AVI has had a series of
posts on a revisionist history by an anarchist activist and a professor of archaeology. His latest quotes a
review that is quite negative, and that opens with an analogy whose force is meant to suggest that only an American could believe such things (although the anarchist here was from London, presumably that analogy is meant to extend to Westerners in general).
I haven't read the book and therefore can't review it, but I do note that there is a grave difficulty in the project. Archaeology is indeed an obvious way to proceed, because our written records don't go far back into a matter that began somewhere between 12,000 and 300,000 years ago.
What the historical record does suggest on the question, as far back ago as we can really go, is that there were a
lot of different things in play. Chesterton remarked that the dawn of history (from his perspective) shows it dawning on the bulk of cities, perhaps
civilizations already old, but also on nomads and tribes with no real government beyond family ties. That is
contra Aristotle, who
argued that politics arose naturally whenever family ties weren't enough: in fact, we see that throughout history there were places where family ties sufficed, and families were just melded in marriage as necessary.
Plato, meanwhile, included this
discussion (which you may remember from the
Laws, Book III).
Ath. Why, do you think that you can reckon the time which has elapsed since cities first existed and men were citizens of them?
Cle. Hardly.
Ath. But are sure that it must be vast and incalculable?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. And have not thousands and thousands of cities come into being during this period and as many perished? And has not each of them had every form of government many times over, now growing larger, now smaller, and again improving or declining?
Cle. To be sure.
"Every form of government" does not necessarily include anarchy, though it does include forms of democracy, constitutional governments, oligarchies, aristocracies, kings and tyrants: we know that because those forms are all named in Aristotle's Politics. Anarchy, too, is a word we have from ancient Greece: αναρχία, 'without a ruler.'
As for the analogy, I don't think it's very impressive. Asking someone from a warzone if they prefer that to a state at peace is a highly biased way of framing the question of whether egalitarian societies are preferable to ones with a hierarchy based on dominion: it is a frame that is almost guaranteed to produce the Hobbesian response that it does. Ask someone who lives in a peaceful agrarian society whose members come together voluntarily to do things like raise each others' houses and barns, have dances and celebrations, attend church services together, drink together at their local feasts and festivals, and so forth -- and then compare that to the response of someone who has lived in a stable but oppressive state. Even mildly oppressive states are quite unpleasant, and some societies become sufficiently unpleasant that a warzone really is preferable to them.
The review goes on to suggest that the author finds it implausible that, if life in such societies were really so much better, they wouldn't have out-competed hierarchies and become the norm. Sadly, that is probably not true: the great challenge isn't whether it would be better without oppressive force, but whether it is possible to resist the introduction of oppressive force from abroad without adopting governments, armies, and police at home. My sense is in many places that possibility awaited the introduction of the rifle, a technological change that empowers the individual sufficiently that a large enough number of individuals voluntarily choosing to cooperate can keep themselves free.
