Graeber's entire body of work is fantastic - there's a "mythology of progress" that's endemic to modern western culture, in which the current moment and way we live are the inevitable outcomes and apotheosis of human nature, that it's all natural and the way things simply must be. Graeber's books are an enjoyable, accessible dismantling of this mythology. "Debt: the first 5000 years" is an essential read, and both "The Utopia of Rules" and "Bullshit Jobs" are fantastic.

(If you're through Graeber's library and still looking for intellectual bricks to throw, James C Scott is a good chaser - "Seeing like a State" is a profoundly enlightening book, and "Against the Grain" is something of a diet "Dawn of Everything". I have heard great things about "The Art of Not Being Governed", but it's a bit denser than the other two and I haven't made my way though it yet.)

Yup, a must read. Made me wish I'd studied archeology as a pup.

That guy Harari in his best seller Sapiens compares humans to bonobos and chimps, without choice. A comparison rooted in modern day racism. Contrast this with anthropologists of today, like Levi-Strauss whose study of Nambikwara society found no fixed roles but seasonally adjusted politics and material economies, not some lockstep progression of discreet phases from gathering to hunting to farming as presumed by Turgot. Studies of Eskimo changing their names, swapping partners seasonally or of Lakhota buffalo police, or Cheyenne shifts from coercion to dispersion seasonally refute such a progression as does the enduring shift of Stonehenge druids away from grain farming to hazlenut gathering as primary food staple. Human social adaptability and innovation is nonlinear.

Migratory neolithic society was porous, people flowed in and out of various societal groups at different seasons, ranging across huge distances.

The Davids (plural) who wrote the article, are also the authors of The Dawn of Everything.

His “Debt: The first 5,000 years” is excellent also

YC partner cofounder tlb also has recommended the book

Too bad this got insta-flagged, it's not exactly a political text.

One thing I learned from "the dawn of everything" is that societies have had diverse approaches to property over the millennia. And I've seen that it varies by country and region, even today.

Anecdote: My family went on a walking holiday in England. The entire country is crisscrossed by a network of walking paths. Many go through private farms. The same thing is rare, or even nonexistent, in the US. We were told that although we're allowed to use the land, there are certain stipulations, such as taking care not to damage the crops or disturb the livestock.

Here in the states, my family "owns" the land that our house is on, but with a variety of limitations.

"this is my cheeseburger"

is different from

"all 100 people in my village need a cheeseburger very badly; this piece of paper says that if any of them lay a finger on it, they get carted off to jail"

they're more referring to the latter

from a quick glance at the text i think he means legally institutionalized private property or equivalent.

but he as an anthropologist has argued in other venues to revise historical origins of various concepts like currency and debt based on available evidence rather than academic myth.

which is an earliest known origins argument based on available archaeological evidence rather than true earliest origins or mythologized origins for propagandized explainability. Of course this isnt relevant to your dog point, but just to contextualize a reoccurring theme of Graeber.

I feel like this is an instance of "common senseism" for lack of a better term. You're not really engaging with the concepts presented (legally enshrined concepts of private property in a capitalist system) and dismissing it with some folksy sounding idea. Like others on the thread mentioned, you could pick a different arbitrary animal and come up with the complete opposite "conclusion"

Are you a dog?

What of the cooperation an ant colony?

People love finding examples that reinforce their biases

Leftists (Graeber was an Anarchist) distinguish personal property from private property. Personal property are your personal effects. Your clothes, your car, your desk, your pen. Private property is the ownership of land and, later, industrial means of production. Things which have been historically used in an allegedly communal context, or worked on by communities of people, but their product is privatized for the person who provided the capital for the land or industrial tools.

I don't agree with this view of economics, but this is generally the line of thought among leftist thinkers

Maybe the dogs should write their own history books.

Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities.

I think maybe you're referring to personal property.

This so very much.

But of course you could argue that dogs were badly influenced by humans .. but also most other wild animals know the concept of territory and fight over it.

But I think was meant with the quote is formalized property. Ownership tied to a piece of paper eventually - and this is indeed something different at some point.