An attorney by profession, Lewis Henry Morgan became an anthropologist and ethnologist, noted for his comprehensive theory of social revolution. He was born near Aurora, New York, on November 21, 1818, and graduated from Union College in Schenectady in 1840. He read for the law and opened an office in Rochester in 1844. Although Morgan concentrated on his law duties, he also became interested in the Iroquois people of western New York State. This interest grew into a lifelong championship of native Americans against white oppressors. Morgan began an exhaustive study of the Iroquois Confederation, especially the Seneca tribe, which adopted him in 1846. He surveyed their history, social organizations, and material culture, culminating in his 1851 publication League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois. It is considered to be one of the earliest objective ethnographic works.
Between his law practice and investments, Morgan accumulated a small fortune. In 1856, he attended a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (In 1879, he would be elected president of the organization, the first anthropologist so honored.) After that meeting, Morgan decided to follow his anthropological interests in a scientific way. He had noted in his studies that the Seneca had a very different way of designating relatives than did white civilizations. The Seneca placed relatives such as uncles, cousins, nephews into a direct line that classified these kin as fathers, brothers, etc. Whereas white civilizations showed distinctions in the line of descent, the Seneca did not. In 1858, Morgan traveled to Michigan on a business trip. There he discovered that the Ojibwa tribe classified their kin in a manner very similar to the Seneca. If this system was characteristic of native Americans, might it not hold true for all tribal civilizations? If the system was used for tribes in Asia, for instance, might not the Asiatic origin of native Americans be proven"
Thus began a far-flung investigation of kinship terms used by various peoples. Morgan began by sending questionnaires to likely informants. Evidence that he was on the right track came from as far as India. From 1859 to 1862, Morgan undertook four field trips in his quest to gather information on classification terms and other aspects of culture. His travels took him up the Missouri River to western Montana. Finally, in 1871, the results of his pioneer investigation produced Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, an influential work that inaugurated the modern anthropological study of kinship systems as a basic principle of organization in most tribal societies. Morgan showed how widespread this classification system was in both the Old and New Worlds. It remains his most lasting contribution to the field.
Despite the importance of his pioneer work, many anthropologists today disagree with Morgan's conclusions. Morgan believed that this kinship classification system resulted from a "period of promiscuity" when it was not possible to distinguish father from uncle or son from nephew, for instance. Although marriage rules were later adopted, the old terminology remained in use and later still, according to Morgan, as societies became more civilized, distinctions were made between one's own immediate family and other relatives. However, anthropologists generally do not agree that a "period of promiscuity" existed in the development of the family.
From the kinship study, Morgan developed a theory of cultural evolution expressed in his most famous work Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (1877), the first major scientific account of civilization's origin and evolution. Morgan stated that the three stages in human cultural evolution--savagery, barbarism, and civilization--resulted mainly from changes in the production of food. Savagery, Morgan's term for the hunting-and-gathering stage, was preagricultural. Barbarism was a period of settled agriculture and the making of pottery. The more advanced stage was civilization, an urban society with more advanced agriculture and marked by the invention of writing.
Lewis Morgan, who died in Rochester, New York, on December 17, 1881, believed that human evolution is essentially a single development from savagery to civilization and his emphasis on material factors in evolution caught the attention of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who viewed Morgan's work as complementing their own. Ancient Societyis viewed by Marxists as a classic work.
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