Anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan’s magnum opus, his seminal study on human societies, Ancient Society: Researches in the Line of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization was written in 1877 and strongly influenced the thinking of Marx and Engels. Indeed, Engels’ 1884 ‘The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’ is partly based on Marx’s critical notes on Morgan’s book. Forty years after it was first published, Charles H Kerr republished this work as a accompaniment of an edition of Engels’ ‘Origins.’ Full online text is available here.

Ancient Society by Lewis Henry Morgan. Charles H Kerr Publishers, Chicago. 1907.

Contents: Preface (1877), I) The Growth of Intelligence Through Inventions and Discovery, Ethnical Periods, Arts of Subsistence, Ration of Human Progress, II) Growth of the Idea of Government, Organization of Society upon the Basis of Sex, The Iroquois Gens, The Iroquois Phratry, The Iroquois Tribe, The Iroquois Confederacy, Gentes in Other Tribes of the Ganowanian Family, The Aztec Confederacy, The Grecian Gens, The Grecian Phratry Tribe and Nation, The Institution of Grecian Political Society, The Roman Gens, The Roman Curia Tribe and Populus, The Institution of Roman Political Society, Change of Descent from the Female to the Male Line, Gentes in Other Tribes of the Human Family, III) Growth of the Idea of the Family, The Ancient Family, The Punaluan Family, The Syndyasmian and the Patriarchal Families, The Monogalian Family, Sequence of Institutions Connected with the Family, IV) The Growth of the Idea of Property, The Three Rules of Inheritance, The Three Rules of Inheritance (Cont.). 598 pages.

The Charles H Kerr publishing house was responsible for some of the earliest translations and editions of Marx, Engels, and other leaders of the socialist movement in the United States. Publisher of the Socialist Party aligned International Socialist Review, the Charles H Kerr Co. was an exponent of the Party’s left wing and the most important left publisher of the pre-Communist US workers movement. It remains a left wing publisher today.

PDF of 1907 edition: https://archive.org/download/ancientsocietyor00morg/ancientsocietyor00morg.pdf