How did we get stuck?

Abstract

The Dawn of Everything argues that human political arrangements got stuck when divine kings and other patriarchal despots began to confuse paternal care with coercive control. Drawing on insights provided by an Amazonian myth, this article argues that the decisive changes occurred much earlier than Graeber and Wengrow suppose. Gender politics got stuck when patriarchal forms of marriage and residence took over, disconnecting women from their former freedom to choose where to live – a freedom in turn linked with the periodicity of the moon.