David Wengrow

the whole story we summarized in the last chapter – our standard historical meta-narrative about the ambivalent progress of human civilization, where freedoms are lost as societies grow bigger and more complex – was invented largely for the purpose of neutralizing the threat of indigenous critique

Mass society exists in the mind before it becomes physical reality

These black earths (Russian: chernozem) are legendary for their fertility; for the empires of later antiquity, they made the lands between the Southern Bug and Dniepr Rivers a breadbasket (which is why Greek city-states established colonies in the region and enslaved or made serfs of the local populations to begin with: ancient Athens was largely fed by Black Sea grain).