(单词翻译:单击)
And what a gift it is, no less ambitious a project than its subtitle claims.
这是一份多么好的礼物啊，这个项目的雄心不亚于它的副标题。
The Dawn of Everything is written against the conventional account of human social history as first developed by Hobbes and Rousseau;elaborated by subsequent thinkers; popularized today by the likes of Jared Diamond, Yuval Noah Harari, and Steven Pinker; and accepted more or less universally.
《万物的黎明》与霍布斯和卢梭首先提出的人类社会历史的传统描述观点相悖；这一观点由后来的思想家详细阐述；如今由贾里德·戴蒙德(Jared Diamond)、尤瓦尔·诺亚·哈拉里(Yuval Noah Harari)和史蒂文·平克(Steven Pinker)等人普及；并或多或少被普遍接受。
The story goes like this. Once upon a time, human beings lived in small, egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers (the so-called state of nature).
故事是这样的。 很久以前，人类生活在小而平等的狩猎-采集群落中(所谓的自然状态)。
Then came the invention of agriculture, which led to surplus production and thus to population growth as well as private property.
然后，农业的发明导致了生产过剩，从而导致了人口增长和私有财产的增加。
Bands swelled to tribes, and increasing scale required increasing organization: stratification, specialization; chiefs, warriors, holy men.
群落扩大成部落，规模的扩大需要越来越多的组织:阶层化、专业化; 首领，勇士，圣人。
Eventually, cities emerged, and with them, civilization—literacy, philosophy, astronomy; hierarchies of wealth, status, and power; the first kingdoms and empires.
最终，城市出现了，随之而来的是文明-识字、哲学、天文学；财富、地位和权力的等级制度；第一批王国和帝国。
Flash forward a few thousand years, and with science, capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution, we witness the creation of the modern bureaucratic state.
几千年后，随着科学、资本主义和工业革命的到来，我们见证了现代官僚国家的创建。
The story is linear (the stages are followed in order, with no going back), uniform (they are followed the same way everywhere),
故事是线性的(阶段是按顺序进行的，没有回头路)、统一的(到处都是一样的方式)、
progressive (the stages are “stages” in the first place, leading from lower to higher, more primitive to more sophisticated),
渐进的(阶段首先是“阶段”，从低到高，从更原始到更复杂)，
deterministic (development is driven by technology, not human choice), and teleological (the process culminates in us).
确定的(发展是由技术驱动的，而不是人的选择)，以及目的论的(这个过程在我们身上达到顶峰)。
It is also, according to Graeber and Wengrow, completely wrong.
根据格雷伯和温格罗的说法，这也是完全错误的。
Drawing on a wealth of recent archaeological discoveries that span the globe, as well as deep reading in often neglected historical sources (their bibliography runs to 63 pages), the two dismantle not only every element of the received account but also the assumptions that it rests on.
他们利用了全球范围内的大量最近的考古发现，以及对经常被忽视的历史资料的深入阅读(他们的参考文献长达63页)，这两个人不仅拆解了收到的记述的每一个元素，而且还拆解了它所依赖的假设。
Yes, we’ve had bands, tribes, cities, and states; agriculture, inequality, and bureaucracy, but what each of these were, how they developed, and how we got from one to the next—all this and more, the authors comprehensively rewrite.
是的，我们有过群落、部落、城市和国家; 农业、不平等和官僚主义，但每一个都是什么，它们是如何发展的，以及我们如何从一个走向下一个—所有这些，以及更多，作者全面地重写了。
More important, they demolish the idea that human beings are passive objects of material forces, moving helplessly along a technological conveyor belt that takes us from the Serengeti to the DMV.
更重要的是，他们推翻了人类是被动的物质力量的对象，无助地沿着技术传送带从塞伦盖蒂平原到车管所的观点。
We’ve had choices, they show, and we’ve made them.
我们有过选择，它们表现出来了，我们做出了选择。
Graeber and Wengrow offer a history of the past 30,000 years that is not only wildly different from anything we’re used to, but also far more interesting: textured, surprising, paradoxical, inspiring.
格雷伯和温格罗提供了一段过去3万年的历史，它不仅与我们所熟悉的任何事物都大不相同，而且更加有趣:富有风韵、令人惊奇、看似矛盾却有道理、鼓舞人心。
