Savagery Morgan's Report

Lewis henry morgan argued that cultures were clearly evolving from stages of savagery through to more complex types of societies. This Boas would not have accepted. Savagery here meaning the earliest stages of time in which humans lived, foraging for food and moving about from place to place. Morgan thought these stages were pervasive throughout humanity and all society’s went through the same stages in the same order. This is what is meant within the term unilineal evolution. Pottery domestication, and iron tools incorporate much of the second stage, that of barbarism. With quite similar conclusions to those as in Tylor’s theories, Morgan arrived at his conclusions through a different focus. Fascinated with with Iroquois and studying their kinship systems and differences from euro society, Morgan identified the distinguishment of relatives on mother’s side of family and those of fathers side and merges father with father’s brother and mother with mother’s sister. Then father’s brother children and mothers sisters children, who are parallel cousins are merged with brother and sister. …show more content…
The idea that all civilizations would make the same discoveries in what would be the same sequential order is too much of an assumption to allow for any debate. The reality would be that each individual society faces its own issues and comes to evolve in its own way based on its’ reaction to the difficulties it is facing. This is where Boas historical particularism comes to the light. His ideas were that societies differing histories cannot be compared because of the ability for different paths to lead to the same conclusion and the same paths to lead to different conclusions. Given that each particular society has its own unique history, similar culture elements may be present in multiple societies for very different reasons. Based on these ideas, Boaz would say comparative notions between cultures are