OBJECTS IN BRONZE & ENAMEL.

FOUND IN THE VICTORIA CAVE, SETTLE.

hell bro the Lond

THE

JOURNAL

OF THE

ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

OF

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED FOR

The Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland,

BY

TRÜBNER & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW.

All Rights Reserved.

1872.

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart., M.P., F.R.S., President, in the Chair.

Mr. HODDER M. WESTROPP exhibited a worked-flint of tri-

radiate form, said to have been found many years ago on Ashey

Down, in the Isle of Wight.

The PRESIDENT, having made some remarks respecting the
formation of the Institute, vacated the chair in favour of Pro-
fessor Huxley, V.P., and read the following paper:-

I-On the DEVELOPMENT of RELATIONSHIPS. By Sir JOHN

LUBBOCK, Bart., M.P., F.R.S., Pres. Anth. Inst.

MR. MORGAN, whose remarkable memoir, entitled "A Conjec-
tural Solution of the Origin of the Classificatory System of
Relationship", is doubtless well known to many gentlemen
present, has now published, by the assistance of the Smithsonian
Institution, his promised work on the same subject. Those
who have read his preliminary memoir will naturally have
waited for the full development of his views, as well as of the
facts on which they are based, with much interest; and they
will not be disappointed, for Mr. Morgan's work is certainly one
of the most valuable contributions to ethnological science which
has appeared for many years.

It contains schedules, most of which are very complete, giving
the systems of relationships of no less than 139 races or tribes;
and we have, therefore (though there are still many lamentable
deficiencies the Siberians, South Americans, and true Negroes,
being, for instance, as yet unrepresented), a great body of evidence

"Proc. Am. Ac. of Arts and Sciences", vol. vii, Feb. 1868.

+"Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family". By L.

H. Morgan. 1870.

VOL. I.

B

illustrating the ideas on the subject of relationships which prevail among different races of men.

Our own system of relationships naturally follows from the marriage of single pairs; and it is, in its general nomenclature, so mere a description of the actual facts, that most persons tacitly regard it as necessarily general to the human race, with, of course, verbal and unimportant differences in detail. Hence but little information can be extracted from dictionaries and vocabularies. They generally, for instance, give words for uncle, aunt, and cousin; but an uncle may be either a father's brother or a mother's brother, and an aunt may be either a father's sister or a mother's sister; a first cousin, again, may be the child of any one of these four uncles and aunts; but practically, as we shall see, these cases are in many races distinguished from one another; and I may add, in passing, it is by no means clear that we are right in regarding them as identical and equivalent. Travellers have, on various occasions, noticed with surprise some special peculiarity of nomenclature which came under their notice; but Mr. Morgan was the first to perceive the importance of the subject, and to collect complete schedules of relationships. The special points which have been observed have, indeed, been generally regarded as mere eccentricities, but this is evidently not the case, because the principle or principles to which they are due are consistently carried out, and the nomenclature is reciprocal generally, though not quite without exceptions. Thus, if the Mohawks call a father's brother, not an uncle, but a father, they not only call his son a brother and his grandson a son, but these descendants also use the correlative terms.

We must remember that our ideas of relationships are founded on our social system, and that, as other races have very different habits and ideas on this subject, it is natural to expect that their systems of relationship would also differ from ours. I have elsewhere* pointed out, that the ideas and customs with reference to marriage are very dissimilar in different races, and we may say, as a general rule, that, as we descend in the scale of civilisation, the family diminishes, and the tribe increases, in importance. Words have a profound influence over thought, and true family-names prevail principally among the highest races of men. Even in the less advanced portions of our own country, we know that collective names were those of the tribe, rather than the family.

Even among the Romans the "family" was not a natural family in our sense of the term. It was founded,† not on mar

"On the Origin of Civilisation, and Primitive Condition of Man" Longmans, 1870.

+ See Ortolan's Justinian, p. 126 et seq.