, revealing how our ancestors consciously experimented with different social structures – creating and dismantling hierarchies with the seasons. Finally, we confront how we lost this political flexibility, and how recovering this forgotten history reveals that the inequality and hierarchy we take for granted are not inevitable.

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 Introduction: The Story We've Been Told
00:03:24 The Lure of the Wild
00:10:19 Listening to the Savage Critique
00:18:18 Kandiaronk's Challenge
00:26:36 Building the Evolutionary Cage
00:33:42 The Princes of Ice
00:41:48 Societies in Motion
00:49:33 How We Got Stuck
00:58:55 The Foragers Who Chose Their Fate
01:07:32 The Three-Thousand-Year Experiment
01:15:44 Freedom Farming versus Hierarchy Hunting
01:25:37 Cities Without States
01:32:06 Diverse Urban Paths
01:41:30 The Rise of Kings
01:49:25 American Experiments
01:58:14 What Is a State Anyway
02:07:28 Freedom's Shadow

Thank you for joining us! We hope you find this exploration of our human past both insightful and thought-provoking.

#History #Anthropology #Archaeology #HumanHistory #Inequality #HistoryAfterDark #RelaxingHistory #DeepDive #Civilization