Civilization
A civilization (also spelled civilisation in British English) is any complex society characterized by the development of state (polity), the state, social stratification, urban area, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyon ...
. Contemporary European social theorists such as
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
and
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels" ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State'' (1884).
The concept of progress
The dominant idea of Morgan's thought is that of ''progress''. He conceived it as a ''career'' of social ''states'' arranged in a ''scale'' on which man has ''worked his way up'' from the ''bottom''. Progress is ''historically true of the entire human family'', but not uniformly. Different ''branches'' of the family have evidenced ''human advancement'' to different conditions. He thought the scale had universal application or ''substantially the same in kind'', with ''deviations from uniformity ... produced by special causes''. Morgan hopes therefore to discern ''the principal stages of human development''.
Morgan arrived at the idea of a society's progress in part through analogy to individual development. It is an ''ascent'' to ''human 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 Roman ''cursus 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 a ''scala,'' 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 called ''ethna,'' by which he means ''inventions'', ''discoveries'' and ''domestic 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 of
Edward Burnett Tylor
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (2 October 18322 January 1917) was an English anthropologist, and professor of anthropology.
Tylor's ideas typify 19th-century cultural evolutionism. In his works '' Primitive Culture'' (1871) and ''Anthropology'' ...
's cultural objects. 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. He does not mention
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
's theory of evolution, but Darwin referred to Morgan's work in his own.
The lines of progress
The substitutions of ''ethna'' better than the previous follow several ''lines 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. Many
Sino-Tibetan languages
Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...
and Tai–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.
The ethnical periods
Morgan rejects the ''Ages of Stone, of Bronze, of Iron'', the
Three-Age System
The three-age system is the periodization of human prehistory (with some overlap into the history, historical periods in a few regions) into three time-periods: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, although the concept may also re ...
of pre-history, as being insufficient characterizations of progress. This theory had been explicated by J. J. A. Worsaae in his ''The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark'', published in English in 1849. Worsaae had built his work on the foundation of evidence-based chronology by
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen (29 December 1788 – 21 May 1865) was a Danish antiquarian who developed early archaeological techniques and methods.
In 1816 he was appointed head of 'antiquarian' collections which later developed into the Na ...
, whose ''Guideline 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.
Morgan believed the prehistoric stages as defined by the Danish were difficult to distinguish, as they overlapped and refer only to material types of ''implements'' or 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 in
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...
and
archeology
Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeolo ...
, but the age characteristics have been enlarged to include many of the additional factors which Morgan described. Morgan's ''Savagery'' and ''Barbarism'' are roughly equivalent to Braidwood's ''food gathering'' and ''food production''.
Based on the ''lines of progress'', he distinguishes ''ethnical periods'', which each have a ''distinct culture'' and a ''particular mode of life'' and 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 of
stratigraphy
Stratigraphy is a branch of geology concerned with the study of rock layers (strata) and layering (stratification). It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks.
Stratigraphy has three related subfields: lithost ...
or scientific dating available, but based his arguments on
linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
and historical speculation.
Chronological dating
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen (29 December 1788 – 21 May 1865) was a Danish antiquarian who developed early archaeological techniques and methods.
In 1816 he was appointed head of 'antiquarian' collections which later developed into the Na ...
and J. J. A. Worsaae are 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 of
chronological dating
Chronological dating, or simply dating, is the process of attributing to an object or event a date in the past, allowing such object or event to be located in a previously established chronology. This usually requires what is commonly known as a "d ...
in archeology.
From savagery to civilization
John Wesley Powell credited ''Ancient Society'' as "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 the ''
survival of the fittest
"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success. In Darwinian terms, th ...
'' theory 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.