John Ferguson McLennan FRSE LLD (14 October 1827 – 16 June 1881), was a Scottish advocate, social anthropologist and ethnologist.
[1][2][3] McLennan then spent two years in London writing for The Leader, at that time edited by George Henry Lewes, and other periodicals.
He became secretary to the Scottish Law Amendment Society, and took an active part in the agitation which led to the Court of Session Act of 1868.
Via conjectural steps involving the form of polyandry as it might have evolved, he found the topic that led on to his major work.
[1] McLennan developed from ethnographic data a social evolutionist theory of marriage, and also of systems of kinship according to natural laws.
He rejected patriarchal society as an early stage, arguing in favour of agnation as a more basic evolutionary point; he proposed an early model of social groups, a war band mainly male, practicing female infanticide and acquiring female sexual partners, with promiscuity and matrilineality salient features.
[1] The materials which he had accumulated on kinship were edited by his widow and Arthur Platt, under the title Studies in Ancient history: Second Series (1896).
It connected contemporary Arab nomads and ancient biblical peoples with the social function of totemism in primitive religions.