Ancient Society

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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.

HORACE.

[Illustration]

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.

Cum prorepserunt primis animalia terris, Mutum et turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter Unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro Pugnabant armis, quæ post fabricaverat usus: Donec verba, quibus voces sensusque notarent, Nominaque invenere: dehinc absistere bello, Oppida coeperunt munire, et ponere leges, Ne quis fur esset, neu latro, neu quis adulter.

—Horace, Sat., I, iii, 99.

“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.