A New Understanding of Human History and the Roots of Inequality | David Wengrow | TED

I graduated from McGill university with a diploma in Anthropology where we were taught the Fertile Crescent was the beginning of civilization. I always thought there had to be more to it than that. Life led me in a different direction from pursuing this subject, but I am glad to hear that There Is more to this. History is written by the “winners” and how few they are.

Very insightful. I am from India and everyone in the Indian school system have been taught about the Indus Valley civilisation and their cities like Mohenjo Daro, etc. which the speaker mentions briefly. But these cities have been noted for their utilitarian design, especially on urban sanitation and roads. We have never been taught about their egalitarian qualities. This is a wonderful aspect to hear about!

Nearly every time I hear a TED talk, I learn something new. This one taught me several new things, for which I'm grateful. And congratulations to David Wengrow for his effortless pronunciation of all those ancient places with almost unpronounceable names.

Excellent! This is a conversation we need to be having world wide. Imagine if every community around the world were to be reminded of its actual history, and the history of other places. We wouldn't feel so stuck in a rut.

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” - sometimes attributed to George Orwell. That was one of the best TED talks I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

I am happy to see there are still high quality TED talks.

If you liked this talk, read the book he wrote with Graber called Dawn of Everything. He doesn't really do a great job of talking about the evidence in this talk (probably because that's hard to do in a talk) but he and Graeber do a fabulous job of it in the book.

The regular Beating of the Ego to remind politicians who is in charge- brilliant.

Its a brilliant book and we sorely miss the late great David Graeber

Sociocracy is the operating system for this new world! I highly recommend researching Sociocracy. It's not socialism. It's not governance by consensus. It's a paradigm shift to consent based decision making were groups of rotating decision makers listen deeply to the people impacted by a given issue and draft policy that is "safe enough to try" instead if "perfect." It's iterative, adaptive, and it has revolutionized my workplace.

I suggest that the kings and the nobility arose not with early agrarian agriculture, but when the (entirely separate development) of northern/ steppe based culture of herder-agriculture (which was much more militarised) and this culture then encountered the grain agriculturalists - and invaded them and took over. The nobility were the descendants of the invaders. This is a variant of Gimbutas theory of history (Now called the Yamnaya hypothesis) but writ large. All the early grain civilisations were eventually taken over by herder (usually horse-based) militaries. You even can see this in the changes in their armies - for those civilisations that survived - now with nobles.

An excellent presentation by an exceptionally intelligent man

Gobekli tepe discovery struck me as compelling evidence against the narrative. There were also lots of stories about ancient India, very interesting.

I am just finishing his book with Gareber. Just mind-blowing and so important. I got my degree in history and wish I could have learned from them!

This blew my mind...I always looked upon civilisation as a game changer for us and to think about the attribute of inequality it had never crossed my mind until I heard this talk. This changed my whole perception of humanity and I always thought democracy was the solution invented by us to solve the problems of class division and ensure representation in society. But, to think democracy is innate to us as humans make sense since even though we had many past events that have changed us within, humanity survives because we have democracy within and between us.

We are unstoppable, another world is possible ❤️

Highly recommend the book. Brilliant.

I highly recommend the book “Human Kind” where historian Rutger Bregman shows that most people are actually inherently good based on the latest 2 decades findings from different fields such as sociology, psychology, biology, anthropology and archeology. 😊

very comprehensive, very impressive and eye opening presentation!

One of the most eye-opening lectures I’ve ever heard.