ABSTRACT
With the decline of Christian theology with its drama of the creation, science undertook to provide its own account of the origin and evolution of man and human society. Several outstanding men of the latter half of the nineteenth century made contributions toward this end. In the field of social evolution, J. J. Bachofen and John F. McLennan developed independently theories of social evolution in which mankind was assumed to have begun its career in a condition of promiscuity, out of which emerged the institutions of mother right, followed eventually by father right and monogamy.
