In his work Ancient Society (1877) keeping in line with the evolutionary stages of the society as propagated by savagery, barbarism, and civilization, Morgan subdivided the first two categories into three sub-stages (lower, middle, and upper) and gave contemporary ethnographic examples of each stage. Importantly, each stage was characterized by technological innovations, changing forms of the family, the development of property rights, and the evolution of political complexity and the rise of the state.
Morgan set forth a three-stage evolutionary scale of progress that he called ethnical periods: Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization. He subdivided the first two stages into subperiods: lower, middle, and upper. Each stage of evolutionary progress was defined in terms of particular technological developments (Morgan 1877).
Each of these periods has a distinct culture and exhibits a mode of life more or less special and peculiar to itself. This specialization of ethnical periods renders it possible to treat a particular society according to its conditions of relative advancement, and to make it a subject of independent study and discussion. It does not affect the main result that different tribes and nations on the same continent, and even the same linguistic family, are in different conditions at the same time, since for our purpose the condition of each is the material fact, the time being immaterial (Morgan 1877:13). Morgan associated the stages of evolution with the evolution of social organization, going from a stage of promiscuous marriage to the development of the monogamous family.
| Ethnic Period | Sub Ethnic Period | Technology | Marriage | Family | Kinship | Property | Political Organization |
| Civilization | Phonetic, Alphabet and writing Ex: European | Monogamy | Monogamous family | Aryan / Semitic / Uralian | Based on territory . Male oriented property inheritance | State ; Country; Township | |
| Upper | Iron tools Ex: Greeks of Homeric time | Pairing | Patriarchal family | Turanian / Ganowanian | Male oriented property inheritance | Confederation | |
| Middle | Domestication of animal – Old world Ex: All people Cultivation of maize in New world ex: Zuni red Indians | Pairing | Syndiasmian Family | Turanian / Ganowanian | Male oriented | Tribe | |
| Barbarism | Lower | Pottery | Pairing | Syndiasmian Family | Turanian / Ganowanian | Male oriented | Phrartry |
| Upper | Bow and Arrow Ex: Polynesian | Group Marriage | Punaluan Family | Turanian / Ganowanian | Property linked with female | Matri-sib | |
| Middle | Fish subsistence and use of fire Ex: Australian aboriginals | Group Marriage | Punaluan Family | Turanian / Ganowanian | No concept | Sections | |
| Savagery | Lower | Fruits and nuts subsistence | Group Marriage | Consanguineous family | Malayan | No concept | Promiscus Horde / Band |
| No analogue in modern and historic societies | Promiscuity | No family | No Kinship | No concept | None |
- Civilization: Phonetic alphabet and systems of writing and written records; stage of family was monogamian; kin-term system was Aryan-Semitic-Uralian; examples include modem and ancient state-level societies.
- Upper Barbarism : Development of metallurgy based upon iron; stage of family was patriarchal ; A kin-term system was Ganowanian; examples include Grecian tribes of the A Homeric Age and the Germanic tribes in the time of Caesar.
- Middle Barbarism : Domestication of animals in the Old World. Domestication of maize and development of irrigation agriculture, use of bricks and stone in building construction in the New World; stage of family was syndyasmian ; kin -term system was Ganowanian; living representatives include village-level peoples in New Mexico(Aztec), Mesoamerica(inca), and Peru.
- Lower Barbarism : Invention of pottery; stage of family was syndyasmian; kin-term system was Ganowanian; living representatives include Indians east of the Missouri River.
- Upper Savagery: Invention of bow and arrow; stage of family was punaluan; kin-term system was Ganowanian; Living representatives include Athapascan tribes of Hudson ‘s Bay Territory.
- Middle Savagery :Fishing , discovery of the use of fire, Spread of people outside of original habitats to occupy much of the earth’s surface; stage of family was punaluan; kin-term system was Ganowanian; living representatives include Australian aborigines and many Polynesians including Hawaiian.
- Lower Savagery: Infancy of the human race, humans restricted to particular habitats; development of speech; fruits and nuts the basis of subsistence; stage of family was consanguine; kin -term system was Malayan ; no surviving examples.
Criticisms:
- Morgan , however, did not recognize any sort of logical or causal articulation between the technological and economic innovations by means of which he differentiated evolutionary stages and substages and associated forms of family types of social organization Such obscurities in Morgan’s work have led him to be classified as a materialist by some, as an idealist by others, and as an eclectic theoretician by still others .The lack of articulation between the technological traits Morgan used to demarcate evolutionary stages and other features of culture have rendered his typology difficult to use .
- Again, Barrett (1996: 51), more than terminological adjustments have been necessary to make what has not been discarded in Morgan’s work compatible with modern evolutionary thought, as evident in Service’s (1971) a band-tribe-chiefdom-state typology. Morgan’s use of subsistence strategies and techno-ecoinomic factors to distinguish different types of * cultures is still a viable idea, and as Leacock (1963: xi) points out, “ his general sequence of stages has been written into our understanding of prehistory and interpretation of archaeological remains.” This is true, but only because of substantial modifications to Morgan’s original typology (Rambo 1991: 30-32). It is only in the context of Morgan’s discussion of the transition from descent-based to territorially and politically based polities or state level societies that an articulation between the technological traits and other cultural features becomes evident, and even this is problematic, This aspect of Morgan’s work was emphasized in Marx and Engels’ reworking of his scheme Morgan’s evolutionary scheme as a whole is ‘fraught with errors . For example, Morgan’s association of Lower Savagery with a fruit and nut subsistence is contrary to archaeological evidence, which has shown most Paleolithic people were hunters and gatherers.
- Similarly, there is an overlap if not synchronization between the domestication of plants and animals , which Morgan places into two separate stages, with pastoralism preceding agriculture. Also, Morgan’s assumption that the manufacture of pottery, which “presupposes village life,” came before domestication of animals and cereal cultivation is false.
- Morgan’s other errors include placing the agricultural and highly stratified aboriginal Hawaiians, who possessed a complex government (see Kirch 1984, 1988), in the level of Middle Savagery because they lacked the bow and arrow. Similarly he failed to recognize the tremendous complexity achieved by the Aztecs, who possessed a highly developed state-level society, simply because they did not use iron tools.
- Finally, using writing as a criterion for “civilization” has led Morgan to underestimate the nature of the Inca society, which had become a super-state, or empire, without a system of writing (on the Aztec and Inca states, see Fiedel 1987).
- Another error is assigning the bronze-age people of the Homeric age to the stage of iron.