Knowra Unilineal evolution Unilineal evolution A nineteenth-century theory that all societies pass through the same fixed sequence of cultural stages, progressing from simpler to more complex forms.
Lewis Henry Morgan : An American anthropologist whose evolutionary scheme divided human history into savagery, barbarism, and civilization. His stage sequence became one of the theory’s best-known formulations.
Cultural evolution : Changes in learned practices, beliefs, institutions, and technologies across generations. Unilineal evolution was a specific, directional theory of cultural change.
Historical particularism : An approach associated with Franz Boas that explains each culture through its particular history and circumstances. It rejected the assumption that all cultures follow one developmental sequence.
Unilineal cultural evolution and colonialism : The relationship between theories of cultural stages and colonial rule over societies labeled less advanced. Stage rankings could portray colonial domination as a civilizing mission.
Edward Burnett Tylor : An English anthropologist who defined culture broadly and studied its development through comparative analysis. His account of cultural progress helped establish evolutionary anthropology.
Social evolution : Theories explaining how societies change in organization, institutions, or complexity over time. The theory applied an evolutionary model directly to whole societies.
Multilineal evolution : An approach that studies distinct evolutionary trajectories among societies rather than one universal sequence. It retained evolutionary questions while replacing the single cultural ladder.
Social Darwinism : The application of evolutionary language to justify social competition, hierarchy, or political inequality. It shared a language of progress and hierarchy, though it was not identical to anthropological stage theory.
Herbert Spencer : An English philosopher who applied evolutionary ideas to society, describing development from simple to complex forms. His social evolutionism supplied a broader framework for ranking societies by complexity.
Morgan's stages of social evolution : Lewis Henry Morgan’s sequence of savagery, barbarism, and civilization, each divided into lower, middle, and upper stages. This scheme shows how a universal sequence was organized into named stages.
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