Chapter One - The Ladder of Cultural Evolution

An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it -- Don Marquis

Early twentieth century classifications of human culture had three distinct and sequential stages: savages, barbarians, and civilized peoples. A native american afficianado and one of the world's first anthropologists, Lewis Henry Morgan, was a leading proponent of this classification. He influenced Karl Marx, who liked hist view of 'savage' cultures as egalitarian, without private property, as well as Herbert Spencer, who loathed marxism and was a contributor to the idea of social darwinism, as well as John Stuart Mill, the philosopher responsible for Utilitarianism. At this point (the late eighteen hundreds), the directionality of cultural evolution was commonly accepted.

Trends Become Untrendy

After ideas of social darwinism were used to justify exploitation, and after WWII in which 'destiny' was used as a reason for Hitler and Stalin to fight, not to mention the exploitation of less advanced native cultures for centuries, the idea of rating one culture as 'more advanced' than another fell out of favor.

A Short-Lived Insurrection

There have been movements within anthropology to reestablish cultural evolution as a valid idea, but they have been met with great resistance, especially after any instance of one group exploiting a 'less advanced' group. However, archeologists are forced to admit that as they dig, almost without fail more advanced cultures are layered above less advanced clutures -- all cultures seem to evolve over time, and evolve to levels of greater complexity.

-- SamPreston - 24 Mar 2007