The Worship of Animals and Plants

work by McLennan

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July 15, 2026

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John Ferguson McLennan, a Scottish ethnologist, proposed in his work The Worship of Animals and Plants that early human societies universally passed through a totemistic stage. He viewed totems, which could be animals or plants, as remnants of an earlier worship of fetishes. McLennan's theories suggested that these totems held significance for social groups, leading to practices like exogamy (marriage outside the group) and endogamy (marriage within the group). His ideas stimulated significant anthropological research and discussion on the origins of religion and kinship.12

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totemism
McLennan to Thurnwald
…perspective, and in his study The Worship of Animals and Plants (1869, 1870) he did not seek to explain the specific origin of the totemistic phenomenon but sought to indicate that all of the human race had in ancient times gone through a totemistic stage.
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…perspective, and in his study The Worship of Animals and Plants (1869, 1870) he did not seek to explain the specific origin of the totemistic phenomenon but sought to indicate that all of the human race had in ancient times gone through a totemistic stage.
Read More