From: bm665@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jay Robert Hauben)
Newsgroups: alt.amateur-comp,misc.misc,soc.misc,sci.bio
Subject: Amateur Archeology: Evolution of the Human Family a la Lewis Morgan
Date: 7 Nov 1992 06:04:09 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: bm665@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jay Robert Hauben)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


                  Evolution of the Human Family
 
     Charles Darwin (1809-1882) set himself the task of ascer
taining whether the origin or transmutation of species was a 
totally biological process. His particular contribution was his 
discovery and careful description of that process in The Origin 
of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of 
Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (1859).
 
     Darwin carefully described natural selection as a naturally 
occurring process. This process requires otherwise appearing 
variations among the members of a species. These are understood 
today to be due to mutations in an individual's genetic material. 
Over a very long period of time, the mutations which better adapt 
the species to its environment and for the competition with other 
species determine the dominant characteristics of the members of 
the species. Darwin succeeded admirably in setting the basis for 
the conclusion that nothing more than natural selection was 
necessary to have produced the human species as a development 
from precedent species. A natural next question is, has human 
society and behavior also evolved by this mechanism?
 
     In 1877, Lewis Henry Morgan published Ancient Society or 
Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through 
Barbarism to Civilization. Morgan had done research for 40 years 
to solve the puzzle why among American Indians and most other 
primitive peoples did the relation names used like "brother", 
"sister", "mother", "father", etc. (the consanquinity) not match 
the biological relationship among the people? Morgan discovered 
that the organization of families in human societies has gone 
through a number of changes. The evidence implied that in the 
earliest prehistorical stages, human groups were of a particular
ly cooperative and sharing nature including casual sexual rela
tions among whole groups of males and females appearently without 
coercion, resistance, resentment or social stigma. All offspring 
were considered children of the whole group and were treated that 
way. In time, social structure developed among all groups of 
people with a woman and her sisters including what we would call 
female cousins of all orders sharing as husbands a man and all 
his brothers and male cousins. In such societies, all children 
called all adult males "father" and all adult females "mother" 
while calling all of themselves "brother" or "sister". Morgan 
found evidence for the eventual central importance of the women 
in such groupings especially as hunting developed. The women were 
the central core of most groups, doing agricultural work and 
caring for the children, while the men were often away on some
times precarious hunts. Paternity was only certain with respect 
to mothers and so kinship lines were universally matrilineal.
 
     Eventually in some groups, rather than bringing back only 
meat, animals were brought back alive and domesticated. Growing 
herds were possible which enhanced the importance of the men in 
these groups especially if the herd had to be moved to new pas
ture land. In such cases, the men went with the herds, and the 
women and children began to follow the men. In time, the transfer 
of his animals to a man's children required knowledge of who his 
children were. To achieve such knowledge, greater social res
trictions on sexual pairing especially for women became the norm 
causing the appropriate change in the form of the family.
 
     Morgan was able to document five different forms of human 
families including the monogamous family which predominates to
day. Morgan's important contribution was his demonstration that 
the human family changed sequentially from one form to the next. 
But was this change an evolution by the mechanism of natural 
selection?
 
     The changes that Morgan discovered through which the human 
family had gone took place over about 50,000 years. The fossil 
evidence we have implies that physiologically there are no major 
differences between the humans of 50,000 years ago and those of 
today. This is a time period much shorter than that required by 
natural selection to modify physiological features. Unless the 
human family was influenced by a genetic mechanism different from 
that responsible for physiological features (for which there is 
no evidence), the family has not changed because of genetic vari-
ations. On the other hand, Morgan observed that the changes in 
the human family as well as changes of other characteristics of 
human societies could be correlated with changes in how the so-
cieties gathered and/or produced the necessities of life. Morgan 
recognized three main stages of human society, savagery (hunter, 
gathers), barbarism (agriculture and animal husbandry) and civ
ilization (commerce and industry), each with substages corres
ponding to progressive improvements particularly in procuring 
food. He concluded, " it is ... probable that the great epochs of 
human progress have been identified more or less directly with 
the enlargement of the sources of subsistence" (Ancient Society, 
The World Publishing Co., New York, 1963, page 19).
 
     A careful study of Darwin's natural selection and of Mor
gan's demonstration of the evolution of the human family would 
show that, where as human society does evolve, it is not a bio
logical process. The sequential changes in the human family and 
in human society in general take place at a pace much more rapid 
than does the process of natural selection and these changes are 
the result not of mutations or changes in genetic material but of 
changes in how a society of humans procure their necessities of 
life. The study of human society and behavior therefore requires 
not so much the study of biology or of other animals as a study 
of the connection between procuring the necessities of life and 
the social forms and behaviors that result. The Royal Ontario 
Museum in Toronto has a very fine Darwin exhibit on one floor and 
an exhibit of the history of civilization based on the develop
ment of the means of production on another. These two exhibits 
demonstate that genetic development and social development are 
two distinct processes each unfolding according to its own set of 
scientific laws. Each generation of humans passes on to the next 
a genetic legacy and a legacy of knowledge. The form of the human 
family is a result more of the latter than the former.


Xref: sparky alt.amateur-comp:187 misc.misc:3741 soc.misc:1032 sci.bio:4086