Labour’s persistent failure to address its electorate’s salient concerns is behind the protest vote, asserts DIANE ABBOTT
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Any old iron
New evidence suggests that hunter-gatherer societies smelted iron much earlier than believed, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and JOEL HELLEWELL
An aerial view of the wall of the great enclosure of Great Zimbabwe
[Janice Bell / Creative Commons]
Washington’s lawless behaviour towards countries in the region it considers its ‘back yard’ should be condemned by all law-abiding people, says LUKE DANIELS
In part I of a serialisation of his new book, JOHN McINALLY takes a look at the early days of organising government workers
Colombia’s success in controlling the drug trade should be recognised and its sovereignty respected, argues Dr GLORY SAAVEDRA
The shadow lord chancellor has recently made a name for himself as an rabid hater of immigration – but there are exceptions to every rule, says SOLOMON HUGHES
Plaid Cymru’s front-bench spokesman on health and social services MABON AP GWYNFOR, in a two-part series, analyses the Caerphilly by-election and the wider political scene in Wales ahead of the 2026 Senedd election
THE recent publication of The Dawn of Everything, written by archaeologist David Wengrow and the late anthropologist David Graeber, has prompted debate about the history of human societies.
Graeber and Wengrow argue that popular ideas about what happened in “prehistory” are wrong. It is often assumed that human history has been a linear progression: from small egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers to farming, to ever-larger societies and eventually “real” civilisation.
The political implication of this view is that, while some sort of small-scale communism was possible in these “pre-political” egalitarian bands, the increasing size of societies led inexorably to inequality and hierarchies.
This political implication, set out memorably by Rousseau, is incorporated into many political views, ranging from the “Enlightenment Now” defence of modernity offered by Steven Pinker to (some) Marxist conceptions of the history of the world before capitalism.
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STEPHAN BLUM presents the evidence that wine was enjoyed by common folk, independent of upper-class celebrations and religious rituals
DUNCAN GARROW introduces a remarkable Iron Age discovery in Yorkshire that reveals ancient Britons’ connections with Europe
WILL PODMORE is enlightened by the achievements of a 17th century scientist whose work anticipates computer programming as well as Marx’s materialism