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''Ancient Society'' is an 1877 book by the American anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan. Building on the data about kinship and social organization presented in his 1871 ''Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family'', Morgan develops his theory of the three stages of human progress, i.e., from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization. Contemporary European social theorists such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were influenced by Morgan's work on social structure and material culture, as shown by Engels' ''The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State'' (1884). ==The concept of progress== The dominant idea of Morgan's thought is that of ''progress''.〔This article places words and phrases quoted from Morgan in Italics, rather than quotes, for the reader's visual convenience.〕 He conceived it as a ''career'' of social ''states'' arranged in a ''scale'' on which man has ''worked his way up'' from the ''bottom''. Progress is ''historically true of the entire human family'', but not uniformly. Different ''branches'' of the family have evidenced ''human advancement'' to different conditions. He thought the scale had universal application or ''substantially the same in kind'', with ''deviations from uniformity ... produced by special causes''. Morgan hopes therefore to discern ''the principal stages of human development''.〔Chapter 1, initial〕 Morgan arrived at the idea of a society's progress in part through analogy to individual development. It is an ''ascent'' to ''human supremacy on the earth''. The prime analogate is an individual working his way up in society; that is, Morgan, who was well read in classics, relies on the Roman ''cursus honorum,'' rising through the ranks, which became the basis of the English ideas of career and working your way up, to which he blends in the rationalist idea of a ''scala,'' or ladder, of life. The idea of growth or development is also borrowed from individuals. He proposed that a society has a life like that of an individual, which develops and grows. He gives the analogy an anthropological twist and introduces the comparative method coming into vogue in other disciplines. Lewis names units called ''ethna,'' by which he means ''inventions'', ''discoveries'' and ''domestic institutions''. The ethna are compared and judged higher or lower on the scale, pair by pair. Morgan's ethna appear to comprise at least some of Edward Burnett Tylor's cultural objects. Morgan mentions Tylor a number of times in the book. Morgan's standard of higher or lower is not clearly expressed. By higher he appears to mean whatever contributes better to control over the environment, victory over competitors, and spread of population. He does not mention Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, but Darwin referred to Morgan's work in his own. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ancient Society」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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