Translation by José Riello, Ricardo Dorado, Antonio de Cabo

This groundbreaking book reviews, against the current of established opinion, what was thought to be known about the first civilizations in the Mesopotamian floodplain and elsewhere. It was believed that the domestication of plants and animals led to sedentary lifestyles and farming in fixed fields. However, sedentary lifestyle long predates any evidence of plant or animal domestication, and both sedentary and domestication existed nearly four millennia before an agricultural village emerged. It was believed that sedentary lifestyles and the emergence of cities were the typical effect of irrigation and states. But it turns out that both are, on the contrary, the result of the abundance of wetlands. It was thought that sedentary lifestyle and agriculture led to the formation of states, but it so happens that these only appear long after agriculture in fixed fields. It was taken for granted that agriculture was a great step forward for people's nutrition, well-being and leisure; the opposite seems to have happened in the early stages.

Early civilizations were seen as magnets that attracted people with the luxury, culture, and opportunities they offered. In reality, the first states were forced to capture and retain a large part of their population with different forms of servitude and were transfixed by the epidemics of overcrowding; they were fragile and prone to collapse. On the other hand, the "dark ages" that followed them could often have led to a real improvement in human well-being. It seems reasonable to argue that, at least outside the elites, life outside states—the life of the "barbarian"—may have been simpler in material terms, and freer and healthier, than life within civilizations.