ewis Morgan of
Rochester, made a brilliant attempt in this direction, to which the
reader's attention is now invited.

[Sidenote: Distinction between Savagery and Barbarism.]

[Sidenote: Origin of pottery.]

Below _Civilization_ Mr. Morgan[23] distinguishes two principal grades
or stages of culture, namely _Savagery_ and _Barbarism_. There is much
looseness and confusion in the popular use of these terms, and this is
liable to become a fruitful source of misapprehension in the case of any
statement involving either of them. When popular usage discriminates
between them it discriminates in the right direction; there is a vague
but not uncertain feeling that savagery is a lower stage than barbarism.
But ordinarily the discrimination is not made and the two terms are
carelessly employed as if interchangeable. Scientific writers long since
recognized a general difference between savagery and barbarism, but Mr.
Morgan was the first to suggest a really useful criterion for
distinguishing between them. His criterion is the making of pottery; and
his reason for selecting it is that the making of pottery is something
that presupposes village life and more or less progress in the simpler
arts. The earlier methods of boiling food were either putting it into
holes in the ground lined with skins and then using heated stones, or
else putting it into baskets coated with clay to be supported over a
fire. The clay served the double purpose of preventing liquids from
escaping and protecting the basket against the flame. It was probably
observed that the clay was hardened by the fire, and thus in course of
time it was found that the clay would answer the purpose without the
basket.[24] Whoever first made this ingenious discovery led the way from
savagery to barbarism. Throughout the present work we shall apply the
name "savages" only to uncivilized people who do not make pottery.

[Footnote 23: See his great work on _Ancient Society_, New
York, 1877.]

[Footnote 24: See the evidence in Tylor, _Researches into the
Early History of Mankind_, pp. 269-272; cf. Lubbock,
_Prehistoric Times_, p. 573; and see Cushing's masterly "Study
of Pueblo Pottery," etc., _Reports of Bureau of Ethnology_,
iv., 473-521.]

[Sidenote: Lower status of savagery.]

But within each of these two stages Mr. Morgan distinguishes three
subordinate stages, or Ethnic Periods, which may be called eithe