At a time when the future of human civilisation looks shaky, a reappraisal of how we got here suggests that changing direction may be easier than we think
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| Bernard Friel/Education Images/Universal |
WHY is society the way it is? We thought we knew. Now, it appears, we have been thinking about it all wrong.
We explore what has happened to human societies over the past 10,000 years and what came before. It details new evidence on why many of us abandoned hunting and gathering for a life of farming, urbanism and paperwork, and explores why societies became more unequal and hierarchical, including the role war and religion played in such transformations.
The answers are nuanced, but the most powerful idea that comes out of the latest interpretations of our history is that we have a lot more control over social change than we thought. Many interpretations of the switch to modern society have portrayed it as inevitable: a process that is inexorable once started. The transition to farming, for instance, is often portrayed as a trap. Once people started farming, it became impossible to stop because the population swelled, the need for a stable food supply only grew and elites emerged to dominate everyone else.
In reality, human history was a lot more varied than this. Over and over, we see people trying new kinds of society, only to reject them and attempt something else. Hierarchies and elites have been toppled by popular uprisings. Societies have taken a kaleidoscopic range of forms rather than being limited to crude binary choices like capitalism versus communism.
When seen in this light, the shaping of human society is a far more creative exercise than we think. This new view of history is also inspiring and uplifting: if we don’t like aspects of our current society, we can change them.
That lesson is particularly relevant now. We are living through a critical moment in history; a crisis when powerful forces like climate change, AI and populist authoritarianism are reshaping our world in unpredictable ways. It is easy to feel helpless. But we aren’t. The past tells us that we have the power to influence how our societies live, work, fail and prosper. Big change can happen. History proves it.
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