"The theory of a natural development of society from the family was first elaborated by Aristotle, but it goes back in its fundamental idea to legend and myth. Peoples frequently trace their origin to an original pair of ancestors. From a single marriage union is derived the single tribe, and then, through a further extension of this idea, the whole of mankind. The legend of an original ancestral pair, however, is not to be found beyond the limits of the monogamous family. Thus, it is apparently a projection of monogamous marriage into the past, into the beginnings of a race, a tribe, or of a mankind. Wherever, therefore, monogamous marriage is not firmly established, legend accounts for the origin of men and peoples in various other ways. It thinks of them as coming forth from stones, from the earth, or from caverns; it regards animals as their ancestors, etc. Even the Greek legend of Deukalion and Pyrrha contains a survival of such an earlier view, combined with the legend of an original ancestral pair. Deukalion and Pyrrha throw stones behind them, from which there springs a new race of men.
The thought of an original family, thus, represents simply a projection of the present-day family into an inaccessible past. Clearly, therefore, it is to be regarded as only an hypothesis or, rather, a fiction. Without the support which it received from the Biblical legend, it could scarcely have maintained itself almost down to the present". (Wundt, Wilhelm. Elements of folk psychology. London; New York; George Allen & Unwin; The Macmillan Company. 1915. p.12)
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