Unilineal Evolution

• NOTE: This theory is now considered ethnocentric, offensive, and has negative connotations behind it. Many of the words/quotes of these anthropologists reflected their ideas of this theory, but is no longer considered by most modern anthropologists.

Unilineal evolutionism is the first developed anthropological theory generated in the 19th century. This theory claims that all cultures/societies go through the same progressive stages of evolution from savagery, barbarianism, “civilization”. In other words, all societies evolve in one direction. Peoples and Bailey explain unilineal evolutionism in which “the earliest ‘simple’ (primitive) cultures had given rise to ever more ‘complex’ (more advanced) cultures, and later cultures were, in some objective sense, superior to earlier cultures” (Peoples and Bailey 2011: 72).

The two main anthropologists that founded this form of evolutionism were E. B. Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan. E. B. Tylor’s most prominent work was titled Primitive Culture, published in 1871. While composing his work, he was inspired by Charles Darwin and his works specifically on evolution (Diah et al. 2014: 157). Over time, while studying how humans evolve to where they are now, he developed the idea of unilineal evolution. He “assumed that hunter gatherers and other non-Western societies were living at a lower level of existence than the ‘civilized’ societies in Europe” (Scupin and DeCorse 2012: 281). In addition to this, he incorporated religion to many of his reasons regarding this theory.

Lewis Henry Morgan was the other prominent anthropologist that contributed to the unilineal evolution theory. His main work, Ancient Society, was published in 1877. Morgan focused and narrowed in on Tylor’s concept of unilineal evolution. Langess states that Morgan was “interested in the evolution of a number of specific things, such as subsistence, government, language, the family, religion, house life, architecture, and property” (Langess 1974: 17). To elaborate, Morgan would explain the evolution of the family, through the Hawaiian society, for example, by saying that humans in the past would live in ‘primitive hoards’ and have unregulated sex, resulting in people not able to recognize their real parents. Then, brother-sister marriages, group marriages, and matriarchal society arose sequentially. Lastly, the patriarchal form of family became the dominant one where men took charge of the household (Scupin and DeCorse 2012: 282). Because of Morgan’s interpretation of this theory, scientific racism was used to help justify concepts like colonialism and white/European supremacy.

As years passed and many other anthropologists and thinkers came about, this unilineal evolutionism theory was heavily criticized. Scholars criticized this theory for three main reasons. First, evolutionists, like Herbert Spencer, claimed that the data that Tylor and Morgan used to initiate this theory was based on philosophical information and biased Europeans, not extensive fieldwork of specific societies (Diah et al. 2014: 157). In addition, many scholars considered this theory as ethnocentric in which the ‘primitive’ societies are thought of as “less developed, less intelligent, and less sophisticated in comparison to the civilized Europeans” (Diah et al. 2014: 157). Thirdly, anthropologists, like Franz Boas, believed that the unilineal evolution theory described development in a simplistic way, in which it is ‘one-directional’. However, not every society may follow this development, which counteracts Tylor and Morgan’s theory.

Learn More

“Dead Anthropologists Late at Night: Tylor and Morgan” https://youtu.be/FcwPdmdVrKY

“19th-century Evolutionism (Unilineal Evolution)” http://faculty.cascadia.edu/tsaneda/cultural/theories/unilineal.html

“How Do Cultures Evolve? - featuring Edward Burnett Tylor — Anthropology Theory #1” https://youtu.be/9M7pKi-3o18

“Social Evolution & The Rise of Capitalism | featuring Lewis Henry Morgan | Anthro Theory #2” https://youtu.be/vbZ3PJQqmHk

Works Cited

Diah, Nuarazzura M. , Dewan M. Hossain, Sohela Mustari, and Noor S. Ramli. 2014. "An Overview of the Anthropological Theories." International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 4(10). Retrieved November 19, 2019 (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5eae/7e4788f3e1852bb17cff7055c918fb89b6cc.pdf).

Langness, Lewis L. 1974. The Study of Culture (Revised Edition). San Francisco, CA: Chandler & Sharp Publishers, Inc.

Peoples, James and Garrick Bailey. 2011. Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Scupin, Raymond and Christopher R. DeCorse. 2012. Anthropology A Global Perspective Boston, MA: Pearson.