Abstract

Piero Vereni’s essay takes Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything as a starting point to test the extent to which the concept of ‘prophecy’ can legitimately be used in anthropological theory. Vereni critiques their utopian and anarchic vision, which privileges freedom over equality in the origins of human societies. Analyzing various authors and theories, Vereni emphasizes the need to recover in anthropological theorizing the relevant weight of hierarchies and ecological conditions in the formation of human societies. The author questions the political approach of Graber and Wengrow and proposes a return to scientific rigor and the distinction between scientific and political goals