Classical Evolutionism

 

Charles Darwin's work established the Monogenistic School, which believed that all humans have the same origin and no racial difference in human development. In the 19th century, European scholars sought to explain the diverse cultures found worldwide and the transformations that occurred in their societies. Anthropology was established to study human evolution and variation, both in terms of culture and physical differences.

Tylor, who held the first officially designated chair of anthropology, explained human cultural variations as stages of development of the same culture, with only one human culture and different differences across the globe. He used the "If I were a horse hypothesis" to determine the origin of an overtly human institution like religion, derived from this speculation.

Tylor and Lubbock described human evolution in terms of stages of evolution with an inbuilt notion of progress. Lubbock identified the archeological stages of stone, copper, and iron age with the stages of economic progress, such as savagery, barbarism, agriculture, and industrial civilization. Tylor also identified three stages of progress of human culture: savagery, barbarism, and civilization, with the transition from the first to the second marked by the advent of agriculture and from the second to the third by the invention of writing.

Lewis Henry Morgan, influenced by Tylor and Lubbock, wrote his Ancient Society (1877) and used the concept of Ethnical Periods to create seven distinct ethnical periods. Morgan identified four main ideas: idea of government, idea of property, idea of family, and idea of subsistence or technology, each following its own line of growth. Each ethnical period is marked by successive stages of growth of these ideas.