Ancient society

by Lewis Henry Morgan

As we ascend in the order of time and of development, but descend in the scale of human advancement, inventions become more simple, and more direct in their relations to primary wants; and institutions approach nearer and nearer to the elementary form of a gens composed of consanguinei, under a chief of their own election, and to the tribe composed of kindred gentes, under the government of a council of chiefs. The condition of Asiatic and European tribes in this period, (for the

Aryan and Semitic families did not probably then exist), is substantially lost. It is represented by the remains of ancient art between the invention of pottery and the domestication of animals; and includes the people who formed the shell-heaps on the coast of the Baltic, who seem to have domesticated the dog, but no other animals.

In any just estimate of the magnitude of the achievements of mankind in the three sub-periods of barbarism, they must be regarded as immense, not only in number and in intrinsic value, but also in the mental and moral development by which they were necessarily accompanied.

Ascending next through the prolonged period of savagery, let us strike out of human knowledge the organization into gentes, phratries and tribes; the syndyasmian family; the worship of the elements in its lowest form; syllabical language; the bow and arrow; stone and bone implements; cane and splint baskets; skin garments; the punaluan family; the organization upon the basis of sex; the village, consisting of clustered houses; boat craft, including the bark and dug-out canoe; the spear pointed with flint, and the war club; flint implements of the ruder kinds; the consanguine family; monosyllabical language; fetishism; cannibalism; a knowledge of the use of fire; and lastly, gesture language.[36] When this work of elimination has been done in the order in which these several acquisitions were made, we shall have approached quite near the infantile period of man’s existence, when mankind were learning the use of fire, which rendered possible a fish subsistence and a change of habitat, and when they were attempting the formation of articulate language. In a condition so absolutely primitive, man is seen to be not only a child in the scale of humanity, but possessed of a brain into which not a thought or conception expressed by these institutions, inventions and discoveries had penetrated;—in a word, he stands at the bottom of the scale, but potentially all he has since become.

With the production of inventions and discoveries, and with the growth of institutions, the human mind necessarily grew and expanded; and we are led to recognize a gradual enlargement of the brain itself, particularly of the cerebral portion. The slowness of this mental growth was inevitable, in the period of savagery, from the extreme difficulty of compassing the simplest invention out of nothing, or with next to nothing to assist mental effort; and of discovering any substance or force in nature available in such a rude condition of life. It was not less difficult to organize the simplest form of society out of such savage and intractable materials. The first inventions and the first social organizations were doubtless the hardest to achieve, and were consequently separated from each other by the longest intervals of time. A striking illustration is found in the successive forms of the family. In this law of progress, which works in a geometrical ratio, a sufficient explanation is found of the prolonged duration of the period of savagery.

That the early condition of mankind was substantially as above indicated is not exclusively a recent, nor even a modern opinion. Some of the ancient poets and philosophers recognized the fact, that mankind commenced in a state of extreme rudeness from which they had risen by slow and successive steps. They also perceived that the course of their development was registered by a progressive series of inventions and discoveries, but without noticing as fully the more conclusive argument from social institutions.

The important question of the ratio of this progress, which has a direct bearing upon the relative length of the several ethnical periods, now presents itself. Human progress, from first to last, has been in a ratio not rigorously but essentially geometrical. This is plain on the face of the facts; and it could not, theoretically, have occurred in any other way. Every item of absolute knowledge gained became a factor in further acquisitions, until the present complexity of knowledge was attained. Consequently, while progress was slowest in time in the first period, and most rapid in the last, the relative amount may have been greatest in the first, when the achievements of either period are considered in their relations to the sum. It may be suggested, as not improbable of ultimate recognition, that the progress of mankind in the period of savagery, in its relations to the sum of human progress, was greater in degree than it was afterwards in the three sub-periods of barbarism; and that the progress made in the whole period of barbarism was, in like manner, greater in degree than it has been since in the entire period of civilization.

What may have been the relative length of these ethnical periods is also a fair subject of speculation. An exact measure is not attainable, but an approximation may be attempted. On the theory of geometrical progression, the period of savagery was necessarily longer in duration than the period of barbarism, as the latter was longer than the period of civilization. If we assume a hundred thousand years as the measure of man’s existence upon the earth in order to find the relative length of each period,—and for this purpose, it may have been longer or shorter,—it will be seen at once that at least sixty thousand years must be assigned to the period of savagery. Three-fifths of the life of the most advanced portion of the human race, on this apportionment, were spent in savagery. Of the remaining years, twenty thousand, or one-fifth, should be assigned to the Older Period of barbarism. For the Middle and Later Periods there remain fifteen thousand years, leaving five thousand, more or less, for the period of civilization.

The relative length of the period of savagery is more likely under than over stated. Without discussing the principles on which this apportionment is made, it may be remarked that in addition to the argument from the geometrical progression under which human development of necessity has occurred, a graduated scale of progress has been universally observed in remains of ancient art, and this will be found equally true of institutions. It is a conclusion of deep importance in ethnology that the experience of mankind in savagery was longer in duration than all their subsequent experience, and that the period of civilization covers but a fragment of the life of the race.