Ancient society

by Lewis Henry Morgan

It has before been suggested that the time, when this institution originated, was the period of savagery, firstly, because it is found in complete development in the Lower Status of barbarism; and secondly, because it is found in partial development in the Status of savagery. Moreover, the germ of the gens is found as plainly in the Australian classes as in the Hawaiian punaluan group. The gentes are also found among the Australians, based upon the classes, with the apparent manner of their organization out of them. Such a remarkable institution as the gens would not be expected to spring into existence complete, or to grow out of nothing, that is, without a foundation previously formed by natural growth. Its birth must be sought in pre-existing elements of society, and its maturity would be expected to occur long after its origination.

Two of the fundamental rules of the gens in its archaic form are found in the Australian classes, namely, the prohibition of intermarriage between brothers and sisters, and descent in the female line. The last fact is made entirely evident when the gens appeared, for the children are then found in the gens of their mothers. The natural adaptation of the classes to give birth to the gens is sufficiently obvious to suggest the probability that it actually so occurred. Moreover, this probability is strengthened by the fact that the gens is here found in connection with an antecedent and more archaic organization, which was still the unit of a social system, a place belonging of right to the gens.

Turning now to the Hawaiian punaluan group, the same elements are found containing the germ of the gens. It is confined, however, to the female branch of the custom, where several sisters, own and collateral, shared their husbands in common. These sisters, with their children and descendants through females, furnish the exact membership of a gens of the archaic type. Descent would necessarily be traced through females, because the paternity of children was not ascertainable with certainty. As soon as this special form of marriage in the group became an established institution, the foundation for a gens existed. It then required an exercise of intelligence to turn this natural punaluan group into an organization, restricted to these mothers, their children, and descendants in the female line. The Hawaiians, although this group existed among them, did not rise to the conception of a gens. But to precisely such a group as this, resting upon the sisterhood of the mothers, or to the similar Australian group, resting upon the same principle of union, the origin of the gens must be ascribed. It took this group as it found it, and organized certain of its members, with certain of their posterity, into a gens on the basis of kin.

To explain the exact manner in which the gens originated is, of course, impossible. The facts and circumstances belong to a remote antiquity. But the gens may be traced back to a condition of ancient society calculated to bring it into existence. This is all I have attempted to do. It belongs in its origin to a low stage of human development, and to a very ancient condition of society; though later in time than the first appearance of the punaluan family. It is quite evident that it sprang up in this family, which consisted of a group of persons coincident substantially with the membership of a gens.

The influence of the gentile organization upon ancient society was conservative and elevating. After it had become fully developed and expanded over large areas, and after time enough had elapsed to work its full influence upon society, wives became scarce in place of their former abundance, because it tended to contract the size of the punaluan group, and finally to overthrow it. The syndyasmian family was gradually produced within the punaluan, after the gentile organization became predominant over ancient society. The intermediate stages of progress are not well ascertained; but, given the punaluan family in the Status of savagery, and the syndyasmian family in the Lower Status of barbarism, and the fact of progress from one into the other may be deduced with reasonable certainty. It was after the latter family began to appear, and punaluan groups to disappear, that wives came to be sought by purchase and by capture. Without discussing the evidence still accessible, it is a plain inference that the gentile organization was the efficient cause of the final overthrow of the punaluan family, and of the gradual reduction of the stupendous conjugal system of the period of savagery. While it originated in the punaluan group, as we must suppose, it nevertheless carried society beyond and above its plane.

III. The Turanian or Ganowdnian System of Consanguinity.

This system and the gentile organization, when in its archaic form, are usually found together. They are not mutually dependent; but they probably appeared not far apart in the order of human progress. But systems of consanguinity and the several forms of the family stand in direct relations. The family represents an active principle. It is never stationary, but advances from a lower to a higher form as society advances from a lower to a higher condition, and finally passes out of one form into another of higher grade. Systems of consanguinity, on the contrary, are passive; recording the progress made by the family at long intervals apart, and only changing radically when the family has radically changed.

The Turanian system could not have been formed unless punaluan marriage and the punaluan family had existed at the time. In a society wherein by general usage several sisters were married in a group to each other’s husbands, and several brothers in a group to each other’s wives, the conditions were present for the creation of the Turanian system. Any system formed to express the actual relationships as they existed in such a family would, of necessity, be the Turanian; and would, of itself, demonstrate the existence of such a family when it was formed.

It is now proposed to take up this remarkable system as it still exists in the Turanian and Ganowánian families, and offer it in evidence to prove the existence of the punaluan family at the time it was established. It has come down to the present time on two continents after the marriage customs in which it originated had disappeared, and after the family had passed out of the punaluan into the syndyasmian form.