Ancient Society (Summarized Edition)

Ancient Society (1877) proposes a unilineal sequence from Savagery to Barbarism to Civilization, keyed to pivotal inventions—fire, pottery, agriculture, metallurgy, writing—and to linked changes in kinship, property, and government. Drawing expansive comparative evidence, prominently from Iroquoian institutions, Morgan fuses ethnographic observation with stadial history. His taxonomic chapters on ...