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Home > Explaining Ukraine > Cities without Kings: Humanity's Prehistory on Ukrainian Soil — with David Wengrow
Podcast: Explaining Ukraine
Episode:

Cities without Kings: Humanity's Prehistory on Ukrainian Soil — with David Wengrow
Category: News & Politics
Duration: 00:52:27
Publish Date: 2026-01-28 07:37:51
Description: What can the deep past of Ukrainian lands reveal about the global story of humanity? Six thousand years ago, "mega-sites" flourished in what is now central Ukraine—but can these be considered the world’s first cities? How were they organized without central authorities, and how do they challenge everything we thought we knew about early social life? *** This is Thinking in Dark Times, a podcast by UkraineWorld, an English-language multimedia project about Ukraine. Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, and president of PEN Ukraine. Guest: David Wengrow, a renowned British archaeologist and Professor of Comparative Archaeology at University College London. He is the co-author, alongside David Graeber, of the international bestseller "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity". *** Thinking in Dark Times is produced by UkraineWorld and brought to you by Internews Ukraine. It is supported by the International Renaissance Foundation and Politeia, a Ukrainian NGO. *** SUPPORT: You can support our work on https://www.patreon.com/c/ukraineworld Your help is crucial, as we rely heavily on crowdfunding. You can also contribute to our volunteer missions to frontline areas in Ukraine, where we deliver aid to both soldiers and civilians. Donations are welcome via PayPal at: ukraine.resisting@gmail.com. *** CONTENTS: 00:00 - Intro. What can the deep past of Ukraine reveal about the global story of humanity? 00:14 - Were the world’s first cities actually built in what is now Ukraine? 02:51 - Why does the Ukrainian soil play a key role in rethinking the origins of cities and states? 03:55 - Why are standard narratives of human history fundamentally wrong? 09:15 - What were the Cucuteni-Trypillia megasites? 17:23 - Why does the existence of egalitarian cities overturn political history itself? 20:35 - What does a circular city say about how people imagined the world? 21:27 - How did thousands of people govern themselves without rulers? 26:36 - Did democracy exist thousands of years before ancient Greece? 28:29 - Were Hobbes and Rousseau both wrong about human nature? 42:29 - Is Ukrainian history shaped by a tension between freedom and vulnerability? 47:22 - What do burning rituals reveal about cyclical views of life and nature? 50:51 - Why does Ukraine’s past matter for the future of humanity?
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