One of my favorite books. Though I have to read it with 10 Wikipedia tabs opened.
Comment on 60,000-year-old ostrich eggshell engravings reveal a surprisingly sophisticated human mind
cmbabul@slrpnk.net 3 weeks agoThe Dawn of Everything makes this point fabulously and with loads of historical examples. The urge to look at the peoples of the past as primitive and lesser is a major fault in our understanding of ourselves and human societies
artifex@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
cmbabul@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Yeah that’s more than understandable, it’s dense as fuck, but well worth the effort!
sulfidedisburseangledafternoontipper@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I made my book club read it a couple of years ago. A few people did the audiobook. Even though I think it might be one of the most important and fascinating books of the last century, I cannot imagine the soporific power of that audiobook.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago I look at humanity today and feel we’re quite primitive, worse than they were ages ago when they didn’t really have a choice.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Even in short timespans, I was downvoted harshly recently for disagreeing with somebody who said that the tech we use today was “unrealistic science fiction 50 years ago”.
Eq0@literature.cafe 3 weeks ago
I’ve been reading it and I recommend it m mainly for this specific reason! Just because they were born long ago doesn’t make them stupid. And, thinking about it, maybe not having a massively time consuming and mind numbing job actually helped them develop their minds and thoughts.
cmbabul@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
And that calls into question the generally accepted notion that the way we’ve organized our societies has been getting progressively better over the timeline of our species and that we might be able to take some of the aspects of our modern world that meet that criteria(solar electricity, medical advancements, etc) can be applied to older paradigms. Fusing old and new to create a better world for human kind. Revolutionary book
Eq0@literature.cafe 3 weeks ago
Reminds me of Harari’s Sapiens, supporting the idea that most revolutions, starting from the agricultural one, actually made our lives globally worse.
cmbabul@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
I’ve got some criticisms of Harari but in general I agree. I think he leans a bit hard into the narrative of progression but i haven’t re-read Sapiens in the context of having read The Dawn of Everything