Ancient Society Or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarism to Civilization

Gloucester MA: Peter Smith, 1985. reprint. Hardcover. Very Good/None. Hardcover, green cloth covers, 569 pages. Two decades after Darwin, intellectuals were writing about the evolution of everything. In England Edward Taylor focused on material culture such as fire making, cooking, or tool making. In America, Lewis Henry Morgan, concentrated on social evolution combined with subsistence techniques. His thinking was influenced by his Iroquois neighbors in New York. Like many others he posited three stages of evolution: savagery, barbarism and civilization, but he refined the three periods with three subperiods. In Lower savagery, for example, he saw humans subsisting on fruits and roots in tropical climes, using gesture language and marrying siblings in a consanguine family. Middle savagery saw fish subsistence, monosyllabic language, and marriage of cousins. Bows and arrows appeared in Upper Savagery along with syllabic language, clans, and tribal organization. Obviously Morgan was speculating on most of the developments, but he had found arguments for his positions from the reports of explorers and missionaries around the world. As a result, Morgan inspired an era of inquisitive thought that led to the development of American anthropology. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean. Record # 380319