RESEARCHES IN THE LINES OF HUMAN PROGRESS FROM SAVAGERY THROUGH BARBARISM TO CIVILIZATION LEWIS H. MORGAN, LL.D Member of the National Academy of Sciences, Author of “The League of the Iroquois, Affinity of the Human Family," Etc. Narcit was missa reverti. HORACE. NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 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 terria, Mutum et turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter Pugnabant armis, quæ post fabricaverat usus: -Horace, Sat., I, iii, 99. "Modern science claims to be proving, by the most careful and exhaustive study of ma 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, religlon, 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 of the contributions of myriads of foraminifers.”—Dr. J. Kaines, Authropologia, 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. Since the probable length of their career is connected with geological periods, a limited measure of time is excluded. One hundred or two hundred thousand years would be an unextravagant estimate of the period from the disappearance of the glaciers in the northern hemisphere to the present time. Whatever doubts may attend any estimate of a period, the actual duration of which is unknown, the existence of mankind extends backward immeasurably, and loses itself in a vast and profound antiquity. This knowledge changes materially the views which have prevailed respecting the relations of savages to barbarians, and of barbarians to civilized men. It can now be asserted upon convincing evidence that savagery preceded barbarism in all the tribes of mankind, as barbarism is known to |