Page 28 - ModernParadiseFLIPBOOKcomplete

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quiet sense of religion in their sayings and doings.” In its several forms, religion has

been central to our history. Geography, on its own, is not destiny.

Conclusion: prehistoric party people
As discussed in the conclusion to Session One, the over-arching question we are
addressing is, can we find anything to say about how offshore islanders thought and
felt about their situation in these earliest times? In prehistory, in the absence of
written records, this is immensely challenging, but Graeber and Wengrow rise to it.
They suggest that far from being engaged in a perpetual struggle for survival,

prehistoric people resisted the excessive workload of agriculture. They were sceptical
about hierarchy and unwilling to submit to elite dominance. They were happy to
experiment and innovate with various, and complex, forms of social order. Above all
they valued freedom and choice. Prehistoric people were playful. Stonehenge was
not some grim, forbidding monument, but a place of mass celebration. The early
farmers, it seems, loved a big party,

Is it naïve to prefer this to Ian Morris’ pinched view that historical progress springs
from greed, sloth and fear? Or that hierarchy and elite rule were historically
inevitable? We seldom view prehistoric times as an age of creativity, imagination and
freedom of the spirit, assuming that these are modern characteristics. Graeber and
Wengrow rescue prehistoric people from a remorseless struggle for subsistence and
give them back their humanity.

They also point out that prehistory was indeed the dawn of everything. Think of all

the knowledge that had been accumulated as history began - how to survive, hunt,
gather, knap, build, speak, socialise, farm, sow, harvest, domesticate, skin, butcher,
cook, pot, shear, spin, weave, sew, dye, smelt, forge and sharpen: all were devised by
prehistoric people. They were creative and intelligent, not boring dolts. And they
valued their freedom.

This is their big message. Prehistoric people were just like us.