anthropology

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The Dawn of Everything

by David Graeber and David Wengrow

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The Dawn of Everything

by David Graeber and David Wengrow

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Graeber and Wengrow set out to dismantle the linear progress narrative shared by popular big-history books, arguing that prehistoric humans experimented with radically varied forms of social organisation rather than marching inexorably from egalitarian bands to hierarchical states. Drawing on recent archaeology, they attack the Hobbes-vs-Rousseau framing and insist that inequality was a choice, not an inevitability of scale.

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The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

by Joseph Henrich

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Henrich reveals that people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies are psychological outliers, not the human norm. He traces how the medieval Catholic Church's marriage policies dissolved kinship networks, fostering the individualism, analytical thinking, and impersonal trust that drove Western institutional development and economic prosperity.

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Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans

by Michaeleen Doucleff

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Doucleff, an NPR science reporter, travels with her toddler to learn parenting practices from Maya families in Mexico, Inuit families in the Arctic, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania. She discovers that ancient approaches emphasizing autonomy, community involvement, and minimal adult interference produce remarkably cooperative and emotionally regulated children, challenging Western assumptions about the need for constant parental direction and praise.

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