I'm about halfway through and it's fascinating. I love a "here is how the dominant paradigm is an over-simplification of reality" story and I also love pre-literary history so I'm finding a lot to enjoy.
I like the overarching argument and continue to recommend the book to people, but it's worth noting that the book really struggles with its factual basis. The authors aren't experts in most of the examples they discuss and their lack of familiarity really shows.
But yes, they definitely take an interesting stance that's worth reading in its own right.
In a sense the fundamental takeaway is: not only history, but also prehistory has been "written" by the subsequent "winners" (interpreting scarce evidence to fit a desired narrative).
It seems very plausible yet it would be really satisfactory if we could piece a more complete picture of these long gone eras
Hence critical theory.
That's why we don't automagically assume "that particular indoeuropean tomb is probably from a male warrior chief" nowadays, and actually do some interdisciplinary research, because we used to assume a lot in the early 20th. And sometimes the "male chief" have female bones. And the "warrior" lance point was probably the rest of a priest baton.
But most archeology we learn come from schoolbooks that are built on those old, often pretty much falsely interpretted discoveries, and pretty much all good research you have to read academia (or look at serious archeology youtube channels, some exists !)
Have any YouTube recommendations?
Yes. Don't use YouTube.
Or if you feel you must, download (via yt-dlp[0] or similar) videos and watch them offline.