The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

The bow, bowstring, and arrow already form a very complex instrument, the invention of which presupposes long, accumulated experience and sharpened mental powers, thus also the simultaneous acquaintance with a multitude of other inventions. If we compare peoples who indeed know the bow and arrow, but not yet the art of pottery (from which Morgan dates the transition into barbarism), we find in fact already some beginnings of settlement in villages, a certain mastery over the production of subsistence, wooden vessels and implements, finger-weaving (without a loom) with fibers of bast, woven baskets of bast or reeds, and polished (neolithic) stone tools. Mostly, too, fire and the stone axe have already provided the dugout boat and, in some places, beams and planks for house construction. We find all these advances, for example, among the northwestern Indians of America, who indeed know the bow and arrow, but not pottery. For savagery, the bow and arrow was what the iron sword was for barbarism and the firearm for civilization: the decisive weapon.

II. Barbarism.

1. Lower stage. Dates from the introduction of pottery. This is demonstrably, in many cases, and probably everywhere, derived from the coating of wicker or wooden vessels with clay to make them fireproof; whereupon one soon discovered that the molded clay also served the purpose without the inner vessel.

Up to now, we could view the course of development quite generally, as valid for a specific period of all peoples, without regard to locality. With the entry of barbarism, however, we have reached a stage where the different natural endowments of the two great earth continents assert themselves. The characteristic element of the period of barbarism is the taming and breeding of animals