To be modern is to privilege the present over the past. It is characteristic of modern people to assume that our cultures and societies are more advanced than those of previous generations. Modernity is unique in this regard however, and the presentism of the modern mind therefore demands explanation. The present can most plausibly be judged to have surpassed the past by material, technological or economic criteria. Modernity therefore assumes that such criteria are the most appropriate means of evaluating progress, which in turn involves the prior assumption that progress is desirable. These assumptions inspire the kind of pop-anthropology to which this book claims to be the antidote. The Dawn of Everything is an effective debunking of the self-satisfied narrative of progress espoused by such bestsellers as Yuval Noah Hariri’s Sapiens (2017) and Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel (1997).