How Brutish were our Ancestors?
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 27 August 2023
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Was life for our ancient ancestors brutish and short or did they exist as noble savages, free and living in harmony with nature and each other? Many of our assumptions about ancient societies stem from Renaissance theories about how society should be organised and what civilisation is. Dan is joined by David Wengrow, Professor of Comparative Archaeology at University College London and co-author of 'The Dawn of Everything' to challenge some of these assumptions and show that they were founded on critiques of European society. David shines a light on the great variety of ancient civilisations, the different models of society they offer and how that might influence us today.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you're a fan of this podcast, I've got some exciting news for you. |
| 0:03.5 | We're publishing a book, an actual book. |
| 0:06.2 | Have you ever wondered who the third man on the moon was? |
| 0:10.2 | Why a pigeon is a hero of the American army, and whether Napoleon was actually as small |
| 0:16.3 | as people say he was? |
| 0:17.8 | Well, History Hit Misscellanie has got all the answers. |
| 0:20.8 | It's available to pre-order now and will be published on the 28th of September, pre-order |
| 0:25.8 | from your favourite bookshop or visit historyhit.com slash book. |
| 0:30.5 | Hello, everybody. |
| 0:34.0 | Welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. |
| 0:36.2 | We talked about this all canada before. |
| 0:38.1 | Who was right? |
| 0:39.1 | Hobbs was life nasty, brutish and short before we gave into the vython, let the state control |
| 0:46.7 | of every move, swapped liberty for security, or was Rousseau right? |
| 0:53.3 | That rather colourful 18th century philosoph, who says that man was born free and is |
| 0:58.8 | ever in chains, who's become associated with the term noble, savagery, typically born |
| 1:03.5 | so that I actually never wrote that phrase myself, but he's the philosoph that we remember, |
| 1:07.2 | particularly connected with the theory that in a state of nature, we're free, we were |
| 1:12.1 | nice to each other, we collaborated. |
| 1:15.5 | And we've had various wonderful thinkers, like David Runsman at Cambridge, like Rutka |
| 1:20.0 | Breggman, thinking about that kind of central issue of our existence, which is, what are |
| 1:25.0 | we actually like? |
... |
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