ich, I hope, will give due recognition to
the present stage of scientific progress. Furthermore, I give in the
course of this preface a short synopsis of the history of the family as
treated by various writers from Bachofen to Morgan. I am doing this
mainly because the English prehistoric school, tinged with chauvinism,
is continually doing its utmost to kill by its silence the revolution in
primeval conceptions effected by Morgan's discoveries. At the same time
this school is not at all backward in appropriating to its own use the
results of Morgan's study. In certain other circles also this English
example is unhappily followed rather extensively.

My work has been translated into different languages. First into
Italian; L'origine della famiglia, della proprieta privata e dello
stato, versione riveduta dall' autore, di Pasquale Martignetti;
Benevento, 1885. Then into Roumanian: Origina familei, proprietatei
private si a statului, traducere de Ivan Nadejde, in the Jassy
periodical "Contemporanul," September, 1885, to May, 1886. Furthermore
into Danish: Familjens, Privatejendommens og Statens Oprindelse, Dansk,
af Forfatteren gennemgaaet Udgave, besoerget af Gerson Trier,
Kjoebenhavn, 1888. A French translation by Henri Rave, founded on the
present German edition, is under the press.

Up to the beginning of the sixties, a history of the family cannot be
spoken of. This branch of historical science was then entirely under the
influence of the decalogue. The patriarchal form of the family,
described more exhaustively by Moses than by anybody else, was not only,
without further comment, considered as the most ancient, but also as
identical with the family of our times. No historical development of the
family was even recognized. At best it was admitted that a period of
sexual license might have existed in primeval times.

To be sure, aside from monogamy, oriental polygamy and Indo-Tibethan
polyandry were known; but these three forms could not be arranged in any
historical order and stood side by side without any connection. That
some nations of ancient history and some savage tribes of the present
day did not trace their descent to the father, but to the mother, hence
considered the female lineage as alone valid; that many nations of our
time prohibit intermarrying inside of certain large groups, the extent
of which was not yet ascertained and that this custom is found in all
parts of the globe--these facts were known, i