Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by David Graeber

Quote by David Graeber

“When sovereignty first expands to become the general organizing principle of a society, it is by turning violence into kinship. The early, spectacular phase of mass killing in both China and Egypt, whatever else it may be doing, appears to be intended to lay the foundations of what Max Weber referred to as a ‘patrimonial system’: that is, one in which all the kings’ subjects are imagined as members of the royal household, at least to the degree that they are all working to care for the king. Turning erstwhile strangers into part of the royal household, or denying them their own ancestors, are thereby ultimately two sides of the same coin. Or to put things another way, a ritual designed to produce kinship becomes a method of producing kingship.”

Quote by David Graeber

Book:The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Create image

Work

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

David Graeber
David Graeber

David Graeber is an American anthropologist known for his research on economic anthropology, anarchism, and critical theory. His work explores the issues of economic relationships and power structures in modern society. more

You May Also Like

“La objetividad en el historiador es la inversion de las relaciones entre el querer y el saber y, a la vez, la creencia necesaria en la providencia, en las causas finales y en la teología. El historiador pertenece a los ascetas. "No soporto a estos concupiscentes eunucos de la historia, a todos estos reclutadores del ideal ascético; no soporto a estos sepulcros blanqueados que engendran la vida; no soporto a esos seres fatigados y abúlicos que se arropan con la sabidría y creen tener una mirada objetiva.”

Friedrich NietzscheArcheologyOn The Genealogy Of Morals
Book:Nietzsche, la Genealogía, la Historia
Create image

“Once I went professionally to an archaeological expedition- and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, evEryThing is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scare here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking TO do- clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth-the naked shining truth.”

TruthMysteryDetectiveAnalogyArcheology
Author:Agatha Christie
Create image

“We are used to things starting out small and simple and then progressing--evolving--to become ever more complex and sophisticated, so this is naturally what we expect to find on archaeological sites. It upsets our carefully structured ideas of how civilizations should behave, how they should mature and develop, when we are confronted by a case like Göbekli Tepe that starts out perfect at the beginning and then slowly devolves until it is just a pale shadow of its former self.”

SophisticatedComplexDevelopEvolvingArcheologyCivilizationsProgressingGöbekli TepeDevolves
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“Gunung Padang is not a natural hill but a man-made pyramid and the origins of construction here go back long before the end of the last Ice Age. Since the work is massive even at the deepest levels, and bears witness to the kinds of sophisticated construction skills that were deployed to build the pyramids of Egypt, or the largest megalithic sites of Europe, I can only conclude that we're looking at the work of a lost civilization and a fairly advanced one.”

CivilizationConstructionIce AgeArcheologyMan MadePyramidMegalithicGunung Padang
Author:Danny Hilman Natawidjaja
Create image

“What would have made [seeing Göbekli Tepe from Harran] easier, in antiquity, would have been a tall tower annexed to the temple that once stood here--a temple dedicated to Su-En (usually contracted to Sin), the Moon God of the Sabians. After telling us that there were "powerful images in this temple," the Greek Philosopher Libanius (AD 314-394), describes the tower, noting that "from its top one could overlook the entire plain of Harran." [...] A team from the Chicago Oriental Institute was about to start a major dig around the ruins of the Grand Mosque in 1986, but it seems that the Turkish authorities insisted on such restrictive practices that the project had to be abandoned. Current excavations by Harran University and the Sanliurfa Museum Directorate show little interest in recovery of substantive remains from the city's pre-Islamic period.”

RuinsAbandonedArcheologyDigGöbekli TepeSabiansHarran
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“As they stepped out onto the bustling boulevard, the glow of the city lights reflected their shared sense of wonder. Paris, with its endless contradictions and eternal allure, was not just their backdrop but their muse, inspiring them to keep asking, keep seeking, and keep dreaming.”

FictionHistoryFantasyAdventureScience FictionContemporaryParisHistorical FictionAncient HistoryArcheology
Book:The Heirs of the Lost Legacy: A Modern Odyssey in a Forgotten Past
Create image