Tylor, Morgan, Frazer, Maine and McLennan

The development of anthropology as an academic discipline in the 19th century was heavily influenced by the school of classical evolutionism. These scholars attempted to explain the history of human culture, social institutions, and belief systems through a framework of progressive development.

Edward Burnett Tylor

Tylor is often regarded as the father of academic anthropology. He provided the first scientific definition of culture as that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

Key Contributions

• He proposed a universal evolutionary progression for religion, moving from animism to polytheism and finally to monotheism.
• He introduced the concept of survivals, which are cultural practices that persist in modern societies even after the original conditions for their existence have disappeared.
• His comparative method relied on the analysis of ethnographic data from diverse cultures to reconstruct the history of human civilization.

Lewis Henry Morgan

Morgan was a pioneer in studying kinship and social organization. He conducted extensive fieldwork among the Iroquois, which grounded his theories in empirical observation more than many of his peers.

Key Contributions

• He identified three major stages of human progress: Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization.
• He linked these stages to technological inventions such as the bow and arrow, pottery, and the alphabet.
• He categorized kinship systems into classificatory systems, where relatives are grouped into broad categories, and descriptive systems, where specific biological terms are used.
• His work on the Iroquois social structure provided a foundation for understanding the role of descent in tribal societies.

James George Frazer

Frazer is known for his massive compilation of global myths, rituals, and magical practices. His work focused heavily on the transition from magical thinking to religious belief and eventually to scientific understanding.

Key Contributions

• He articulated the laws of sympathetic magic, which include the law of similarity (imitative magic) and the law of contact (contagious magic).
• His seminal work, The Golden Bough, analyzed the role of dying and rising gods in various cultures and their connection to seasonal fertility rites.
• He argued that humanity underwent a cognitive evolution from magic, which sought to compel nature, to religion, which sought to appease deities.

Henry Maine

Maine was a jurist who specialized in the evolution of legal and political systems. He argued that human societies evolved from systems based on status to those based on contract.

Key Contributions

• He identified the patriarchal family as the fundamental unit of early human society.
• He proposed that early societies were organized by status, where an individual’s rights and duties were determined by birth and family position.
• Modern societies, he argued, moved toward a system based on contract, where individuals are free to determine their own social and economic relationships through voluntary agreements.
• His analysis influenced how scholars understand the development of private property and individual rights.

John Ferguson McLennan

McLennan specialized in the study of marriage and family evolution. He was particularly interested in the origins of marital customs and the development of kinship reckoning.

Key Contributions

• He coined the term exogamy to describe the practice of marrying outside one’s own social group or kinship unit.
• He proposed the theory of primitive marriage, suggesting that early societies practiced wife capture, which eventually evolved into the ritualized symbolism seen in wedding ceremonies.
• He emphasized the importance of matrilineal descent in early societies, arguing that it preceded patrilineal descent due to the uncertainty of paternity in early sexual unions.

Comparative Overview of Theoretical Focus

Conceptual Facts

• The classical evolutionary school was built on the assumption of psychic unity of mankind, which posits that all human beings share the same basic mental faculties, leading them to develop similar cultural solutions to environmental challenges.
• This idea was used to justify the use of the comparative method, as it assumed that different cultures at similar levels of technological development would produce similar social structures.
• While these scholars were influenced by Charles Darwin, their theories on social evolution were largely independent of biological natural selection. They focused on the transmission of cultural traits through learning and tradition rather than genetic inheritance.
• Many of their specific evolutionary stages, such as the rigid progression from savagery to civilization, have been discarded by modern anthropology due to their ethnocentric bias and lack of global evidence.

However, their contribution in professionalizing the study of human society and identifying key areas like kinship, magic, and law remains foundational to the discipline.