ABSTRACT
All historical cultures were produced by societies which themselves in turn were integrated and organized by their cultural activities, so that neither civilization nor society can be conceived of as self-sufficient entities. The historian’s task of studying and interpreting the development of human civilization can be facilitated by a systematic inquiry into the character of a civilization and the structure of its society at any given period in a distinct area. Each society is made up of a variety of smaller and more comprehensive units. Some of these units are “natural”, that is, they are composed of members that are related to one another by blood or by marriage. Modern anthropology has found the family to be the smallest sociological unit. Ever since the development of social studies in the second half of the nineteenth century, an enormous amount of material on family religion has been collected by anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and philologists.
