On the Development of Relationships

Bibliographic Data

ID7468340
AuthorsJohn Lubbock (corresponding author)
Year1872
Volume1
Pages1-1
Publication date1872-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0959-5295 • E-ISSN: 2397-2564
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2841141
OpenAlexW2795724608
LanguageEN
Citations received9

SIR JOHN LUBBOCoK.-Onthe -Development illustrating the ideas on the subject of relationships which prevail among different races of men.Our own system of relationships naturally follows from the marriage of single pairs; and it is, in its general nomenclature, so mere a description of the actual facts, that most persons tacitly regard it as necessarily general to the human race, with, of course, verbal and unimnportant differences in detail.Hence but little information can be extracted from dictionaries and vocabularies.They generally, for instance, give words for uncle, aunt, and cousin; but an uncle may be either a father's brother or a mother's brother, and an aunt may be either a father's sister or a mother's sister; a first cousin, again, may be the child of any one of these fouir uncles and aunts; but practically, as we shall see, these cases are in many races distinguished from one another; and I may add, in passing, it is by no means clear that we are right in regarding them as identical and equivalent.Travellers have, on various occasions, noticed with surprise some special peculiarity of nomenclature which came under their notice; but Mr. Morgan was the first to perceive the imnportance of the subject, and to collect complete schedules of relationships.The special points which have been observed have, indeed, been generally regarded as mere eccentricities, but this is evidently not the case, because the principle or principles to which they are due are consistently carried out, and the nomenclature is reciprocal generally, though not quite without exceptions."Thus, if the Mohawks call a father's brother, not an uncle, but a father, they not only call his son a brother and his grandson a son, but these descendants also use the correlative terms.We must remember that our ideas of relationships are founded on our social system, and that, as other races have very different habits and ideas on this subject, it is natural to expect that their systems of relationship would also differ from ours.I have elsewhere* pointed out, that the ideas and customs with reference to marriage are very dissimilar in different races, and we may say, as a general rule, that, as we descend in the scale of civilisation, the family diminishes, and the tribe increases, in importance.Words have a profound influence over thought, and true family-names prevail principally among the highest races of men.Even in the less advanced portions of our own country, we know that collective iiames were those of the tribe, rather than the family.Even amiong the Romans the "family" was not a natural family in our sense of the term.It was founded,t not on mar

Development (topology · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics · Child Therapy and Development · Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics · Mathematics

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