The higher stage of barbarism has been reached with the smelting of iron ore and the invention of alphabetical writing. The invention of the iron plough gives a new impetus to agriculture; the iron axe and spade and hoe make it easier to clear the forest and to cultivate the soil. With the forging of iron a number of new activities set in, giving life a different shape. Iron tools simplify the building of houses, ships and wagons. The malleation of metals furthermore leads to mechanical art, to an improvement in the manufacture of arms, and to the building of walled cities. Architecture is developed, and mythology, poetry and history are conserved and disseminated by means of alphabetical writing. The Oriental countries and those situated about the Mediterranean Sea--Egypt, Greece and Italy--are the ones in which this mode of life was especially developed, and here the foundation was laid to later social transformations that have had a decisive influence upon the development of civilization in Europe and, in fact, in all the countries of the globe. [1] “The theory of natural rights and the doctrine of the social contract, which places an isolated human being at the beginnings of human development, is an invention utterly foreign to reality, and is therefore worthless for the theoretical analysis of human institutions as it is for a knowledge of history. Man should, on the contrary, be classed with gregarious animals; that is, with those species whose individuals are combined into permanent groups.”--(Edw. Meyer: “The Origin of the State, in Its Relation to Tribal and National Association.” 1907.) [2] Backofen’s book was published in 1861. It was entitled, “The Matriarchate; Studies of the Gynocratic Customs of the Old World in Their Religious and Legal Aspects.” Publishers, Krais & Hoffmann, Stuttgart. Morgan’s fundamental work, “Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarism to Civilization,” was published in 1877 by Henry Holt & Co. “The Origin of the Family,” by Frederick Engels, founded upon Morgan’s investigations, was published by J. H. W. Dietz, Stuttgart, as was also “Relationship Organizations of the Australian Negro; a Contribution to the History of the Family,” by Henry Cunow, which appeared in 1894. 2.--Family Forms. The periods of savagery and barbarism were characterized by singular social and sex relations, that differ considerably from those of later times.