Question (A): Explain Luwis Henry Morgan Evolutionary Theory.

INTRODUCTION

Lewis Henry Morgan (November 21, 1818 –December 17, 1881) was an American ethnologist,

and writer. A founder of American anthropology, he is best known for his work on cultural

evolution and the kinship system. He trained as a lawyer and practiced law for several years.

Morgan represented the Seneca Native American tribe, and became deeply interested in

their culture and history, supporting them in their struggle against white oppression. After

becoming interested in their kinship structures, he expanded his investigations to other tribes in

various parts of the United States, publishing his results in a work that established kinship

systems as of one the major organizational concepts of cultural anthropology. Based on his

observations, Morgan developed his theory of cultural evolution: a theory of unilineal evolution

with three basic phases of development that all human societies went through—Hunter-

gatherer (the "savage" stage), agriculture and metal-work (the stage of "barbarism"), and the

highest stage beginning with writing (the stage of "civilization"). Morgan postulated that there

were also stages in the development of family structures—from promiscuity

and incestuous relationships through group marriage, and polygamy to the most advanced stage

of monogamous marriage.

Lewis Henry Morgan was born on November 21, 1818 in rural Rochester, New York, just south

of the town of Aurora. His parents, Jedediah and Harriet Morgan, were of New England stock.

Morgan graduated from Cayuga Academy in Aurora, and then went on to study law at Union

College in Schenectady, New York. He received an A.B. degree in 1840 and began practicing in

Aurora. In 1844 he opened a law office in Rochester.

Parallel to his work as a lawyer, Morgan studied the Classics of Ancient Greece and Rome. He

was enchanted with exotic and ancient cultures and deeply admired Native American Indians. He

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joined a young men's social club in Rochester and eventually renamed it into “Grand Order of

Iroquois,” after the Iroquois tribe. His book Ho-de-no-sau-nee or Iroquois (1851) became a

bestseller.

On August 13, 1851 Morgan married Mary Elizabeth Steele.

Morgan became an attorney for the Seneca tribe in the late 1840s, and helped them fight in

Congress for their land against the Ogden Land Company. The Seneca eventually adopted

Morgan into their tribe and gave him the name Tayadaowuhkuh or "One-bridging-the-gap" (a

bridge between the Indians and white man).

In the 1950s, Morgan invested in mining and railroad ventures, and managed to accumulate a

small fortune. After that he decided to spend more time on anthropology and pursue his interest

in it more scientifically. He noticed that North American Indians had a specific kinship system,

which he decided to study in more depth. Morgan eventually became the first person to classify

the Indian kinship system of relationship, in his The Indian Journals (1859-62).

While meeting with and studying Indian tribes, Morgan made frequent trips to the northern

wilderness, where he also became interested in the habits of the beaver. He published his The

American Beaver and His Works in 1868.

Morgan published numerous smaller papers on ethnology in the 1860s and 1870s. He however

remains famous for his masterpiece, Ancient Society (1877), in which he introduced his cultural

evolutionary theory.

Morgan served in the State Legislature as a Member of Assembly in 1861, representing the city

of Rochester. He was elected Senator in 1867, serving for only one year. Morgan received his

LL. D. in 1873. He was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of

Science in 1879.
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Lewis Morgan died at his home in Rochester, New York on December 17, 1881. His estate

became a part of the University of Rochester, hosting a college for women.

WORK

With the help of his Seneca tribe friend Ely S. Parker of the Tonawanda Creek Reservation,

Morgan studied the culture of the Iroquois and produced the book, The League of the Ho-de-no-

sau-nee or Iroquois (1851). This volume became one of the earliest examples of ethnography,

and this initial research led him to consider more general questions of human social organization.

Morgan conducted four expeditions in the period from 1859 and 1862. He traveled to the West,

up the Missouri River as far as western Montana, collecting information on kinship terminology

and other aspects of Native American culture. He published several books based on his studies,

including his seminal Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity (1871) and Houses and House-lives

of the American Aborigines (1881). His goal was to explain the wide variety of kinship systems

in indigenous societies as different stages in human evolution and social development.

Like Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, Morgan was a proponent of social evolution.

He proposed a unilinear scheme of evolution from primitive to modern, through which he

believed societies progressed. He saw Western civilization as the pinnacle of human

development, and modeled the development of all other societies in the image of the

development of the Western world:

A common principle of intelligence meets us in the savage, in the barbarian, and in civilized

man, It was in virtue of this that mankind were able to produce in similar conditions the same

implements and utensils, the same inventions, and to develop similar institutions from the same

original germs of thought. There is something grandly impressive in a principle which has

wrought out civilization by assiduous application from small beginnings; from the arrow head,

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which expresses the thought in the brain of a savage, to the smelting of iron ore, which

represents the higher intelligence of the barbarian, and, finally, to the railway train in motion,

which may be called the triumph of civilization (Morgan 1877).

According to his evolutionary theory view, societies were divided into three major stages of

social evolution, first proposed in Ancient Society (1877):

1. savagery - the lowest stage of development, where people relied on hunting and

collecting of plants for survival, a hunter-gatherer lifestyle; no soil tilling

or animal domestication occurred on this level;

2. barbarism – middle level of development, when people started to domesticate animals

and learn the techniques of agriculture and pottery;

3. civilization – the highest stage, which starts with the art of writing.

The first two stages were further divided into three sub-stages each, for a total of seven stages.

Morgan divided stages by technological inventions, like fire, bow, pottery in the "savage" era,

domestication of animals, agriculture, metalworking in the "barbarian" era, and the alphabet and

writing in the "civilization" era. Thus, Morgan introduced a link between social progress and

technological progress. Morgan viewed technological progress as the force behind the social

progress, and any social change — in social institutions, organizations or ideologies have their

beginning in the change of technology.

Each stage had a correlate in patterns of marriage, family, and political organization. In Ancient

Society, Morgan commented:

As it is undeniable that portions of the human family have existed in a state of savagery, other

portions in a state of barbarism, and still others in a state of civilization, it seems equally so that

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these three distinct conditions are connected with each other in a natural as well as necessary

sequence of progress (Morgan 1877, 3).

Morgan believed that human society began as a “horde living in promiscuity,” with no real

family structure. Over time, family relationships developed and marriage structures emerged. In

the second stage, sexual relationships still existed between brothers and sisters, while in the third

stage prohibitions against such practices began to appear. The third stage was the level

when group marriage was practiced. In the fourth stage, which corresponds to the barbaric

stages, males and females lived in loose relationships. After that came the male-

dominant polygamous society where males had several wives, followed by monogamous-family

society, which he considered the most developed stage in human relationships.

His theory became an important milestone in the development of Social Darwinism, despite the

fact that Morgan himself regarded humankind as developing from a common origin to a common

destiny, through the guidance of a "Supreme Intelligence" or God:

It may well serve to remind us that we owe our present condition, with its multiplied means of

safety and of happiness, to the struggles, the sufferings, the heroic exertions and the patient toil

of our barbarous, and more remotely, of our savage ancestors. Their labors, their trials and their

successes were a part of the plan of the Supreme Intelligence to develop a barbarian out of a

savage, and a civilized man out of this barbarian (Morgan 1877).

Legacy

Morgan’s work paved an important path in the development of both the concept of cultural

evolution and social Darwinism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels relied on Morgan’s accounts of

the evolution of indigenous peoples to fill in their own account of the development of capitalist

society. As a result, many see Morgan’s work in the light of Marxism.

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Within the discipline of anthropology, authors such as Leslie White championed Morgan's

legacy while Franz Boas attacked it. Today Morgan's evolutionary position is widely discredited

and unilinear theories of evolution are not highly regarded.

Nevertheless, many anthropologists recognize that Morgan was one of the first people to

systematically study kinship systems, which have come to be recognized as a basic organizing

principle in pre-urban societies. There is a prestigious annual lecture memorializing Morgan

given each year at the Anthropology Department of the University of Rochester.

Question (B): What Stage are we in Nigeria

According to the Walt Whitman Rostow's stages we are in Nigeria is currently in the Take-off

stage.

The stages are as follows:

1. Traditional society: This stage is characterized by subsistence agriculture, a poor

monetary system, and a lack of technological innovation.

2. Preconditions for takeoff: This stage is characterized by the development of an

infrastructure, such as roads, railways, and ports, as well as the emergence of a modern

middle class.

3. Take-off: This stage is characterized by rapid economic growth, driven by

industrialization and the export of manufactured goods.

4. Drive to maturity: This stage is characterized by a slowing of economic growth, as

the country reaches the limits of its natural resources and labor force.

5. Age of high mass consumption: This stage is characterized by a shift to a consumer-

driven economy, with a focus on the production of durable goods, such as cars,

appliances, and electronics.

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Nigeria is currently in the Take-off stage, as it has experienced rapid economic growth in recent

years. The country has a young and growing population, which is a major source of labor.

Nigeria also has a large oil and gas sector, which has helped to drive economic growth.

However, Nigeria still faces a number of challenges, such as corruption, poverty, and insecurity.

However, Nigeria still faces a number of challenges, such as:

 Corruption: Corruption is a major problem in Nigeria. It has impeded economic

growth and has led to the misallocation of resources.

 Poverty: Poverty is widespread in Nigeria. According to the World Bank, 40% of

Nigerians live below the national poverty line.

 Insecurity: Insecurity is a major problem in Nigeria. The country is plagued by

violence from terrorist groups, such as Boko Haram, and from armed gangs.

If Nigeria can overcome these challenges, it has the potential to reach the Drive to Maturity stage

in the coming decades.

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References

 Morgan, Lewis H. [1851] 1922. The League of the Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee or Iroquois (2

Volumes). Reprint Services Corporation. ISBN 0781251605

 Morgan, Lewis H. 1859. Circular, laws of consanguinity, and descent of the Iroquois.

Rochester, NY: Steam Press of A. Strong & Co.

 Morgan, Lewis H. 1959. The Indian journals 1859-62. University of Michigan Press.

 Fortes, Meyer. 1970. Kinship and the social order: The legacy of Lewis Henry Morgan.

The Lewis Henry Morgan lectures, 1963. Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co.

 Resek, Carl. 1960. Lewis Henry Morgan, American scholar. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

 Stern, Bernhard Joseph. 1931. Lewis Henry Morgan, social evolutionist. Chicago, Ill: The

University of Chicago Press.

 Tooker, Elisabeth. 1994. Lewis H. Morgan on Iroquois material culture. Tucson:

University of Arizona Press. ISBN 0816513473

 Trautmann, Thomas R. 1987. Lewis Henry Morgan and the invention of kinship.

Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520058496

 Lewis Henry Morgan. www.vintageviews.com.

 Walt Whitman Rostow's (2018), Stages in Nigeria Take-off- Stage.