Graeber / Wengrow 4: "Agriculture [...] did not mean the inception of private property, nor did it mark an irreversible step towards inequality. In fact, many of the first farming communities were relatively free of ranks and hierarchies. And far from setting class differences in stone, a surprising number of the world's earliest cities were organized on robustly egalitarian lines, with no need for authoritarian rules, ambitious warrior-politicians, or even bossy administrators."
"it's all just an endless repetition of a story first told by Rousseau in 1754" (11)
notably, "Rousseau himself never suggested that the innocent State of Nature really happened. On the contrary, he insisted he was engaging in a thought experiment" (11)