Il gran menù culturale di oggi propone una (lunga) recensione di The Dawn of Everything (L’alba di Tutto), l’ultimo libro dell’antropologo David Graeber (già autore di Bullshit Jobs) e dell’archeologo David Wengrow, pubblicata sul sito Astral Codex Ten.

La recensione in poco tempo esonda e si trasforma in un mini-essay vero e proprio sulle origini culturali dell’umanità, e le decine (se non un paio di centinaia) di migliaia di anni che passano dall’avvento dell’Homo Sapiens alle più antiche costruzioni monolitiche al mondo di Göbekli Tepe (Sapiens paradox).

Alla fine l’Autore azzarda una proposta plausibile, per quanto terrificante, sul modo in cui potevano funzionare le culture preistoriche umane, non società egualitarie di cacciatori raccoglitori o bande rivali costantemente in guerra, ma gruppi di 150 persone senza strutture gerarchiche organizzate, ma costantemente sotto pressione sociale, un po’ come al Liceo.

If we imagine being transported back to 50,000 BC, what would we expect to find? In the end, we have to give a metaphor to current life of how things were organized: a follower of Rousseau would expect Burning Man, a follower of Hobbes might expect to find a bunch of warring gangs, the Davids might expect to find the deliberation of a town council full of Kandiaronks.

But perhaps small groups of humans less than the Dunbar number were organized by none of these, since they didn’t need to be—instead, they could be organized via raw social power. That is, you don’t need a formal chief, nor an official council, nor laws or judges. You just need popular people and unpopular people.

After, who sits with who is something that comes incredibly naturally to humans—it is our point of greatest anxiety and subject to our constant management. This is extremely similar to the grooming hierarchies of primates, and, presumably, our hominid ancestors. So 50,000 BC might be a little more like a high school than anything else.