Portable Wisdom

Author: David Graeber and David Wengrow

Brief Info: American anthropologist and British archaeologist

Years Lived: 1961-

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Quotations


Many humans just don't like their families

There is an obvious objection to evolutionary models which assume that our strongest social ties are based on close biological kinship: many humans just don’t like their families very much. And this appears to be just as true of present-day hunter-gatherers as anybody else. Many seem to find the prospect of living their entire lives surrounded by close relatives so unpleasant that they will travel very long distances just to get away from them.

From the book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

— 2021


Very large social units are imaginary

Very large social units are always, in a sense, imaginary. Or, to put it in a slightly different way, there is always a fundamental distinction between the way one relates to friends, family, neighbourhood, people and places that we actually know directly, and the way one relates to empires, nations and metropolises, phenomena that exist largely, or at least most of the time, in our heads.

From the book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

— 2021

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