Publisher's Synopsis
Reading this book takes you into deep considerations of who you are.
Lewis Henry Morgan dives into the development of society in prehistoric times. His controversial proposition is that the earliest human domestic institution was the matrilineal clan, not the patriarchal family.
In his book, Morgan rejects the Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron, as being insufficient characterizations of progress and for overlapping, and instead suggested that a society has a life like that of an individual and divided it into three main stages: Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization, with three subdivisions for each.
He demonstrates the first distinction of man from other animals, and reveals the origin of language, beginning as gestures, then evolving into monosyllabic, and then polysyllabic vocalizations.
Morgan is the only American social theorist to be cited by such diverse scholars as Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud in their works. Understand his fundamental thoughts on social evolution and learn why this book is banned in many universities worldwide!
"There exists a definitive book on the origins of society, as definitive as Darwin's book for biology, and it is, naturally, Morgan's Ancient Society."
Friedrich Engels
