Ancient Society

Answers

• Q32CIVILIZATION

  Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?

  Yes. technical invention measures the ascent to civilization. Divides human history into savagery, barbarism and civilization, marking the stages largely by a sequence of inventions and discoveries.

  It can now be asserted upon convincing evidence that savagery preceded barbarism in all the tribes of mankind, as barbarism is known to have preceded civilization. The history of the human race is one in source, one in experience, and one in progress. It is both a natural and a proper desire to learn, if possible, how all these ages upon ages of past time have been expended by mankind; how savages, advancing by slow, almost imperceptible steps, attained the higher condition of barbarians; how barbarians, by similar progressive advancement, finally attained to civilization; and why other tribes and nations have been left behind in the race of progress—some in civilization, some in barbarism, and others in savagery. It is not too much to expect that ultimately these several questions will be answered. Inventions and discoveries stand in serial relations along the lines of human progress, and register its successive stages; while social and civil institutions, in virtue of their connection with perpetual human wants, have been developed from a few primary germs of thought. They exhibit a similar register of progress. These institutions, inventions and discoveries have embodied and preserved the principal facts now remaining illustrative of this experience. When collated and compared they tend to show the unity of origin of mankind, the similarity of human wants in the same stage of advancement, and the uniformity of the operations of the human mind in similar conditions of society.

  Part I, "Growth of Intelligence through Inventions and Discoveries" · Gutenberg #45950; Part I heading and preface read.