Ancient Society
 | |
| Author | Lewis H. Morgan |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Published | 1877 |
| Publication place | United States |
Ancient Societyis an 1877 book by the American anthropologistLewis H. Morgan.Building on the data about kinship and social organization presented in his 1871Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family,Morgan develops his theory of the three stages of human progress, i.e., fromSavagerythroughBarbarismtoCivilization.Contemporary European social theorists such asKarl MarxandFriedrich Engelswere influenced by Morgan's work on social structure and material culture, as shown by Engels'The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State(1884).
The concept of progress
[edit]The dominant idea of Morgan's thought is that ofprogress.He conceived it as acareerof socialstatesarranged in ascaleon which man hasworked his way upfrom thebottom.Progress ishistorically true of the entire human family,but not uniformly. Differentbranchesof the family have evidencedhuman advancementto different conditions. He thought the scale had universal application orsubstantially the same in kind,withdeviations from uniformity... produced by special causes.Morgan hopes therefore to discernthe principal stages of human development.[1]
Morgan arrived at the idea of a society's progress in part through analogy to individual development. It is anascenttohuman supremacy on the earth.The prime analogate is an individual working his way up in society; that is, Morgan, who was well read in classics, relies on the Romancursus honorum,rising through the ranks, which became the basis of the English ideas of career and working your way up, to which he blends in the rationalist idea of ascala,or ladder, of life. The idea of growth or development is also borrowed from individuals. He proposed that a society has a life like that of an individual, which develops and grows.
He gives the analogy an anthropological twist and introduces the comparative method coming into vogue in other disciplines. Lewis names units calledethna,by which he meansinventions,discoveriesanddomestic institutions.The ethna are compared and judged higher or lower on the scale, pair by pair. Morgan's ethna appear to comprise at least some ofEdward Burnett Tylor's cultural objects.[citation needed]Morgan mentions Tylor a number of times in the book.
Morgan's standard of higher or lower is not clearly expressed. By higher he appears to mean whatever contributes better to control over the environment, victory over competitors, and spread of population.[citation needed]He does not mentionCharles Darwin's theory of evolution, but Darwin referred to Morgan's work in his own.
The lines of progress
[edit]The substitutions ofethnabetter than the previous follow severallines of progress.Morgan admits to a deficit in knowledge of language development, which he does not think important. The little knowledge he shares can be found in Chapter 3. His brief scheme is in fact speculative only. ManySino-Tibetan languagesandTai–Kadai languages,which may appear to non-speakers be "monosyllabic", use tone to distinguish morphemes, One syllable in different tones has different meanings. No language today is considered more primitive than any other. Early stages of language are totally unknown and must have disappeared in remote prehistory. Gestural language still is considered the original form of symbolic communication.
| No. | Line | Ethna |
|---|---|---|
| I | Subsistence | Thearts of subsistence[2]are
|
| II | Government | |
| III | Language | The origin of languageis:
|
| IV | The Family | Theforms of familyare[3]
|
| V | Religion | |
| VI | House Life and Architecture | |
| VII | Property |
The ethnical periods
[edit]Morgan rejects theAges of Stone, of Bronze, of Iron,theThree-Age Systemof pre-history, as being insufficient characterizations of progress. This theory had been explicated byJ. J. A. Worsaaein hisThe Primeval Antiquities of Denmark,published in English in 1849. Worsaae had built his work on the foundation of evidence-based chronology byChristian Jürgensen Thomsen,whoseGuideline to Scandinavian Antiquity(Ledetraad til Nordisk Oldkyndighed) (1836), was not published in English until 1848. The two works were highly influential to researchers in Great Britain and North America.[4]
Morgan believed the prehistoric stages as defined by the Danish were difficult to distinguish, as they overlapped and refer only to material types ofimplementsor tools. In addition, Morgan thought they did not fit the evidence he was finding among Native American societies in North America, in which he had closely studied social structure as an indicator of stages of civilization. Since Morgan, the European three-age system has prevailed inanthropologyandarcheology,but the age characteristics have been enlarged to include many of the additional factors which Morgan described. Morgan'sSavageryandBarbarismare roughly equivalent to Braidwood'sfood gatheringandfood production.
Based on thelines of progress,he distinguishesethnical periods,which each have adistinct cultureand aparticular mode of lifeand do not overlap in a region. He does admit to exceptions and a difficulty of determining precise borders between periods. Scientific archaeology was being developed at this time; Morgan did not have the techniques ofstratigraphyor scientific dating available, but based his arguments onlinguisticand historical speculation.
Chronological dating
[edit]Christian Jürgensen ThomsenandJ. J. A. Worsaaeare credited with the foundation of scientific archaeology, as they worked to have controlled excavations in which artifacts could be evaluated by which were found together: the beginning of stratigraphy. This supposedly evidence-based system was the start ofchronological datingin archeology.
| Period | Subperiod | Ethna |
|---|---|---|
| Savagery: Natural Subsistence, at least 60,000 years. |
Lower | First distinction of man from the other animals.Fruits and Roots,tropical or subtropical habitats, at least partialtree-dwelling,gesture language,intelligence, Consanguine Family. |
| Middle | Fish Subsistence,Use of Fire,spread of man worldwide along shorelines,monosyllabic language,Punaluan Family.Morgan adduces this spread from the presence of stone tools along the shorelines, but appeared not to realize there were huntsmen. | |
| Upper | Weapons: bow and arrow, club, spear; addition of game to diet, cannibalism,syllabical language, Syndyasmian Family, organization into gentes, phratries and tribes, worship of the elements. | |
| Barbarism:Cultivation,Domestication.35,000 years in total to reachUpper Barbarism.20,000 year for Lower; 15,000 years for Middle. | Lower | Horticulture:maize, bean, squash, tobacco;art of pottery,tribal confederacy,finger weaving, blow-gun, village stockade, tribal games, element worship, Great Spirit,formation ofAryan and Semitic families. |
| Middle | Domestication of animalsamong theSemitic and Aryan families:goat, sheep, horse, ass, cow, dog; milk,making bronze,irrigation,great joint tenement houses in the nature of fortresses. | |
| Upper | Cultivation of cereals and plants,smelting iron ore,poetry, mythology, walled cities, wheeled vehicles, metallic armor and weapons (bronze and iron), the forge, potter's wheel, grain mill, loom weaving, forging,monogamian family,individual property,municipal life, popular assembly, by the Aryans. Morgan usesAryanto meanIndo-Europeandaughter-language speakers, including Greek, Latin, English, etc.Vere Gordon Childewas perhaps the last of the modern thinkers to use the term in that sense. Morgan usedSemitesto mean what today's scholars mean when they use that term. Although Morgan seems to view the Aryans primarily and the Semites secondarily as the innovators of civilization, he does not attribute amaster raceto them. For this list Morgan intendedthe Homeric poemsas a guide. The existence of theLate Bronze Agewas then little known. To MorganUpper Barbarismwas what today is called the earlyIron Age. | |
| Civilization: Field Agriculture, 5000 years. |
Ancient | Plow with an iron point,iron implements, animal power,unlimited subsistence, phonetic alphabet, writing,Arabic numerals,the military art, the city, commerce, coinage,the state, founded upon territory and upon property,the bridge, arch, crane, water-wheel, sewer. Morgan'sAncient civilizationrelated toclassical Greeceand the city of Rome. |
| Mediaeval | Gothic architecture, feudal aristocracy with hereditary titles of rank, hierarchy under the headship of a pope.Morgan has little to say about themediaeval period.[5] | |
| Modern | Telegraph, coal gas, spinning-jenny, power loom, steam engine, telescope, printing, canal lock, compass, gunpowder, photography, modern science, religious freedom, public schools, representative democracy, classes, different types of law. |
From savagery to civilization
[edit]John Wesley PowellcreditedAncient Societyas "the most noteworthy attempt hitherto made to distinguish and define culture-stages". Powell theorized that savages advanced into civilization with the help of racial and cultural mixing. Therefore, Powell reasoned, civilized people could help savages by mixing blood, rather than spilling blood. Powell also contended, that "human evolution has none of the characteristics of animal evolution". Powell opposed thesurvival of the fittesttheory because in his mind, humans did not advance their living conditions to succeed in the struggle for existence. Instead, he mused that the "human endeavor to secure happiness" was the driving force of civilization.[6]
References
[edit]- ^Chapter 1, initial
- ^Chapter 2.
- ^Chapter 2, end.
- ^Conn, Steven (2004).History's Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century.University of Chicago Press. pp. 137–139.
- ^Chapter 3
- ^Lee D. Baker (2010).Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture.Duke University Press. p. 72.ISBN9780822392699.
External links
[edit]| Authority control databases:National |
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