Evolutionary direction: establishment

Anthropological Theories

Osama Elnur

Evolutionary direction: establishment

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881)

An American lawyer and anthropologist, he was interested in studying the Iroquois and other Native Americans in the Northeast. Morgan tried to reconstruct the image of human societies and classify them in order to learn about the history of European society and the stages it passed through to reach what it is in his time. Morgan was influenced by Bachofen's book "The Right of the Mother" and by La Vito's research.

In 1851, Morgan published a paper entitled “The League of the Iroquois,” in which he highlighted the matriarchal system prevailing among the Iroquois. Morgan's interest in kinship systems and social and political systems was great, which prompted him to make extensive trips among the Amerind, and he corresponded with missionaries working in different parts of the world, inquiring about the kinship systems and social organizations of the peoples among whom they preached. He also reviewed Henry Maine's book, "The Ancient Law," which was published in 1861. As a result of those researches and readings, Morgan published a book on "Systems of Kinship and Intermarriage in the Human Family" in 1871, and in 1877 he appended it to his book, "The Ancient Society."

Morgan succeeded in proving, in general, that kinship relations dominate the history of primitive man, and that these relations have a history and a logic. Morgan discovered that the kinship systems in primitive societies are stratified and not descriptive, and that their fulcrum is the exchange of women between groups, and that external marriage (alien/exogamous) is not incompatible with carnal marriage (internal/endogamous) because alien marriage between clans is a complement to carnal marriage between tribes. Morgan explained that the clan is the dominant form of social organization among all peoples who have passed the stage of savagery. Morgan distinguished two forms of clan, the clan that belongs to the mother and the clan that belongs to the father, and he argued for the historical and logical precedence of maternal kinship systems over paternal kinship systems, thus adopting one of Bachofen's hypotheses.

Morgan started his analysis of kinship systems from an incident he observed among the Iroquois, with whom he lived and whose lives he learned extensively. The kinship system prevailing among the Iroquois was “contradictory to their actual familial relationships.” At a time when there was no doubt about the reality of the people who were their fathers, mothers, daughters, and brothers, Morgan called them (according to him as a European who adopts the descriptive system of kinship) uncles, aunts, etc. The Iroquos considered parallel cousins ​​to be brothers and sisters, and only cross cousins ​​(i.e. descendants of the father's sisters and the mother's brothers) were called first cousins. Morgan was convinced, after surveying and reviewing more than 250 lists of kinship terms throughout the world, that the distinctive contradiction of the Iroquois kinship system also existed in India and North America. To explain this general phenomenon, Morgan assumed that the kinship system corresponds to an extinct family form that could be reconstructed if the mystery of that system could be solved. This contradiction was an expression of the varying speed of the development of the family, the active dynamic element, and of the development of kinship systems, the separate passive element.

Comparing the 250 kinship systems and family forms that he had collected, Morgan imagined that he had discovered in the Hawaiian family (the island of Hawaii) a family form that corresponded to the terms of kinship among the Iroquois, but since the Hawaiian kinship system did not also match the Hawaiian family form, there was no escape from gradually returning to “an even more primitive family form, a form whose existence has not been proven anywhere, but which must have existed.” Because the kinship system would not exist without it,” Morgan said.

This original, primitive form could only be, in Morgan's view, a case of "sexual promiscuity" between members of the "primitive herd." In this case, all brothers and sisters, fathers and children were husbands and wives, and mahrams did not exist. The next stage witnessed the birth of the prohibition of marriage between descendants and descendants, while brothers and sisters in every generation remained husbands and wives. The family must have been "nervous" at that time. Although Morgan believes that even the most primitive peoples do not provide conclusive examples of this type of family, he says: “This family must have existed because the subsequent development of the family forced it and the Hawaiian system forces us to accept that.”

The second advance was the prohibition of marriage between brothers and sisters of the mother's line, and then between brothers and sisters of kinship. In this form of family, men become the joint husbands of a group of women who are not their sisters, and the sisters, in return, become the joint wives of men who are not their brothers. Thus, Morgan believes that this family form explains the kinship system among the Iroquois, and that this system coexists with a different family form, the "consort" family, in which the number of marriage taboos is also greater and in which the spouses assume more importance. In all previous forms of group marriage, it was not possible to determine the lineage other than through the mother. Then the social organization to which the "consort" family corresponded took the form of a clan, that is, a group of branches of one mother who were from now on forbidden from marrying into each other. Between them.

The clan in its first form could only be based on the mother's lineage. The clan formed, in Morgan's words, "the base of the social system of most, if not all, barbarian peoples, and from it we move immediately to civilization in Greece as well as in Rome."

The clan, which was based on the mother's lineage, was replaced by the clan, which was based on the father's lineage, which did not achieve its full development until the ancient world after the emergence of livestock breeding led to a change in production relations and forms of ownership in favor of men. The development of livestock raising and then agriculture led to the birth of the patriarchal family, and the development of the latter led to the birth of the modern conjugal family.

It developed starting from the clan system, the tribal organization, and then the union of tribes. This was the highest point reached, in Morgan’s opinion, by the most advanced indigenous American Indians: the Iroquois, the Aztecs, and the Incas. A tribe, according to Morgan, is a group of clans that have their own land and dialect, and have common religious concepts and worship. It elects its leaders, and its common affairs are managed by the tribal council, headed by a supreme leader with limited powers. The people always have the right to intervene in discussions.

This organization, in Morgan's opinion, was an organization of "military democracy" that, by its military character, entailed exceptional forms of authority reserved for warlords, but at the same time, by its democratic character, it was incompatible with the existence of conflicting classes and a state. Accordingly, Morgan believes that the kingdoms, empires, kings, and princes that the Spaniards discovered in Mexico were nothing but the invention of their imagination, ignorance, and preconceived Western opinions, in a way that completely contradicts all accumulated scientific knowledge about the structure of tribal society among the American Indians.

Morgan assumed a number of social evolutionary stages, and linked each of these stages to a specific pattern according to the stages of cultural development, meaning that each stage is distinguished by cultural relations that appear in forms of systems that correspond to the sub-stages. Morgan assumed that all human societies are subject in their development to one law as long as the history of the human race is one, “the unity of origin of humanity and the unification of human needs at the same degree of development, when social relations are at the same degree of equality.”

Thus, Morgan believes that human culture has followed a unilateral path in its development, meaning that it moves through history according to a series of successive episodes, meaning that there are specific and inevitable stages that every culture must pass through, from the lowest states to the highest and most advanced states. Morgan assumed and sought to find a relationship between two major elements in the prehistoric stage: the stage of savagery and the stage of barbarism, and he divided each stage into lower, middle and higher sub-stages before reaching the stage of civilization. Thus, primitive history regained comprehensive cohesion and depth... the multiplicity of faces appears as follows:

1- The lower stage of savagery: Morgan sees the childhood of humanity, where man lived in an animal-like stage, wandering on his face, feeding on plant roots and some wild fruits...gathering and gathering.

2- The middle stage of savagery: a stage in which man advanced slightly from what he was in the previous stage by being guided to the discovery of fire and its use in cooking food and lighting caves. This resulted in humans becoming acquainted with new types of foods, especially meat and fish.

3- The highest stage of savagery: in which man discovered the bow and arrow, which helped him change his diet and economy in general. Man in this stage became a hunter of animals and relied on their meat. That is, man began at this stage to achieve the transition from a gatherer and gatherer of food to a producer of his food. Morgan assumes that this progress in the economy is linked to a similar progress in the form of social and religious organization.

4- The stage of lower barbarism: It is characterized by man’s access to new innovations, the most important of which is pottery making, and by man’s emergence from his narrow isolation and his spread to wider areas, and the beginning of the emergence of social groups.

5- The middle stage of barbarism: during which man was able to smelt metals and manufacture metal tools and machines, and the beginning of the discovery of pictorial writing.

Morgan believes that after passing these six stages, man reached the stage of civilization, which is characterized by the invention of the alphabet and writing, a stage that continues to this day.

Morgan emphasizes this distinctive sequence of cultural development and considers it necessary to match it with reality. Morgan tried to apply these stages to some of his contemporary human cultures, and he saw that the indigenous people of Australia could represent the middle stage of savagery, while the Polynesians represented the upper savage stage, and the Iroquois represented the post-higher stage of barbarism. As for European culture in his time, it represented the seventh stage - the civil one. The first stage remains - the lower brutality for which Morgan did not find anyone to represent it.

Morgan opposed civilization to the history of primitive man in its brutal and barbaric forms, and likened this opposition between classless societies organized according to kinship relations and class societies dominated by states and based on private property, exchange, and the accumulation of wealth.

Morgan envisioned the stage of civilization itself as a transitional era in the development of humanity that must lead, by virtue of the laws of evolution, to “the resurrection of freedom, equality, and brotherhood as the ancient clans knew them.”

Edward Brent Taylor (1832-1917)

A British anthropologist who became a professor of anthropology at the University of Oxford in 1896 and remained there until his retirement in 1913. He made a significant contribution to the study of culture and was one of the pioneers of the evolutionary trend. He advocated the biological theory and contributed to the development of comparative studies of religions.

Taylor believes that culture evolved from uncomplicated forms to complex forms, showing his agreement with Morgan regarding the stages of cultural succession from savagery to barbarism to civilization. His book “Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization” in 1869, which was followed by his book “Primitive Society” in 1871, started from an evolutionary point of view.

Taylor is credited with inventing the term culture as an anthropological concept, as “whatever is understood from science and belief, art and morals, traditions and customs, and any other capabilities that a person acquires as a member of a society.” Taylor's definition of culture was considered at the time one of the most important definitions, but with the advancement of scientific methods and the expansion of research and field studies, this definition was no longer appropriate. The limitation of this definition appears to be that it relied on descriptive ethnographic studies recorded by travelers and did not go beyond being merely a descriptive narration of the elements and content of culture.

Taylor considered culture a helpful element in understanding the history of human beings, as long as culture is a historical phenomenon that distinguishes man from all other beings, and man acquires it by learning from the society in which he lives. With this understanding, Taylor believes that culture is always the culture of a group - a society. But at the same time, he does not neglect the study of the individual's mental processes, considering culture the result of many individual actions. Thus, Taylor assumes that the study of culture is the study of the history of the development of the individual in society as it is the mental historical process of the development of human customs and traditions from their uncomplicated state to their complex and even more complex state. But it is noted that Taylor, unlike Morgan, does not insist on counting the stages of the development of culture from savagery to barbarism, as civilization is a binding inevitability, while at the same time maintaining the principle of evolutionary progress from the lowest to the highest as a positive reality.

Taylor was the first to study the methods of lighting fire among primitives, and the method of cooking with hot stones among groups that were not familiar with pottery making. He also carefully studied the local expatriate marriage system, and the marriage system with maternal lineages (cousin or aunt). Taylor agreed with Adolphe Bastian's hypothesis, which sees psychological explanations for cultural development. Taylor says that culture, like plants, is characterized by diffusion rather than development, and he believes that people took more from their neighbors than they invented or discovered on their own. He believes that there are a number of discoveries that originated in one place and spread from there to other places: for example, pottery, which he believes spread in America from Mexico, and the bow, arrow, and chess, which originated in India and spread in the New World across the Pacific Ocean to Mexico.

These views constitute a contradiction in Taylor's evolutionary writings, which stems from his belief in the unity of the human soul, whose reflections become similar in similar circumstances anywhere. However, despite the manifestation of some such statements regarding the cultural spread of some aspects, Taylor, in view of the totality of his ideas, is an evolutionary one, and an advocate of simple development from the bottom to the top, from the uncomplicated to the complex, from the absurd to the reasonable. Although he gave cultural systems an evolutionary history, he at the same time acknowledged the existence of cases of stagnation and cultural regression without this representing a radical shift in the general picture of development from the bottom up. The matriarchal system is older than the patriarchal system, and the Kuvada rituals are an intermediate stage between the two systems in which the matriarchal system is mixed with the patriarchal system, where the Kuvada rituals represent “cultural remnants” that indicate the presence of the previous form in the bowels of the existing form.

In the field of studying beliefs, Taylor presented the concept of animism as a theory to explain religion and its global development. From his field study of the American Indian tribes of the Pueblo people in the southwestern United States, he concluded that all religious beliefs emerged as a result of the wrong interpretation of some phenomena to which humans are exposed, such as dreams, diseases, sleep, and death. He believes that the phenomenon of dreams and the phenomenon of death had the greatest impact in directing human belief. Dreams are what inspired man with the idea of ​​the soul and the body, because the primitive imagines himself moving from one place to another while he is asleep, and he may even see himself performing tasks that he is unable to do when he is awake. Then his beliefs arose that the soul leaves the body during sleep, moving away to other worlds, and then returns to it upon awakening. If the soul does not return to the body, it means death. Taylor discovered that these ideas were linked to rituals and customs, and were also linked to the custom of offering sacrifices to the spirits of the ancestors. Hence, he proposed the term animism (animism), meaning the belief in the existence of spirits, gods, jinn, demons, and other invisible images, which Taylor considered to be the cultural origin of religious beliefs of all kinds, which developed into the idea of ​​the supreme God in the civil stage.

If eighteenth-century scholars viewed the ritual practices associated with European beliefs as metaphysical, Taylor viewed them as cultural rituals that must be understood based on their internal meaning and compared with the overall degrees of progress. Taylor expressed this: “The stage of the law of survival does not have any scientific significance, because most of what we call metaphysical beliefs belong to this sector such that a rational explanation can be given to them.” If the practices and rituals of an unseen nature are nothing other than the remnants of a previous stage of development, then we must ask what these remnants express.”

Taylor says that some practices should be considered remnants, that they have a scientific reason, or that they serve, at least, rituals that are related to the place and time of their origin, and that if they appear absurd, it is because they are used in new societal conditions, and thus they appear to have lost their meaning... With an explanation of this kind, that is, by returning to a forgotten meaning, it is possible to clarify most of the rituals that can only be said to be foolishness or rare practices.

Taylor does not doubt the superiority of this positivist analysis, which leads to true understanding. With the help of this method, “forgotten or lost connotations” are rediscovered, which for a long time were considered occult and meaningless practices. With this positivist analysis, according to Taylor, the priests in primitive societies turned into magicians who knew something, but their knowledge, despite what it seemed like, was not actually worth anything. Then Taylor writes, saying: “Magic does not have its origins in sorcery and fraud, and it was not initially practiced from these standpoints. The magician usually learns his craft in a good spirit, and maintains this spirit in practicing his knowledge from beginning to end. He is like the deceiver and the deceived at the same time, adding the energy of the believer to the trickery of the hypocrite. If the secret sciences existed from the beginning for the purpose of deception, then some absurd things may suffice for that, but what we actually find is science.” Wrong, developed in a completely systematic way. It is a true but wrong philosophy, developed by the human mind in a way that we can understand to a large extent, and whose origin goes back to the human mental structure.

In such a concept, the mental ability inherent in every individual disappears, as does the possibility of understanding his practices and beliefs, when he does not pay attention to the game of the priests. Instead, the claim that it is difficult to understand the language of the primitive or understand his actions prevails, and the claim that his mental status is closed prevails. On the other hand, for anthropological theory, this feature of closure is the gateway and condition for understanding and interpreting “myth.” This is how Taylor explains, “The meaning of myth cannot be limited to the limits proposed by eighteenth-century theorists who saw it as merely a naive and flat moral connotation, or an organized secret science, because the laws of myth are nothing but the laws of language and the laws of imagination, which are logical laws and constitute a system with its own meaning.”

Taylor argues that the meaning of practices for primitives, as for their priests, does not result from the influence that language exerts on the human mind. Only in positive science does it become possible to understand language and consider it conducive to it. Hence, in Taylor's opinion, anthropological theory is the only one capable of providing science related to the mental content of myth, and of understanding non-Western cultures in general. It is, in fact, the fruit of a unique “historical and cognitive focus”: “There is a kind of border that must be on one side in terms of interaction with myth and crossed on the other side in order to be able to understand it. Fortunately, we are on the side of this border, and that we can also cross it by our will,” Taylor declares. The matter is so clear that Taylor concludes that anthropological theory is the only one that is “reasonable” from this angle, not primitive culture itself.

Primitive cultures dissolve in Taylorist analysis, being considered dead remnants or rationalizations, and therefore must disappear from practice and from practical life. It must disappear, as he says, “because of its connection with the lower stages of the history of the mental world.”

Follow cultural evolutionary theory