The Project Gutenberg eBook, Ancient Society, by Lewis Henry Morgan

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Title: Ancient Society

Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism to Civilization

Author: Lewis Henry Morgan

Release Date: June 13, 2014 [eBook #45950]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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Ancient Society

OR

RESEARCHES IN THE LINES OF HUMAN PROGRESS FROM SAVAGERY, THROUGH BARBARISM TO CIVILIZATION

BY

LEWIS H. MORGAN, LL.D.

Member of the National Academy of Sciences. Author of “The League of the Iroquois,” “The American Beaver and his Works,” “Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family,” Etc.

Nescit vox missa reverti.
Nescit vox missa reverti. HORACE.

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1877

Copyright, 1877,
By HENRY HOLT.

TO THE REVEREND

J. H. McILVAINE, D.D.,

LATE PROFESSOR OF BELLES-LETTRES IN PRINCETON COLLEGE,

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED,

IN RECOGNITION OF HIS GENIUS AND LEARNING,

AND IN APPRECIATION OF HIS FRIENDSHIP.

“Modern science claims to be proving, by the most careful and exhaustive study of man and his works, that our race began its existence on earth at the bottom of the scale, instead of at the top, and has been gradually working upward; that human powers have had a history of development; that all the elements of culture—as the arts of life, art, science, language, religion, philosophy—have been wrought out by slow and painful efforts, in the conflict between the soul and the mind of man on the one hand, and external nature on the other.”—Whitney’s Oriental and Linguistic Studies, p. 341.

“These communities reflect the spiritual conduct of our ancestors thousands of times removed. We have passed through the same stages of development, physical and moral, and are what we are to-day because they lived, toiled, and endeavored. Our wondrous civilization is the result of the silent efforts of millions of unknown men, as the chalk cliffs of England are formed by contributions of myriads of foraminifera.”—Dr. J. Kaines, Anthropologia, vol. i, No. 2, p. 233.

PREFACE.

The great antiquity of mankind upon the earth has been conclusively established. It seems singular that the proofs should have been discovered as recently as within the last thirty years, and that the present generation should be the first called upon to recognize so important a fact.

Mankind are now known to have existed in Europe in the glacial period, and even back of its commencement, with every probability of their origination in a prior geological age. They have survived many races of animals with whom they were contemporaneous, and passed through a process of development, in the several branches of the human family, as remarkable in its courses as in its progress.

Since the probable length of their career is connected with geological periods, a limited measure of time is excluded. One hundred or two hundred thousand years would be an unextravagant estimate of the period from the disappearance of the glaciers in the northern hemisphere to the present time. Whatever doubts may attend any estimate of a period, the actual duration of which is unknown, the existence of mankind extends backward immeasurably, and loses itself in a vast and profound antiquity.

This knowledge changes materially the views which have prevailed respecting the relations of savages to barbarians, and of barbarians to civilized men. It can now be asserted upon convincing evidence that savagery preceded barbarism in all the tribes of mankind, as barbarism is known to have preceded civilization. The history of the human race is one in source, one in experience, and one in progress.

It is both a natural and a proper desire to learn, if possible, how all these ages upon ages of past time have been expended by mankind; how savages, advancing by slow, almost imperceptible steps, attained the higher condition of barbarians; how barbarians, by similar progressive advancement, finally attained to civilization; and why other tribes and nations have been left behind in the race of progress—some in civilization, some in barbarism, and others in savagery. It is not too much to expect that ultimately these several questions will be answered.

Inventions and discoveries stand in serial relations along the lines of human progress, and register its successive stages; while social and civil institutions, in virtue of their connection with perpetual human wants, have been developed from a few primary germs of thought. They exhibit a similar register of progress. These institutions, inventions and discoveries have embodied and preserved the principal facts now remaining illustrative of this experience. When collated and compared they tend to show the unity of origin of mankind, the similarity of human wants in the same stage of advancement, and the uniformity of the operations of the human mind in similar conditions of society.

Throughout the latter part of the period of savagery, and the entire period of barbarism, mankind in general were organized in gentes, phratries and tribes. These organizations prevailed throughout the entire ancient world upon all the continents, and were the instrumentalities by means of which ancient society was organized and held together. Their structure, and relations as members of an organic series, and the rights, privileges and obligations of the members of the gens, and of the members of the phratry and tribe, illustrate the growth of the