The authors open the book by suggesting that current popular views on the progress of western civilization, as presented by Francis Fukuyama, Jared Diamond, Yuval Noah Harari, Charles C. Mann, Steven Pinker, and Ian Morris, are not supported by anthropological or archaeological evidence, but owe more to philosophical dogmas inherited unthinkingly from the Age of Enlightenment.

Moreover, they argue that the transition from foraging to agriculture was not a civilization trap that laid the ground for social inequality, and that throughout history, large-scale societies have often developed in the absence of ruling elites and top-down systems of management.

They illustrate this process through the historical example of the Wendat leader Kondiaronk, and his depiction in the best-selling works of the Baron Lahontan, who had spent ten years in the colonies of New France.

The authors describe ancient and modern communities that self-consciously abandoned agricultural living, employed seasonal political regimes (switching back and forth between authoritarian and communal systems), and constructed urban infrastructure with egalitarian social programs.

The authors then go on to explore the issue of scale in human history, with archaeological case studies from early China, Mesoamerica, Europe (Ukraine), the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa (Egypt).

While acknowledging that in some cases, social stratification was a defining feature of urban life from the beginning, they also document cases of early cities that present little or no evidence of social hierarchies, lacking such elements as temples, palaces, central storage facilities, or written administration, as well as examples of cities like Teotihuacan, that began as hierarchical settlements, but reversed course to follow more egalitarian trajectories, providing high quality housing for the majority of citizens.

They also discuss at some length the case of Tlaxcala as an example of Indigenous urban democracy in the Americas, before the arrival of Europeans, and the existence of democratic institutions such as municipal councils and popular assemblies in ancient Mesopotamia.

They explore the utility of this new approach by comparing examples of early centralised societies that elude definition as states, such as the Olmec and Chavín de Huántar, as well as the Inca, China in the Shang dynasty, the Maya Civilization, and Ancient Egypt.

Returning to North America, the authors then bring the story of the Indigenous critique and Kondiaronk full circle, showing how the values of freedom and democracy encountered by Europeans among the Wendat and neighbouring peoples had historical roots in the rejection of an earlier system of hierarchy, with its focus at the urban center of Cahokia on the Mississippi.

"[17] Historian of science Emily Kern, writing in the Boston Review, called the book "erudite" and "funny", suggesting that "once you start thinking like Graeber and Wengrow, it's difficult to stop.

"[19] Andrew Anthony in The Observer said the authors persuasively replace "the idea of humanity being forced along through evolutionary stages with a picture of prehistoric communities making their own conscious decisions of how to live".

[31] Anthropology Today later published a letter to the editor, in which political ecologist Jens Friis Lund writes "Appadurai never discloses where and how exactly Graeber and Wengrow go wrong," calling the book a "monumental empirical effort" and "exemplar of interdisciplinary engagement.

Bell, responding solely to Graeber and Wengrow's arguments about the Indigenous origins of Enlightenment thought and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, accused the authors of coming "perilously close to scholarly malpractice.

"[35] Historian and philosopher Justin E. H. Smith suggested "Graeber and Wengrow are to be credited for helping to re-legitimise this necessary component of historical anthropology, which for better or worse is born out of the history of the missions and early modern global commerce.

[42] In Antiquity, archaeologist Rachael Kiddey suggested that the book arose from "playful conversations between two eminently qualified friends" and also that it contributes to "feminist revisions of the development of knowledge.

"[55] Socialist activist and anthropologist Chris Knight stated that the "core message" of the book was rejecting Engels' primitive communism, and called The Dawn of Everything "incoherent and wrong" for beginning "far too late" and "systematically side-stepping the cultural flowering that began in Africa tens of thousands of years before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe".

[57] Reviewers in the Ecologist expressed the view that the authors "fail to engage with the enormous body of new scholarship on human evolution" while, at the same time, calling the book a "howling wind of fresh air".

[60] Historian Dominic Alexander, writing for socialist organization Counterfire questioned the evidence used in the book and characterized its rejection of "the teleological habit of thought" as a "profoundly debilitating approach" to political change.

[62] In The Nation, historian Daniel Immerwahr characterised the book as "less a biography of the species than a scrapbook, filled with accounts of different societies doing different things," while praising its refusal "to dismiss long-ago peoples as corks floating on the waves of prehistory.