Dear Diary,
I cannot say how much I enjoyed studying my last module. Doing revision with Jane helping out, has made me realise how much I relished the course. {Especially the first book
Approaches.}
The legacy of Lewis Henry Morgan in
Ancient Society (1877) namely his law of Recapitulation, has had a little-known but long-lasting impact on a whole generation! But how? Because, for turn-based strategy game freaks, Lewis Henry Morgan's theory of Recapitulation has been adhered to, and revived, by many computer game makers in recent history.
This outdated mode of catagorisation has several 'culprits'. The most well-known 'offender' is Sid Meir in his series of
Civilization turn-based strategy games. Other proponents of Morgan's theory are Microsoft's
Age of Empires and
Age of Kings. [
Note: A.o.E. is a R.T.S. game, not T.B.] Both Civ' and "Ages" (and ages and ages) of Empires, have essentially a colonial outlook, over a century out of date!
The American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan's theory of Recapitulation espouses a grading system going from 'Savagery', 'Barbarism', to 'Civilization'. The tiers are based on technological advances, which define whether cultures are of the 'lower status of savagery' or 'upper status of civilization' (or anywhere in between, i.e. 'barbarism').
The theory of cultural evolution has been developing since 1735, ever since the Swedish botanist Carl Linnæus (known affectionaly as "Line-us" by his colleagues) who pioneered the classification of flora and fauna, for the first time, transforming the way biological sciences saw the natural world. His groundbreaking discoveries were published in a book entitled
Systema Naturæ, first published in 1735.
Linnæus' work was further developed by the German Peter Pallas in 1766 (note, this is not mentioned in the O.U. book I was reading, but Jane's help highlighted the tree of life) which laid the foundations for Charles Darwin's tree of life, first published in his
Origin of Species in 1851 (Darwin's tree of life he had been working on for over two decades).
Prior to this came another academic who was to shape the way we speak about history, unto this day. This man (another indirect influence on Darwin's work) was Danish scholar
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, who first coined the
Three-Age System in the 1820's. [Used in A.o.E.] Which gave birth to the terms "Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age". Aye. It was he, Christian Jürgensen Thomsen (b.1788 - d.1865) who founded stratigraphy, unearthing and catagorising finds into stone, bronze, and iron artefacts, cross-referenced with the law of superposition, geological and sedimentary layered strata.
This was further developed by English academic John Lubbock (a colleague and friend of Darwin) in 1865, when
Pre-historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages was published [yeah, cute title!]. Anyhow, Lubbock coined the terms Palæolithic ('old' stone age) and Neolithic ('new' stone age).
Their are many more facets to the subject, but the point being (in relation to colonialist thought and games programmers being most misguided by this outmoded principle, that of Morgan's Recapitulation) is that Sid's Civ' and M.S. A.o.E. (not to mention the tech'-trees from games like
Empire Earth, Cossacks, and
Empire: Total War my old favourite game) is that a whole generation of gamers, knew nothing but Recapitulation. Aye. This is grave. Check it out, this could easily fit the tech'-tree from Civ'.
"
...Status of Savagery... fish subsistence ... the use of fire...
Upper Status of Savagery... the Invention of the Bow and Arrow...
Lower Status of Barbarism ... the Art of Pottery...
Middle Status of Barbarism... Domestication of animals on the Eastern hemisphere... in the West... cultivation... of... plants by Irrigation, with the use of adobe-bricks and stone...
Upper Status of Barbarism... the process of Smelting Iron Ore... the use of iron tools...
...Civilization... the phonetic alphabet... writing..."
Morgan, L. H. (2012 [1877])
Ancient Society (quoted in
Approaches by Harrison, R.) Belknap Press, Massachusetts, page 12.
"...scheme of unilinear cultural evolution, the progression of societies through a single series of technological stages from... social stages from 'savagery' to civilisation, is now understood within its... historical... context. As such, it helped to provide a partial explanation for the stark social and racial inequalities which had emerged... as a result of the Industrial Revolution and Euro-American colonial expansion (Bennett, 2004). It did this by suggesting that
technologically advanced societies... were more
intellectually and
culturally advanced... [...] ...there is no link between intellectual ability and... tools which are made... there is no logical or inevitable trajectory of human culture and/or technological progression from... one society to another. Hunter-gatherer societies are no less... capable than agricultual ones..."
quoted in Harrison, 2012, pages 17 to 18. © The Open University.
Gotta go to bed now, Mrs. is awaitin'.
Later,
Max
Post-Script: Bibliographical Reference (in the Harvard style)
Harrison, R. (2012)
Approaches [Book 1 for the module 'A151'
Making Sense of Things...] The Open University, Milton Keynes, pages 14 to 19.
On the Flex
