Economist Writing Every Day

For a current research project on institutions, I skimmed The Dawn of Everything (2021).

I liked this passage about an archaeological site in Syria. The following items were found in a destroyed village where people are estimated to have lived 8,000 years ago:

These devices included economic archives, which were miniature precursors to the temple archives at Uruk and other later Mesopotamian cities.

These were not written archives: writing, as such, would not appear for another 3,000 years. What did exist were geometric tokens made of clay, of a sort that appear to have been used in many similar Neolithic villages, most likely to keep track of the allocation of particular resources.

In chunks, the book has fascinating stuff like the quote above. However, D-o-E is the second book I have read this year that tries to do too much. A book on “everything” sounds incredibly fun to write, and I’m the type who would try, so I take these as a warning.

What is more intriguing than history? Emily Wilson said it well, concerning some of the oldest records we have of human words:

I think we should stop selling classics as, “These are the societies that formed modern America, or that formed the Western canon” — which is a really bogus kind of argument — and instead start saying, “We should learn about ancient societies because they’re different from modern societies.” That means that we can learn things by learning about alterity. We can learn about what would it be to be just as human as we are, and yet be living in a very, very different society.