[Charles Rykken]

I just received my copy of “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow. I started out with chapter 10, “Why the State has No Origin”. It is going to take a while to fully digest the material. Interestingly, I ran across a very new publication that talks about mid-holocene settlements

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-35920-z

I will respond to the Dawn of Everything after I have read enough to be able to have a coherent impression. I was amused to find that Noam Chomsky is quoted on the back cover

“A fascinating inquiry, which leads us to rethink the nature of human capacities, as well as the proudest moments of our own history, and our interactions with and indebtedness to the cultures and forgotten intellectuals of Indigenous societies. Challenging and illuminating”

nature.com

Explaining population booms and busts in Mid-Holocene Europe - Scientific Reports

Archaeological evidence suggests that the population dynamics of Mid-Holocene (Late Mesolithic to Initial Bronze Age, ca. 7000–3000 BCE) Europe are characterized by recurrent booms and busts of regional settlement and occupation density. These boom-bust patterns are documented in the temporal … Continue reading