Conjectural history and empirical data. A deep history of the human condition

Fifty years after the publication of Marshall Sahlins's Stone Age Economics we can re-read that collection of essays on primitive societies, and especially The Original Affluent Society, and The Spirit of the Gift (the political aspects of the Gift) in a contrasting perspective of deep history of contemporary society, as a challenge to our social organization of production and consumption. But the lesson from archaeology (and history) is that it is very difficult for mankind to turn back time.