ENGELS AND NINETEENTH CENTURY PALEOANTHROPOLOGY
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
ASM 104 - BONES, STONES, AND HUMAN EVOLUTION
SPRING 2024 - WEEK 3
Materialism and Human Origins:
IN 1758, Karl von Linné (better known in Latin: Carolus Linnaeus), a Swedish
naturalist, classified and named species based on the similarity of their structural features.
He named humans Homo sapiens and included them in the class of "superior" mammals
(primate) together with apes. In addition to Homo sapiens, Linnaeus included other
members of the Homo genus, namely Homo sylvestris (or Homo trogolodytes, which refers
to chimpanzees) and Homo nocturnus (referring to the mythical nocturnal cave-dwelling
animals of Java, a Dutch colony in the East Indies)1. Although his goal was based on the
view that species are eternal, as taught by the church at the time and Aristotelian natural
philosophy, his classification inevitably surprised his colleagues. How could it not.
Throughout the Christian-dominated Middle Ages, apes were considered creations of the
Devil to mock the nature of humanity. By putting humans in the same class as apes on the
tree of life, Linnaeus' classification could be considered a blasphemy of religious teachings.
Wasn't man created by God in His image?
In Europe, both before and after Linnaeus, there were already rational attempts to
explain human physical diversity. However, most of these efforts were still not very
scientific. Ideas derived from religious traditions were still dominant. At least at that time,
no popular theory could escape the shadow of Bible stories. Take for example the theory of
monogenesis, which states that humans were originally one. All existing humans come from
the same source, namely the white-skinned Adam and Eve whom God created several
thousand years ago. Humans are one species. The differences in physical appearance among
human races are due to the process of degradation (related to the conception of original sin).
Or another example when the findings of animal fossils began to be debated in the assembly
of the educated. The fossils showed that animals in the past were different from animals
living today. One theory that explains the striking difference between animals that lived in
the past and those that live today was proposed by George Cuvier. According to him, the
extinction of species and the creation of new species is the intervention of God who has
repeatedly destroyed and recreated the earth complete with its contents. Each time a "great
catastrophe" is sent down, each time the chain of life is overhauled. An example of a "great
catastrophe" sent by God is the devastating flood during the time of Noah. All the extinct
animals and plants whose fossils we find today were actually God's creations that were
submerged when the great flood destroyed life on earth.
Cuvier's "God-sent disaster" theory is a response to the to the materialistic theory
proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in the early nineteenth century. In his book Philosophie
Zoologique (1809), Lamarck proposed the first systematic theory to explain how new
species arose by natural processes without citing a word from the Bible. As a materialist,
Lamarck argued that nature is governed by laws that naturally lead to the creation of
progressively more advanced types of organisms. Assuming that all species on earth today
descended from earlier species due to natural changes, and that "more advanced" species
descended from "less advanced" species, Lamarck's most disturbing idea to Cuvier and the
religious right was that humans descended from their ape ancestors through a process of
transmutation. Past environmental changes forced some apes out of their original arboreal
habitats into more open landscapes. This change in habitat led them to develop the capacity
to stand upright, resulting in other changes that eventually transformed them into humans.
Amidst the dominance of the church's worldview, Lamarck's theory was naturally
unpopular. No one wanted to support it openly.
Such was the fate of Étienne Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire's thoughts in his book,
Philosophie Anatomieque (1818-1822). His theory departs from his comparative anatomical
investigation of the vervebrates (vertebrate animals). He found that all existing vertebrates
were the result of a process of diversification from a single design. He combined this idea
with the idea that there is a linear arrangement of species from simple to complex to propose
the theory of alternate species transformation. He argued that the first organisms arose
through natural processes and that the laws of nature itself would produce increasingly
complex organisms over time. Although he did not speak directly about humans himself, his
few followers proposed the idea that all animals, including humans, were produced by
natural processes through modification of ancestral animals. Such an idea was certainly not
popular. Most scientists at the time were opposed to materialistic and atheistic theories about
the origin of life. Especially when the theory touches on human beings who are still seen as
creations or reflections of God's image.
One hundred years after Linnaeus classified humans and apes into the primate
family, Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was published. In this book, Darwin proposed
his theory of evolution through natural selection. Actually, the theory had been formulated
long ago. However, due to the strong rejection of all materialistic theories on the origin of
species, Darwin delayed its publication. In it, Darwin did not talk about the origin of
humans. But at the end of his book he wrote: "Light will illuminate the origin of man and his
history". The assumption behind this sentence is that human existence, like all the living
things Darwin describes in his book, is nothing more than the result of a natural evolutionary
process, not a unique act of divine creation. As the result of a natural evolutionary process,
the origin and history of humans on earth can be scientifically investigated without a single
sentence needed from our holy book.
A sentence that's actually no more presumptuous than the idea itself Lamarck and
Saint-Hilaire were accepted by more natural scientists. What's the point? The findings of
fossils were piling up. Paleonto-logical evidence that when some species go extinct, new
species appear in the fossil record. It became clear that there was some sort of progression in
the fossil record: fishes appeared earlier than reptiles, and mammals appeared in the upper
geologic layers than the layers containing reptile fossils. The absence of human fossils only
proves that humans belong to the animals that appeared the latest in natural history. But even
when the fossil evidence is hard to refute, idealism insists on proposing explanations. One of
the most popular and palatable to religious believers is that God designed the laws of nature
that would produce new species over time as the earth's climate changes, which changes are
also determined by the laws of nature. God's design. Or that God directly created new
groups of species at each stage of Earth's history. This last theory, among others, was
advocated by the famous naturalist Louis Agassiz and was still accepted by many scientists
even when Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was published.
A few years after the Origin of Species was published, in 1863, Ernst Haeckel gave a
lecture in which he proposed the thesis that there must have been a creature that was the link
between apes and humans. These creatures were transitional species that had become
extinct. As transitional species, they had the combined features of apes and humans. He
named this missing link, based on Linnaeus' taxonomic principles, Pithecanthropus alalus
(speechless ape-man) and predicted that fossils of this ape-man would one day be found in
southeast Asia.
In the same year, Thomas Huxley published Evidences as to Man's Place in Nature.
The book is the result of a comparative anatomical study between the human skeleton and
great apes such as gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees. Huxley concluded that compared to
orangutans, the human skeleton is more similar to gorillas and chimpanzees. Eight years
after Huxley proposed this conclusion, Darwin's book, Descent of Man, was published.
Based on Huxley's findings, Darwin hypothesized that humans shared a common biological
ancestor with gorillas and chimpanzees. Since gorillas and chimpanzees live in Africa, that
must be where human ancestors once lived.
From the point of view of religious scholars, the theories proposed by naturalists
above are outrageous. How could human beings who were cultured and could create great
civilizations evolve from ape ancestors? It is said that the wife of the bishop of Worcester,
after talking to Huxley who had just given a lecture, said to her husband: "Masha Allah,
descended from apes?! Let's hope this is not true, but if it is, let us pray that this fact does
not become public knowledge".
The bishop's wife's prayers were not answered. As science developed in the
nineteenth century and beyond, it became increasingly evident that humans were indeed
descended from ape ancestors and that this fact was not only becoming more and more
widely known, but also increasingly becoming a scientific truth that superseded the biblical
version of human origins. Alongside comparative anatomy, geology and later genetics,
paleoanthropology is the key science to uncovering evidence of human evolution on earth.
Paleoanthropology in the Nineteenth Century:
Lamarck, Saint-Hilaire, Darwin, Haeckel and Huxley had only attempted theoretical
tools to explain human origins scientifically. By the end of the nineteenth century, despite
the growing popularity of their theories, the evidence for the hypothesis of humans as the
result of the evolution of an extinct ancestral species had yet to take hold. Indeed, since the
1820s there have been findings of human skeleton-like fossils. However, the event that
triggered the collection of evidence for the truth of the theory of human evolution only
occurred at the beginning of the second half of the century. A newspaper published on
September 6, 1856 in Elberfeld, the town where Friedrich Engels went to school, carried
news of the discovery of fossils of human-like creatures in a new mine in the Neander
Valley, northern Germany. Fossilized parts of the skeleton and skull showed how similar the
creatures were to humans, although there were also striking differences. They were clearly
bipedal but unlike chimpanzees or gorillas were quadrupedal. But, compared to modern
humans, for example, their bones were thicker. Their figures were more sturdy. Their
foreheads were slightly flatter with more prominent brow and temple bones. Their skulls
were also larger. To give you an idea, maybe they looked like Mike Tyson with a bigger
skull.
Fossils from the Neander Valley immediately attracted attention. The fossils were
taken to the University of Berlin for study. After researching, Hermann Schaaffhausen, a
professor of anatomy at the university, came to the conclusion that judging by the
primitiveness of the bones, it was likely that the Neander Valley fossils were humans of the
"barbarian race". Elsewhere, Thomas Huxley interpreted the fossils as one among many
variations of Homo sapiens alone, not a separate species. Similarly, Rudolf Virchow
believed that it was a human fossil and that some of the unusual morphology found on the
fossil was due to bone pathology, not as a feature of a different species.
In contrast to Schaaffhausen, Huxley, and Virchow, Irish anatomist William King,
argued that the fossils belonged to an extinct human species. King named the species Homo
neanderthalensis. Although King's opinion is correct today, in those days until 1886, the
opinion that the Neander Valley fossils were nothing but human-like fossils, albeit of a
different variety, was more accepted. What is it about 1886? In that year a fossil with the
same characteristics as the Neander Valley fossil was found at Spy in Belgium. Discussions
about the species Homo neanderthalensis as a distinct human species that had been closed,
reopened. Moreover, there are findings of fossils with the same characteristics as modern
humans in the Cro-Magnon cave near Les Eyzies, southern France. Compared to the Cro-
Magnon man's body frame, which is the same as modern humans, Neanderthalensis is much
more robust with thicker bones. Although Cro- Magnon humans share the same anatomical
appearance as modern humans, the artifacts and animal fossils found with them confirm that
they lived far in the past. They may have made the old stone tools that have been found in
many places in Europe.
Both Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal provide important evidence of the kingdom's a
variety of human species that lived throughout the Pleistocene Epoch. However, for
investigators of human evolution, they do not have the look a view that points to them as
two points on the missing link that bridges modern man with his anthropoid ape ancestors.
Although primitive, Neanderthals are not the missing link that is being sought. Moreover,
among naturalists there has also been a growing notion that a link with both human and ape
traits must be found outside of Europe. Earlier it was mentioned that Darwin hypothesized
that fossils of the missing "link" would inevitably be found in Africa. However, European
scholars, even materialists, were still not ideologically ready to acknowledge that human
ancestors originated in Africa, the most underdeveloped continent that was then a colony of
European nations.
Eugène Dubois, a Dutch anatomist, after reading Ernst Haeckel's writings that
concluded humans probably evolved in tropical Asia, enlisted as an army doctor for the
Dutch colony in the East Indies. In 1887 he arrived in Sumatra. A few years later he asked to
be transferred to Java. There he began excavations in the Bengawan Solo valley. Between
1890 and 1892, in addition to a collection of ancient animal fossils, Dubois managed to
obtain a partially fossilized jaw, an almost complete cranium, and a femur that he identified
as an ape-like bipedal species but clearly standing upright like a human. He wrote an
anatomical description of the fossils and named the species Pithecanthropus erectus (upright
man-ape). In 1895 he returned to Europe to present his paper at the Third Congress of
International Zoology in Leiden. The response was mixed, but few accepted his conclusion
that the species was an intermediate species in the evolution from ape to man1. At the
International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology in Geneva, the highly
influential French paleontologist Marcellin Boule rejected Dubois and Boule's conclusions
claimed that the fossil from Java was nothing more than an extinct giant gibbon. The reason
is that the fossilized cranium of the creature shows that it is not only small but also long, low
and thick. Since the skulls of modern humans are large, it is impossible for humans to be
descended from such small-brained creatures1. Because of the negative response to his
findings, Dubois shut himself off from the academic world and hid the fossils and his
writings about them2.
Although Asia is still considered better than Africa as a place where human ancestors
evolved, Dubois' findings are still not accepted. One of the reasons is because a piece of
idealism still lingers in the minds of even the most materialist naturalists. This idealism
manifests itself in the persistence of the view that because modern humans have big brains
(and this is associated with superior mental capacity), then their ancestors, or at least their
previous links, must also have big brains.
Nineteenth-century paleoanthropology ended with the return of Nenderthal to the
assembly of the intelligentsia with the discovery of fossils of more than 14 individuals near
the Croatian town of Krapina, along with animal fossils and thousands of stone tools.
Engels on the First Settlers of Europe:
As a materialist, Engels was no less excited by the developments in both evolutionary theory
and fossil discoveries during the nineteenth century. In 1876, five years after the publication
of Darwin's Descent of Man, Engels wrote an essay on the course of human evolution3. In
addition to evolutionary theories, developments in earth science, paleontology, and
embryology, as well as cutting-edge biology related to strengthening the materialist theory
of evolution, were also of interest to him from then until his death in 1895.
In the second half of 1882, Engels wrote a lengthy treatise entitled The Early History
of the German Nation. This treatise is not actually about human evolution or
paleoanthropology. The main content of the treatise, which was never published during his
lifetime, was the origins and main lines of history of the ancient German tribes. Engels'
investigation of ancient German tribes was itself influenced by Georg von Maurer's
publication of Mark, a communistic tribal community. At the beginning of the treatise,
Engels acknowledges that one of the reports he used was William Dawkins' Early Man in
Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period, published two years earlier. Dawkins himself
was a curator at The Manchester Museum and a lecturer in geology and paleontology at
Owens College, Manchester. Engels integrated his knowledge of ancient human fossils and
artifacts into the first four pages of The Early History of the German Nation. The treatise
opens with the paragraph:
"The Germans were not the first inhabitants of the land they now live in. At least three
races have preceded them. The oldest traces of man in Europe are found in certain
subsoils in southern England... which may [geologically exist] between the two glacial
cycles of the so-called Ice Age "1.
The Ice Age is the popular name for the geologic epoch whose scientific name is
Pleistocene. In general, the Pleistocene Epoch lasted from 2.5 jts to 11.7 rts. This period is
characterized by global cooling and the ebb and flow of ice-covered ranges in the northern
hemisphere. There were four major glacial intervals characterized by a decrease in average
climate temperature and an expansion of ice-covered areas. Each glacial period ended with
an interglacial period of relative warmth and receding ice sheets. When Engels asserted that
the oldest traces of the humanity in Europe was between two glacial periods, probably
referring to the last two glacial periods that lasted between 781 AD and 126 AD. If we
compare this with current knowledge, Engels' opinion is clearly just speculation. The reason
is that if Engels' reference is to fossils from Wales, England, discovered in 1822-3, then
these fossils actually represent a species of Homo sapiens no older than 25 rts. Indeed, the
findings in Wales are the earliest fossil evidence ever found at that time. But the age of the
fossils themselves is relatively young on a geological scale and relatively later in the human
evolutionary pathway.
Returning to the Question of History, in the third paragraph, Engels mentions another
type of human being after the extinction of the humans who have left the "oldest traces"
mentioned above. Engels does not name the species. It is only mentioned in generic terms
that they were "early paleolithic humans". According to him:
"after the second glacial period, when the climate gradually warmed, humans were
present throughout Europe, North Africa, and Inner Asia as far as India, along with
large thick-skinned animals (mammoths, straight-tusked elephants, woolly
rhinoceroses) and carnivores (mountain lions, bears) that had become extinct, and with
animals that are still alive today (reindeer, horses, dubuks, lions, bison, aurochs [ancient
cattle])" 1.
If the "oldest traces" of human presence in Europe are between the two European
glacial periods, then these "early paleolithic humans" settled in Europe at the end of the
second glacial period (after 126 rts?). Who were they? In Europe up until 1882, when Engels
wrote this paragraph, only two different types of early human fossils were known from the
fossil record: those of Neanderthals and those of (Homo sapiens). Outside Europe, it was
only in 1890 that fossils of early humans other than the two known species, Pithecan-
thropus erectus1, were discovered. As mentioned, the paleospecies was named by its
discoverer, Eugène Dubois, a Dutch army doctor serving in Java. Dubois, who was
encouraged by Haeckel's hypothesis that the place of human origin was Asia, went to the
Dutch East Indies to prove it. In the Bengawan Solo Valley, Dubois found fossilized parts of
the skull, arms, lower jaw, and teeth. Engels was probably unaware of this cutting-edge
discovery. This is because, firstly, Dubois' findings were far removed from the time when
Engels wrote the treatise; and secondly, because until the end of the 19th century, Dubois'
findings were not widely published and had not been considered at all by the European
intelligentsia. So, when Engels wrote his manuscript in 1882, there were practically only
fossils of two types of early humans. So, where did Engels' knowledge come from that after
the second glacial period humans had spread to almost all continents? In the same
paragraph, Engels continues that:
"The tools associated with this round indicate a very ancient level of cultivation-coarse
stone knives, hammerheads or rhombus-shaped axes used without handles, animal skin
grinders, and drills all made of stone-are close to the stage of development of present-
day indigenous Australians. The remains found so far do not allow us to envisage the
physicality of these humans, from whose widespread distribution and general
uniformity of culture it may be possible to draw [the conclusion] that this [historical]
chapter was of very long duration "2.
From this we can conclude that Engels' speculation about the spread of early humans
to almost all continents after the second glacial period is not based on fossil findings, but on
the findings of artifacts associated with early humans after the second glacial period. That is
why Engels named his humans with an archaeological name, "early paleolithic man", instead
of a paleoanthropological name even though the scientific name for the fossils found in
1856, Homo neander-thalensis, had already been published in 1864.
Engels' foray into prehistoric archaeology had something to do with the limited fossil
record of early humans. If we turn to Dawkins' book, which was Engels' main source, we
will find the truth of this possibility. What Dawkins refers to as the "oldest traces" of early
human presence on almost all continents, particularly in the section titled "Evidence of the
Presence of Man "1, are not fossils at all but their tools. The oldest archaeological evidence
Dawkins mentions is said to have been found in 1690. The most recent at that time included
the discovery of flake tools in 1872 and 1876 in England2.
If we compare Dawkins' description of the ancient rock tools he knows and the
picture he posted in his book with the current state of archaeological knowledge, it may be
that the "oldest traces" are of the Oldowan or Mode 1 Technology type of tool which is the
"oldest for cutting purposes "3. Other forms that archaeology classifies as Acheulean or
Mode 2 Technology such as "hand-held stone axes "4 and "pulverizing rock tools "5 are also
cited by Dawkins as evidence of the "oldest traces" of human presence in all corners of the
earth.
In contemporary prehistoric archaeology, Oldowan Mode 1 toolmakers are usually
associated with an early homo species, either Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis. Some
researchers even claim to have evidence that the Australopithecus garhi species invented the
Oldowan tradition. However, the question of who made it first must be distinguished from
the question of who used it. The organic link between one species and a particular
technology is risky. Finds of Asian Homo erectus fossils, for example, are not accompanied
by finds of Mode 2 stone tools usually attributed to African Homo erectus. The availability
of materials and the presence of other non-fossilized materials, bamboo for example, that
Asian Homo erectus might have used as tools, could be the source of the absence of Mode 2
stone tools in Asia. In Europe itself, Homo antecessor, whose fossils were first found in
southern Spain, is also associated with Mode 1 tools.
Back to Engels, after "early paleolithic man" became extinct, he claimed there was
another kind that replaced them in the late Pleistocene. Engels simply referred to them as
"later paleolithic humans". Again, the evidence presented is not fossils, but artifacts.
"In the caves of England, France, Switzerland, Belgium and southern Germany, the
tools of these extinct humans are found, for the most part, in the lowermost layers of
stratified deposits. Above the lowest layer of this cultural level, and often separated
from it by a substantial stalagmite layer, a tool-bearing layer was found. These tools are
related to the later rounds and appear to have been quite more skillfully made, and also
more diverse in material. Although the stone tools have not yet been refined, they were
designed and made in a manner more suited to a particular purpose; with them were
found stone arrowheads and spearheads, deer antler and bone; diggers and sewing
needles of bone or antler, necklaces of wild animal teeth, etc. Individual objects Some
are boldly decorated with animal images, deer, mammoths, aurochs, seals, whales, and
also paintings of hunting with naked people; we even find the beginnings of antler
sculptures... "1.
In the Oldowan Mode 1 repertoire, the most advanced tool is only the slicing shale
rock, while in Acheulean Mode 2 it is the double-edged hand-held axe. One of the key
differences in the tools of these "later paleolithic humans" compared to "early paleolithic
humans" is the composite nature, the diversity of raw materials other than rock, and in
particular the presence of arrowheads, spearheads and sewing needles that are absent in the
two Modes. The most ancient wooden spear ever found, since its age is calculated to be
around 400 rts, is usually attributed to the ancestor of Neanderthals as well as modern
humans, namely Homo heidelbergensis or informally known as archaic humans. Meanwhile,
scholars today usually attribute composite tools such as stone-edged wooden spears or
wooden-handled rock axes and tools made from horn, bone or teeth to Neanderthals and
Homo sapiens. Meanwhile, the presence of animal drawings, wall paintings, and statues is
usually only linked to the existence of modern humans.
After the "later paleolithic man", Engels mentions the existence of the "later
paleolithic man" the existence of a human species of a "new race... [that] came from the
south, at least in Western Europe". According to Engels, "they probably penetrated from
Africa into Europe at a time when the two continents were still linked by land, both at
Gibraltar and in Sicily. They were at a much higher stage of culture than their predecessors
"2. Regarding their physical form, Engels further explained that:
"Quite conspicuously compared to their predecessors, they buried the dead carefully;
hence we have enough skeletons and skulls to assess their physique. Tall skulls, short
stature (average for females 1.46 meters, for males 1.65 meters), low foreheads, arched
noses, thick prominent brow bones and drooping cheekbones and an average developed
jawbone indicate a race of which the last modern example seems to be the Basques. The
neolithic inhabitants not only of Spain but also of France, England and the whole region
at least up to the Rhine were probably of [this] Iberian race "1.
Regarding this "race", Engels pointed to paleoanthropological evidence. It could be
that, given the physical features of this "new race", Engels was referring to an 1848 fossil
find in Spain that is now identified as proto-Neanderthal. However, if this reference is
correct, unlike Engels' speculation, the fossils have nothing to do with the "Basques" insofar
as the latter were inhabitants of modern northern Spain. Some scholars suggest that rather
the 1848 fossil is not a classic Neanderthal but a predecessor species, Homo antecessor,
which has some Neanderthal physical features but cannot be fully classified as Neanderthal.
For today's scholars, Engels' conflation of Neanderthal physical features with
neolithic culture in the above quote is certainly mistaken. Neolithic tools are indeed
composite. However, judging by the details (needles, arrowheads), it is impossible for them
to be Neanderthal. These two types of stone tools belong to the neolithic culture, while
Neanderthals are associated with the late paleolithic. Neolithic culture itself only developed
in the late Pleistocene to early Holocene 11 rts. At this time, only one type of human on
earth, Homo sapiens. Neanderthals became extinct 20,000 years earlier.
Regarding the behavior of early humans, Engels could only imagine that they
generally still lived in hunter-gatherer communities that moved from place to place
according to the seasons and followed the seasonal movements of game animals. Their
subsistence was based on the hunting of large animals such as mammoths, woolly
rhinoceroses, wildebeest, horses, bison, ancient brooms, and so on.
With regard to their social organization, Engels did not explain. Armed with
prehistoric archaeology, Engels simply envisioned a diversity of cultural levels from one
evolved human species to the next. "Early paleolithic man" he envisioned as being culturally
equivalent to "the present Australian aborigines "1. Whereas the cultural level and "way of
life" of "later paleolithic man" was compared to that of the "Eskimos" whom he considered
to be his contemporary descendants2.
Later, when it came to "early paleolithic man" Engels simply commented "we do not
know what became of them" when a new kind of man appeared; "later paleolithic man" he
said had interacted with "a new race [which] seems gradually to have pushed them
[northward] and often destroyed them without mixing "3.
Cover:
From what Engels describes in the first four pages of The Early History of the
German Nation, there is actually not much to discuss from a paleoanthropological point of
view. Viewed from the present, after so many fossils of various types of humans from
various geological layers discovered, classified and tested for their place in the evolutionary
pathway leading to modern humans, what Engels knew about these early humans was of
course extremely limited. This limitation was related to the development of
paleoanthropology and the limited findings of human fossils at the time. Nevertheless,
judging by his efforts to try to integrate paleoanthropological findings into his historical
treatise and explain human evolution in a materialistic manner armed with the most up-to-
date scientific findings at the time, Engels' efforts were quite advanced in his era. While
most people, even those who were recognized as scientists, were still unable to break away
from views derived from pre-scientific traditions of thought, Engels, who was not trained as
a scientist at all, had already fully embarked on explaining the history of society with
empirically traceable premises.
