Freezing history’s dial? Walter Scheidel e L’alba di tutto

Sofia Agnello

Abstract:

The paper aims to explore a case study involving the reception of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s masterpiece The Dawn of Everything, namely the dialogue between the research by the two authors and the work of Walter Scheidel, a prominent Roman historian currently teaching at Stanford University. In The Great Leveler (2017), Scheidel had examined some ideas discussed by Graeber and Wengrow in their 2015 article Farewell to the Childhood of Men about the existence of inequality in prehistoric foraging groups. Subsequently, The Dawn of Everything (2021) portrayed a global history of humanity which is in evident contradiction with the model and ideological premises of The Great Leveler. In response, Scheidel published a strongly critical review of Graeber and Wengrow’s book, entitled Resetting history’s dial? (2022), where the remarkable differences between his approach to the history of humankind vis-à-vis that of Graeber and Wengrow’s are emphasised. Finally, in his most recent publication, What is ancient history? (2025), Scheidel deceptively cites again Graeber and Wengrow’s work to support his idea that «we are stuck» in a particular mode of submission to hierarchies, and that our present condition is the overall positive result of a precise course of history development, whose results cannot be changed.