Matrilineality
Encyclopedia
Matrilineality is a system in which descent is traced through the mother and maternal ancestors. Matrilineality is also a societal system in which one belongs to one's matriline or mother's lineage, which can involve the inheritance of property and/or titles.
A matriline is a line of descent from a female
ancestor
to a descendant
(of either sex
) in which the individuals in all intervening generations are mothers – a mother line. In a matrilineal descent system an individual is considered to belong to the same descent group as her or his mother. This matrilineal descent pattern is in contrast to the more common modern pattern of patrilineal descent from which a Family name
is usually derived.
The matriline of historical nobility was also called her or his enatic or uterine ancestry, corresponding to the patrilineal agnatic ancestry treated in depth in the article Patrilineality
.
In some ancient cultures, membership in their groups was (and still is if in bold) inherited matrilineally. Example cultures or societies include the Cherokee
, Gitksan, Haida, Hopi
, Iroquois
, Lenape
, and Navajo
of North America
; the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra
, Indonesia
; the Nairs and the Bunts of Kerala
and Karnataka
in south India
; the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo
of Meghalaya
in northeast India; the Mosuo
of China
; the Basques of Spain and France; the Akan
including the Ashanti of west Africa; and the Tuaregs of west and north Africa. Some of these examples are discussed in this article, see Contents below.
s or mother-line surnames are inherited or handed down from mother to daughter (to daughter) in matrilineal cultures, similar to the more familiar patrilineal surnames which are inherited or handed down from father to son (to son) in patrilineal cultures (or societies). See Family name
for an in-depth treatment of patrilineal (father-line) family name
s or surname
s. The terms family name or surname are used here interchangeably. For clarity and for brevity, the scientific terms patrilineal surname and matrilineal surname will usually be abbreviated as patriname and matriname
.
The test of whether a particular surname is a matriname is to determine whether it is actually being handed down from mother to daughter (to daughter) in a matriline.
The usual lack of matrinames to hand down in patrilineal cultures, see the whole Family name
article, makes traditional genealogy
more difficult in the mother-line case than in the normal (father-line) case. After all, father-line surnames originated partly "to identify individuals clearly" and/or were adopted partly "for administrative reasons," see Family name (History); and these patrinames help now in searching for facts and documentation from centuries ago.
(mtDNA) is inherited maternally enables the matrilineal lines (or lineages) of individuals to be traced scientifically through genetic analysis, see main article, above.
Mitochondrial Eve
(mt-mrca) is the name given by researchers to the woman who, by matrilineal reckoning, is the most recent common ancestor
(mrca) for all living humans. She is the person from whom all mtDNA in living humans is derived.
She is believed by some to have lived about 150,000 years ago in East Africa, in or near present-day Tanzania
. The time she lived is calculated scientifically, based on the molecular clock
technique of correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift
, see Mitochondrial Eve
.
Genetic genealogy builds upon (and helps) traditional genealogy
– the latter was touched upon in the above section Matrilineal surname. For further information on genetic genealogy, or tracing of matrilineal lines via mtDNA testing, see the article Genealogical DNA test
.
mainly were patriarchal and patrilineal, certain ancient myths have been argued to expose ancient traces of matrilineal customs that existed before historical records.
The ancient historian Herodotus
is cited by Robert Graves
in his translations of Greek myths as attesting that the Lycia
ns of their times "still reckoned" by matrilineal descent, or were matrilineal, as were the Caria
ns.
In Greek mythology, while the royal function was a male privilege, power devolution often came through women, and the future king inherited power through marrying the queen heiress. This is illustrated in the Homer
ic myths where all the noblest men in Greece vie for the hand of Helen (and the throne of Sparta
), as well as the Oedipian cycle where Oedipus
weds the widow of the late king at the same time he assumes the Theban kingship.
This trend also is evident in many Celtic myths
, such as the (Welsh) mabinogi stories of Culhwch and Olwen
, or the (Irish) Ulster Cycle
, most notably the key facts to the Cúchulainn
cycle that Cúchulainn gets his final secret training with a warrior
woman, Scáthach
, and becomes lover both to her and her daughter; and the root of the Táin Bó Cuailnge
, that while Ailill
may wear the crown of Connacht
, it is his wife Medb
who is the real power, and she needs to affirm her equality to her husband by owning chattels as great as he does.
A number of other Breton
stories also illustrate the motif. Even the King Arthur
legends have been interpreted in this light by some. For example the Round Table
, both as a piece of furniture and as concerns the majority of knights belonging to it, was a gift to Arthur from Guinevere
's father Leodegrance
.
Arguments also have been made that matrilineality lay behind various fairy tale
plots which may contain the vestiges of folk traditions not recorded.
For instance, the widespread motif of a father who wishes to marry his own daughter—appearing in such tales as Allerleirauh
, Donkeyskin
, The King who Wished to Marry His Daughter
, and The She-Bear
-- has been explained as his wish to prolong his reign, which he would lose after his wife's death to his son-in-law. More mildly, the hostility of kings to their daughter's suitors is explained by hostility to their successors. In such tales as The Three May Peaches
, Jesper Who Herded the Hares
, or The Griffin
, kings set dangerous tasks in an attempt to prevent the marriage.
Fairy tales with hostility between the mother-in-law and the heroine—such as Mary's Child
, The Six Swans
, and Perrault's Sleeping Beauty
-- have been held to reflect a transition between a matrilineal society, where a man's loyalty was to his mother, and a patrilineal one, where his wife could claim it, although this interpretation is predicated on such a transition being a normal development in societies.
's influential book Ancient Society
, that early human kinship was everywhere matrilineal. This idea was taken up by Friedrich Engels
in his book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. The Morgan-Engels thesis that humanity's earliest domestic institution was not the family but the matrilineal clan
soon became incorporated into communist orthodoxy. In reaction, most twentieth century social anthropologists considered the theory of matrilineal priority untenable, although feminist scholars often attempted to revive it.
Evolutionary biologists, geneticists and palaeoanthropologists are currently reassessing the issues.
A modern example from South Africa is the order of succession to the position of the Rain Queen
in a culture of matrilineal primogeniture
: Not only is dynastic
descent reckoned through the female line, but only females are eligible to inherit.
, including the clans in most of the example cultures in this article, might possibly contain from one to several or many descent groups – i.e., the clan might be descended from one or several or many unrelated female ancestors.
If the clan contains only one descent group, then the clan is a family
group and the matrilineal clan name, if used in a person's name, would be a matrilineal surname (or matriname). (But note that in the clan-based Minangkabau example culture below, a person has no surname, only a given name
.)
If the clan contains more than one descent group, however, then the clan is not a family group; thus its clan name could not be a family name
and therefore is not a matrilineal surname or matriname. Still, an individual or an individual matriline in such a clan within a culture that used surnames might invent and use their own matriname, in addition to their clan name.
s of the Lenape
or Lenni Lenape or Delaware
, who farmed, fished, and hunted upon it. The pattern of their culture was that of a matrilineal agricultural and mobile hunting society that was sustained with fixed, but not permanent, settlements in their clan territories.
Villages were established and relocated as the clans farmed new sections of the land when soil fertility lessened and when they moved among their fishing and hunting grounds by seasons. The area was claimed as a part of the Dutch New Netherland
province dating from 1614, where active trading in furs took advantage of the natural pass west, but the Lenape prevented permanent settlement beyond what is now Jersey City.
"Early Europeans who first wrote about these Indians found matrilineal social organization to be unfamiliar and perplexing. ... As a result, the early records are full of 'clues' about early Lenape society, but were usually written by observers who did not fully understand what they were seeing."
In the Minangkabau matrilineal clan
culture in Indonesia
, a person's clan
name is important in their marriage and their other cultural-related events. Two totally unrelated people who share the same clan name can never be married because they are considered to be from the same clan mother (unless they come from distant villages). Likewise, when Minangs meet total strangers who share the same clan name, anywhere in Indonesia, they could theoretically expect to feel that they are distant relatives. Minang people do not have a family name or surname; neither is one's important clan name included in one's name; instead one's name is only one's given name
.
The Minangs are one of the world's largest matrilineal societies/cultures/ethnic groups, with a population of 4 million in their home province West Sumatra
in Indonesia and about 4 million elsewhere, mostly in Indonesia. The Minang people are well-known within their country for their tradition of matrilineality and for their "dedication to Islam" — despite Islam being "supposedly patrilineal". This well-known accommodation, between their traditional complex of customs, called adat
, and their religion, was actually worked out to help end the Minangkabau 1821-37 Padri War
. This source is available online.
As further described in the same online source, their (matrilineal) adat and their Islam religion each help the other to avoid the extremes of some modern global trends: Their strong belief in and practice of adat helps their Islam religion to not adopt a "simplistic anti-Western" version of Islam, while their strong belief in and practice of both Islam and adat helps the Minangs to limit or avoid some undesired effects of modern global capitalism. (A version of this paragraph can also be found in a different context, in the Minangkabau article's Adat and religion section.)
A 2009 update on Minangkabau culture is available online. In brief, the traditional matrilineal customs have started to erode or to change. The traditional merantau is changing to include teenage women, in addition to teenage men, leaving their hometown for a few years of school and/or work before returning to start a family; nowadays fewer young adults return except for an annual visit. Now the traditional clan bighouse often falls into disuse as its families feel freer to live in their own smaller modern house built next door. This erosion is due partly to the high upkeep on the old houses and partly to the desire for a modern lifestyle. To assure the continuation of the famous bighouse curved roof, the "government" has mandated that public buildings, such as banks and filling stations, must have a "Minangkabau roof". (A version of this paragraph can also be found in a different context, in the Minangkabau article's A 2009 update subsection.)
Several communities in South India practiced matrilineality, especially the Nair
in the state of Kerala
and the Bunts in the states of Kerala and Karnataka
. The system of inheritance was known as Marumakkathayam
in the Nair community or Aliya Kattu
in the Bunt community, and both communities were subdivided into clan
s. This system was exceptional in the sense that it was one of the few traditional systems in western historical records of India that gave women some liberty and the right to property.
In the matrilineal system, the family lived together in a tharavadu
which was composed of a mother, her brothers and younger sisters, and her children. The oldest male member was known as the karanavar and was the head of the household, managing the family estate. Lineage was traced through the mother, and the children belonged to the mother's family. All family property was jointly owned. In the event of a partition, the shares of the children were clubbed with that of the mother. The karanavar's property was inherited by his sisters' sons rather than his own sons. For further information see the articles Nair
and Bunts.
The Marumakkathayam system is not very common in Kerala and Karnataka these days for many reasons. Society has become much more cosmopolitan and modern. Men seek jobs away from their hometown and take their wives and children along with them. In this scenario, a joint-family system is no longer viable. But conceivably, there might still be a few tharavads that pay homage to this system.
live in Africa, particularly in Ghana
and Côte d'Ivoire
. (See as well their subgroup, the Ashanti, also called Asante
.) Many but not all of the Akan still (2001) practice their traditional matrilineal customs, living in their traditional extended family
households, as follows. The traditional Akan economic, political and social organization is based on matrilineal lineages, which are the basis of inheritance and succession. A lineage is defined as all those related by matrilineal descent from a particular ancestress. Several lineages are grouped into a political unit headed by a chief and a council of elders, each of whom is the elected head of a lineage — which itself may include multiple extended-family households. Public offices are thus vested in the lineage, as are land tenure and other lineage property. In other words, lineage property is inherited only by matrilineal kin.
Each lineage controls the lineage land farmed by its members, functions together in the veneration of its ancestors, supervises marriages of its members, and settles internal disputes among its members.
The political units above are likewise grouped into eight larger groups called abusua
(similar to clan
s): Aduana, Agona, Asakyiri, Asenie, Asona, Bretuo, Ekuona and Oyoko. The members of each abusua are united by their belief that they are all descended from the same ancient ancestress. Marriage between members of the same abusua is forbidden. One inherits or is a lifelong member of the lineage, the political unit, and the abusua of one's mother, regardless of one's gender and/or marriage. Note that members and their spouses thus belong to different abusuas, mother and children living and working in one household and their husband/father living and working in a different household.
According to this source of further information about the Akan, "A man is strongly related to his mother's brother (wɔfa) but only weakly related to his father's brother. This must be viewed in the context of a polygamous society in which the mother/child bond is likely to be much stronger than the father/child bond. As a result, in inheritance, a man's nephew (sister's son) will have priority over his own son. Uncle-nephew relationships therefore assume a dominant position."
"The principles governing inheritance stress sex, generation and age — that is to say, men come before women and seniors before juniors." When a woman’s brothers are available, a consideration of generational seniority stipulates that the line of brothers be exhausted before the right to inherit lineage property passes down to the next senior genealogical generation of sisters' sons. Finally, "it is when all possible male heirs have been exhausted that the females" may inherit.
Certain other aspects of the Akan culture are determined patrilineally rather than matrilineally. There are 12 patrilineal Ntoro
(which means spirit) groups, and everyone belongs to their father's Ntoro group but not to his (matrilineal) family lineage and abusua. Each Ntoro group has its own surnames, taboos, ritual purifications, and etiquette.
A recent (2001) book provides this update on the Akan: Some families are changing from the above abusua structure to the nuclear family
. Housing, childcare, education, daily work, and elder care etc. are then handled by that individual family rather than by the abusua or clan, especially in the city. The above taboo on marriage within one's abusua is sometimes ignored, but "clan membership" is still important, with many people still living in the abusua framework presented above.
Originally, Chinese
surnames were derived matrilineally, although by the time of the Shang Dynasty
(1600 to 1046 BCE) they had become patrilineal. The Chinese character
for "surname" (姓) still contains a female radical, suggesting its matrilineal etymology
.
Archaeological data supports the theory that during the Neolithic period, Chinese matrilineal clans evolved into the usual patrilineal families by passing through a transitional patrilineal clan phase. Evidence includes elaborate and highly adorned burials for young women in early Neolithic Yangshao culture
cemeteries, but increasing elaboration of male burials toward the late Neolithic period. http://www.jstor.org/view/00027294/ap020470/02a00030/8?frame=noframe&userID=808760ec@uchicago.edu/01cce4405c00501b90a70&dpi=3&config=jstor
Relatively isolated ethnic minorities such as the Mosuo
(Na) in southwestern China are highly matrilineal, and use matrilineal household/family names (see the General practice section of the Mosuo
article).
The Tuareg (Arabic:طوارق, sometimes spelled Touareg in French, or Twareg in English) are a Berber
ethnic group found across several nations in north Africa, including Niger
, Mali
and Algeria
. The Tuareg are clan-based, and are (still, in 2007) "largely matrilineal".
Tuareg women enjoy high status within their society, compared with their Arab
counterparts and with other Berber tribes: Tuareg social status is transmitted through women, with residence often matrilocal. Most women could read and write, while most men were illiterate, concerning themselves mainly with herding livestock and other male activities. The livestock and other movable property were owned by the women, whereas personal property is owned and inherited regardless of gender. Remarkably, men wear veils but women do not. This custom is discussed in more detail in the Tuareg article's clothing section, which mentions it may be the protection needed against the blowing sand while traversing the Sahara desert.
The Tuareg are Islamic, in their own fashion.
. The conferring of Jewish status through matrilineality is not stated explicitly in the Torah
, though Jewish oral tradition
maintains this was always the rule, and adduces indirect textual evidence. In biblical times, many Israelites married foreign women, and their children appear to have been accepted as Israelite without question; the Talmud
understands that the women in question converted to Judaism. (See the above-mentioned main article for more information. This section, Judaism, is simply a shortened version of that main article.)
In the Hellenistic period, some evidence indicates that the offspring of intermarriages between Jewish men and non-Jewish women were considered Jewish; as is usual in prerabbinic
texts, there is no mention of conversion on the part of the Gentile spouse. On the other hand, Philo of Alexandria
calls the child of a Jew and a non-Jew a nothos (bastard), regardless of whether the non-Jewish parent is the father or the mother.
The Mishnah
(Kiddushin 3:12) states that, to be a Jew, one must be either the child of a Jewish mother or a convert to Judaism. The Talmud
(Kiddushin 68b) derives this law from the Torah. The relevant Torah passage (Deut. 7:3-4) reads: "Thy daughter thou shalt not give to his son, nor shalt thou take his daughter to thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods."
With the emergence of Jewish denominations
and the modern rise in Jewish intermarriage in the 20th century, questions about the law of matrilineal descent have assumed greater importance to the Jewish community at large. The heterogeneous Jewish community is divided on the issue of "Who is a Jew?
" via descent; matrilineal descent still is the rule within Orthodox Judaism
, which also holds that anyone with a Jewish mother has an irrevocable Jewish status, and matrilineal descent is the norm in the Conservative movement
. Since 1983, Reform Judaism
in the United States of America officially adopted a bilineal policy: one is a Jew if either of one's parents is Jewish, provided that either (a) one is raised as a Jew, by Reform standards, or (b) one engages in an appropriate act of public identification, formalizing a practice that had been common in Reform synagogues for at least a generation. Karaite Judaism, which includes only the Tanakh
in its canon, interprets the Torah to indicate that Jewishness passes exclusively through the father's line. See the above-mentioned main article Matrilineality in Judaism
for more-complete context and sources.
A matriline is a line of descent from a female
Female
Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces non-mobile ova .- Defining characteristics :The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon, is produced by the male...
ancestor
Ancestor
An ancestor is a parent or the parent of an ancestor ....
to a descendant
Kinship
Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. And descent groups, lineages, etc. are treated in their own subsections....
(of either sex
Sex
In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
) in which the individuals in all intervening generations are mothers – a mother line. In a matrilineal descent system an individual is considered to belong to the same descent group as her or his mother. This matrilineal descent pattern is in contrast to the more common modern pattern of patrilineal descent from which a Family name
Family name
A family name is a type of surname and part of a person's name indicating the family to which the person belongs. The use of family names is widespread in cultures around the world...
is usually derived.
The matriline of historical nobility was also called her or his enatic or uterine ancestry, corresponding to the patrilineal agnatic ancestry treated in depth in the article Patrilineality
Patrilineality
Patrilineality is a system in which one belongs to one's father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritance of property, names or titles through the male line as well....
.
In some ancient cultures, membership in their groups was (and still is if in bold) inherited matrilineally. Example cultures or societies include the Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
, Gitksan, Haida, Hopi
Hopi
The Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...
, Iroquois
Iroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...
, Lenape
Lenape
The Lenape are an Algonquian group of Native Americans of the Northeastern Woodlands. They are also called Delaware Indians. As a result of the American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, today the main groups live in Canada, where they are enrolled in the...
, and Navajo
Navajo people
The Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
; the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra
West Sumatra
West Sumatra is a province of Indonesia. It lies on the west coast of the island Sumatra. It borders the provinces of North Sumatra to the north, Riau and Jambi to the east, and Bengkulu to the southeast. It includes the Mentawai Islands off the coast...
, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
; the Nairs and the Bunts of Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
and Karnataka
Karnataka
Karnataka , the land of the Kannadigas, is a state in South West India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act and this day is annually celebrated as Karnataka Rajyotsava...
in south India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
; the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo
Garo (tribe)
See also Garo for other uses.The Garos are a tribal people in Meghalaya, India and neighboring areas of Bangladesh, who call themselves A·chik Mande or simply A·chik or Mande...
of Meghalaya
Meghalaya
Meghalaya is a state in north-eastern India. The word "Meghalaya" literally means the Abode of Clouds in Sanskrit and other Indic languages. Meghalaya is a hilly strip in the eastern part of the country about 300 km long and 100 km wide, with a total area of about 8,700 sq mi . The...
in northeast India; the Mosuo
Mosuo
Known to many as the Mosuo , but known often to themselves as the Na, the Mosuo are a small ethnic group living in Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces in China, close to the border with Tibet...
of China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
; the Basques of Spain and France; the Akan
Akan people
The Akan people are an ethnic group found predominately in Ghana and The Ivory Coast. Akans are the majority in both of these countries and overall have a population of over 20 million people.The Akan speak Kwa languages-Origin and ethnogenesis:...
including the Ashanti of west Africa; and the Tuaregs of west and north Africa. Some of these examples are discussed in this article, see Contents below.
Matrilineal surname
Matrilineal surnameSurname
A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...
s or mother-line surnames are inherited or handed down from mother to daughter (to daughter) in matrilineal cultures, similar to the more familiar patrilineal surnames which are inherited or handed down from father to son (to son) in patrilineal cultures (or societies). See Family name
Family name
A family name is a type of surname and part of a person's name indicating the family to which the person belongs. The use of family names is widespread in cultures around the world...
for an in-depth treatment of patrilineal (father-line) family name
Family name
A family name is a type of surname and part of a person's name indicating the family to which the person belongs. The use of family names is widespread in cultures around the world...
s or surname
Surname
A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...
s. The terms family name or surname are used here interchangeably. For clarity and for brevity, the scientific terms patrilineal surname and matrilineal surname will usually be abbreviated as patriname and matriname
Matriname
Matrilineal surnames, or equivalently matrinames, are inherited or handed down from mother to daughter in matrilineal cultures, and this line of descent or "mother line" is called a matriline...
.
The test of whether a particular surname is a matriname is to determine whether it is actually being handed down from mother to daughter (to daughter) in a matriline.
The usual lack of matrinames to hand down in patrilineal cultures, see the whole Family name
Family name
A family name is a type of surname and part of a person's name indicating the family to which the person belongs. The use of family names is widespread in cultures around the world...
article, makes traditional genealogy
Genealogy
Genealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
more difficult in the mother-line case than in the normal (father-line) case. After all, father-line surnames originated partly "to identify individuals clearly" and/or were adopted partly "for administrative reasons," see Family name (History); and these patrinames help now in searching for facts and documentation from centuries ago.
Genetic genealogy
The fact that mitochondrial DNAMitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA located in organelles called mitochondria, structures within eukaryotic cells that convert the chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, adenosine triphosphate...
(mtDNA) is inherited maternally enables the matrilineal lines (or lineages) of individuals to be traced scientifically through genetic analysis, see main article, above.
Mitochondrial Eve
Mitochondrial Eve
In the field of human genetics, Mitochondrial Eve refers to the matrilineal "MRCA" . In other words, she was the woman from whom all living humans today descend, on their mother's side, and through the mothers of those mothers and so on, back until all lines converge on one person...
(mt-mrca) is the name given by researchers to the woman who, by matrilineal reckoning, is the most recent common ancestor
Most recent common ancestor
In genetics, the most recent common ancestor of any set of organisms is the most recent individual from which all organisms in the group are directly descended...
(mrca) for all living humans. She is the person from whom all mtDNA in living humans is derived.
She is believed by some to have lived about 150,000 years ago in East Africa, in or near present-day Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
. The time she lived is calculated scientifically, based on the molecular clock
Molecular clock
The molecular clock is a technique in molecular evolution that uses fossil constraints and rates of molecular change to deduce the time in geologic history when two species or other taxa diverged. It is used to estimate the time of occurrence of events called speciation or radiation...
technique of correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift
Genetic drift
Genetic drift or allelic drift is the change in the frequency of a gene variant in a population due to random sampling.The alleles in the offspring are a sample of those in the parents, and chance has a role in determining whether a given individual survives and reproduces...
, see Mitochondrial Eve
Mitochondrial Eve
In the field of human genetics, Mitochondrial Eve refers to the matrilineal "MRCA" . In other words, she was the woman from whom all living humans today descend, on their mother's side, and through the mothers of those mothers and so on, back until all lines converge on one person...
.
Genetic genealogy builds upon (and helps) traditional genealogy
Genealogy
Genealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
– the latter was touched upon in the above section Matrilineal surname. For further information on genetic genealogy, or tracing of matrilineal lines via mtDNA testing, see the article Genealogical DNA test
Genealogical DNA test
A genealogical DNA test examines the nucleotides at specific locations on a person's DNA for genetic genealogy purposes. The test results are not meant to have any informative medical value and do not determine specific genetic diseases or disorders ; they are intended only to give genealogical...
.
In mythology
While Indo-European peoplesProto-Indo-Europeans
The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language , a reconstructed prehistoric language of Eurasia.Knowledge of them comes chiefly from the linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics...
mainly were patriarchal and patrilineal, certain ancient myths have been argued to expose ancient traces of matrilineal customs that existed before historical records.
The ancient historian Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
is cited by Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
in his translations of Greek myths as attesting that the Lycia
Lycia
Lycia Lycian: Trm̃mis; ) was a region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Muğla on the southern coast of Turkey. It was a federation of ancient cities in the region and later a province of the Roman Empire...
ns of their times "still reckoned" by matrilineal descent, or were matrilineal, as were the Caria
Caria
Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there...
ns.
In Greek mythology, while the royal function was a male privilege, power devolution often came through women, and the future king inherited power through marrying the queen heiress. This is illustrated in the Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
ic myths where all the noblest men in Greece vie for the hand of Helen (and the throne of Sparta
Sparta
Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...
), as well as the Oedipian cycle where Oedipus
Oedipus
Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...
weds the widow of the late king at the same time he assumes the Theban kingship.
This trend also is evident in many Celtic myths
Celtic mythology
Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, apparently the religion of the Iron Age Celts. Like other Iron Age Europeans, the early Celts maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure...
, such as the (Welsh) mabinogi stories of Culhwch and Olwen
Culhwch and Olwen
Culhwch and Olwen is a Welsh tale about a hero connected with Arthur and his warriors that survives in only two manuscripts: a complete version in the Red Book of Hergest, ca. 1400, and a fragmented version in the White Book of Rhydderch, ca. 1325. It is the longest of the surviving Welsh prose...
, or the (Irish) Ulster Cycle
Ulster Cycle
The Ulster Cycle , formerly known as the Red Branch Cycle, one of the four great cycles of Irish mythology, is a body of medieval Irish heroic legends and sagas of the traditional heroes of the Ulaid in what is now eastern Ulster and northern Leinster, particularly counties Armagh, Down and...
, most notably the key facts to the Cúchulainn
Cúchulainn
Cú Chulainn or Cúchulainn , and sometimes known in English as Cuhullin , is an Irish mythological hero who appears in the stories of the Ulster Cycle, as well as in Scottish and Manx folklore...
cycle that Cúchulainn gets his final secret training with a warrior
Warrior
A warrior is a person skilled in combat or warfare, especially within the context of a tribal or clan-based society that recognizes a separate warrior class.-Warrior classes in tribal culture:...
woman, Scáthach
Scáthach
Scáthach is a figure in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. She is a legendary Scottish warrior woman and martial arts teacher who trains the legendary Ulster hero Cú Chulainn in the arts of combat...
, and becomes lover both to her and her daughter; and the root of the Táin Bó Cuailnge
Táin Bó Cúailnge
is a legendary tale from early Irish literature, often considered an epic, although it is written primarily in prose rather than verse. It tells of a war against Ulster by the Connacht queen Medb and her husband Ailill, who intend to steal the stud bull Donn Cuailnge, opposed only by the teenage...
, that while Ailill
Ailill mac Máta
Ailill mac Máta is the king of the Connachta and the husband of queen Medb in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. He rules from Cruachan .-Family background, marriage and offspring:...
may wear the crown of Connacht
Connacht
Connacht , formerly anglicised as Connaught, is one of the Provinces of Ireland situated in the west of Ireland. In Ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for...
, it is his wife Medb
Medb
Medb – Middle Irish: Meḋḃ, Meaḋḃ; early modern Irish: Meadhbh ; reformed modern Irish Méabh, Medbh; sometimes Anglicised Maeve, Maev or Maive – is queen of Connacht in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology...
who is the real power, and she needs to affirm her equality to her husband by owning chattels as great as he does.
A number of other Breton
Breton people
The Bretons are an ethnic group located in the region of Brittany in France. They trace much of their heritage to groups of Brythonic speakers who emigrated from southwestern Great Britain in waves from the 3rd to 6th century into the Armorican peninsula, subsequently named Brittany after them.The...
stories also illustrate the motif. Even the King Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
legends have been interpreted in this light by some. For example the Round Table
Round Table (Camelot)
The Round Table is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his Knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status. The table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of...
, both as a piece of furniture and as concerns the majority of knights belonging to it, was a gift to Arthur from Guinevere
Guinevere
Guinevere was the legendary queen consort of King Arthur. In tales and folklore, she was said to have had a love affair with Arthur's chief knight Sir Lancelot...
's father Leodegrance
Leodegrance
King Leodegrance is the father of Queen Guinevere in Arthurian legend. His kingdom of Carmelide is sometimes identified with a location somewhere in the southwest of England, but may be located in Breton Cornouaille near the town of Carhaix, which is the Carhaise of L'Histoire de Merlin King...
.
Arguments also have been made that matrilineality lay behind various fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
plots which may contain the vestiges of folk traditions not recorded.
For instance, the widespread motif of a father who wishes to marry his own daughter—appearing in such tales as Allerleirauh
Allerleirauh
Allerleirauh is a fairy tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm. Since the second edition published in 1819, it has been recorded as Tale no. 65. Andrew Lang included it in The Green Fairy Book....
, Donkeyskin
Donkeyskin
Donkeyskin is a French fairy tale told by Charles Perrault.Andrew Lang included it, somewhat euphemized, in The Grey Fairy Book.It is Aarne-Thompson folktale type 510B, unnatural love...
, The King who Wished to Marry His Daughter
The King who Wished to Marry His Daughter
"The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter" is a Scottish fairy tale collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands, listing his informant as Ann Darroch from Islay.It is Aarne-Thompson type 510B, unnatural love...
, and The She-Bear
The She-Bear
"The She-bear" is an Italian literary fairy tale, written by Giambattista Basile in his 1634 work, the Pentamerone.Ruth Manning-Sanders included it in A Book of Princes and Princesses....
-- has been explained as his wish to prolong his reign, which he would lose after his wife's death to his son-in-law. More mildly, the hostility of kings to their daughter's suitors is explained by hostility to their successors. In such tales as The Three May Peaches
The Three May Peaches
The Three May Peaches is a French fairy tale collected by Paul Delarue. He collected more than thirty French types of this tale, which is known in Europe, North Africa, and Asia as far as India.It is Aarne-Thompson type 570, the Rabbit Herd....
, Jesper Who Herded the Hares
Jesper Who Herded the Hares
Jesper Who Herded the Hares is a Scandinavian fairy tale. Andrew Lang included it in The Violet Fairy Book.The motif of herding hares is a common fairy tale theme. Another tale featuring it is The Three May Peaches...
, or The Griffin
The Griffin (fairy tale)
The Griffin is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales.It is Aarne-Thompson type 610, Fruit to Cure the Princess; and type 461, Three Hairs from the Devil...
, kings set dangerous tasks in an attempt to prevent the marriage.
Fairy tales with hostility between the mother-in-law and the heroine—such as Mary's Child
Mary's Child
Mary's Child or Our Lady's Child is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales as tale number 3.The Brothers Grimm noted its similarity to the Italian The Goat-faced Girl and the Norwegian The Lassie and Her Godmother...
, The Six Swans
The Six Swans
The Six Swans is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. It is tale number 49. Andrew Lang included a variant in The Yellow Fairy Book. It is Aarne-Thompson type 451: the brothers who were turned into birds...
, and Perrault's Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault or Little Briar Rose by the Brothers Grimm is a classic fairytale involving a beautiful princess, enchantment, and a handsome prince...
-- have been held to reflect a transition between a matrilineal society, where a man's loyalty was to his mother, and a patrilineal one, where his wife could claim it, although this interpretation is predicated on such a transition being a normal development in societies.
Early human kinship
In the late nineteenth century, almost all prehistorians and anthropologists believed, following Lewis H. MorganLewis H. Morgan
Lewis Henry Morgan was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist, a railroad lawyer and capitalist. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social evolution, and his ethnography of the Iroquois...
's influential book Ancient Society
Ancient Society
Ancient Society is a book by the United States ethnologist Lewis H. Morgan and published in 1877. In this book, Morgan develops his theory of the three stages of human progress, i.e., from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization...
, that early human kinship was everywhere matrilineal. This idea was taken up by Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
in his book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. The Morgan-Engels thesis that humanity's earliest domestic institution was not the family but the matrilineal clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
soon became incorporated into communist orthodoxy. In reaction, most twentieth century social anthropologists considered the theory of matrilineal priority untenable, although feminist scholars often attempted to revive it.
Evolutionary biologists, geneticists and palaeoanthropologists are currently reassessing the issues.
Various cultural patterns
There appears to be some evidence for the presence of matrilineality in pre-Islamic Arabia, in a very limited number of the Arabian peoples (first of all among the Amirites of Yemen, and among some strata of Nabateans in Northern Arabia); on the other hand, there does not seem to be any reliable evidence for the presence of matrilineality in Islamic Arabia, although the Fatimid Caliphate claimed succession from the Islamic Prophet Mohammad via his daughter Fatima.A modern example from South Africa is the order of succession to the position of the Rain Queen
Rain Queen
The Modjadji or Rain Queen is the hereditary queen of Balobedu, a people of the Limpopo Province of South Africa. The succession to the position of Rain Queen is matrilineal, meaning that the Queen's eldest daughter is the heir, and that males are not entitled to inherit the throne at all...
in a culture of matrilineal primogeniture
Matrilineal succession
Matrilineal succession is a form of hereditary succession or other inheritance through which the subject's female relatives are traced back in a matrilineal line.-Systems:...
: Not only is dynastic
Dynasty
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers considered members of the same family. Historians traditionally consider many sovereign states' history within a framework of successive dynasties, e.g., China, Ancient Egypt and the Persian Empire...
descent reckoned through the female line, but only females are eligible to inherit.
Clan names vs. surnames
In general, a matrilineal clanClan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
, including the clans in most of the example cultures in this article, might possibly contain from one to several or many descent groups – i.e., the clan might be descended from one or several or many unrelated female ancestors.
If the clan contains only one descent group, then the clan is a family
Family
In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...
group and the matrilineal clan name, if used in a person's name, would be a matrilineal surname (or matriname). (But note that in the clan-based Minangkabau example culture below, a person has no surname, only a given name
Given name
A given name, in Western contexts often referred to as a first name, is a personal name that specifies and differentiates between members of a group of individuals, especially in a family, all of whose members usually share the same family name...
.)
If the clan contains more than one descent group, however, then the clan is not a family group; thus its clan name could not be a family name
Family name
A family name is a type of surname and part of a person's name indicating the family to which the person belongs. The use of family names is widespread in cultures around the world...
and therefore is not a matrilineal surname or matriname. Still, an individual or an individual matriline in such a clan within a culture that used surnames might invent and use their own matriname, in addition to their clan name.
Care of children
While a mother normally takes care of her own children in all cultures, in some matrilineal cultures a father will take care of his nieces and nephews instead. In a strictly matrilineal system, especially where residence is also matrilocal, a man will exercise guardianship rights not over the children he fathers but exclusively over his sisters' children, who are viewed as 'his own flesh'. These children's biological father – unlike an uncle who is their mother's brother and thus their caregiver – is in some sense a 'stranger' to them, even when affectionate and emotionally close. This may be true for the traditional Akan culture below, for example.Lenape
Occupied for 10,000 years by Native Americans, the land that would become New Jersey was overseen by clanClan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
s of the Lenape
Lenape
The Lenape are an Algonquian group of Native Americans of the Northeastern Woodlands. They are also called Delaware Indians. As a result of the American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, today the main groups live in Canada, where they are enrolled in the...
or Lenni Lenape or Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
, who farmed, fished, and hunted upon it. The pattern of their culture was that of a matrilineal agricultural and mobile hunting society that was sustained with fixed, but not permanent, settlements in their clan territories.
Villages were established and relocated as the clans farmed new sections of the land when soil fertility lessened and when they moved among their fishing and hunting grounds by seasons. The area was claimed as a part of the Dutch New Netherland
New Netherland
New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...
province dating from 1614, where active trading in furs took advantage of the natural pass west, but the Lenape prevented permanent settlement beyond what is now Jersey City.
"Early Europeans who first wrote about these Indians found matrilineal social organization to be unfamiliar and perplexing. ... As a result, the early records are full of 'clues' about early Lenape society, but were usually written by observers who did not fully understand what they were seeing."
Minangkabau
In the Minangkabau matrilineal clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
culture in Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, a person's clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
name is important in their marriage and their other cultural-related events. Two totally unrelated people who share the same clan name can never be married because they are considered to be from the same clan mother (unless they come from distant villages). Likewise, when Minangs meet total strangers who share the same clan name, anywhere in Indonesia, they could theoretically expect to feel that they are distant relatives. Minang people do not have a family name or surname; neither is one's important clan name included in one's name; instead one's name is only one's given name
Given name
A given name, in Western contexts often referred to as a first name, is a personal name that specifies and differentiates between members of a group of individuals, especially in a family, all of whose members usually share the same family name...
.
The Minangs are one of the world's largest matrilineal societies/cultures/ethnic groups, with a population of 4 million in their home province West Sumatra
West Sumatra
West Sumatra is a province of Indonesia. It lies on the west coast of the island Sumatra. It borders the provinces of North Sumatra to the north, Riau and Jambi to the east, and Bengkulu to the southeast. It includes the Mentawai Islands off the coast...
in Indonesia and about 4 million elsewhere, mostly in Indonesia. The Minang people are well-known within their country for their tradition of matrilineality and for their "dedication to Islam" — despite Islam being "supposedly patrilineal". This well-known accommodation, between their traditional complex of customs, called adat
Adat
Adat in Indonesian-Malay culture is the set of cultural norms, values, customs and practices found among specific ethnic groups in Indonesia, the southern Philippines and Malaysia...
, and their religion, was actually worked out to help end the Minangkabau 1821-37 Padri War
Padri War
The Padri War was fought from 1803 until 1837 in West Sumatra between two rival muslim factions. The Dutch intervened from 1821 and helped the Adats defeat the Padri faction.-Background:...
. This source is available online.
As further described in the same online source, their (matrilineal) adat and their Islam religion each help the other to avoid the extremes of some modern global trends: Their strong belief in and practice of adat helps their Islam religion to not adopt a "simplistic anti-Western" version of Islam, while their strong belief in and practice of both Islam and adat helps the Minangs to limit or avoid some undesired effects of modern global capitalism. (A version of this paragraph can also be found in a different context, in the Minangkabau article's Adat and religion section.)
A 2009 update on Minangkabau culture is available online. In brief, the traditional matrilineal customs have started to erode or to change. The traditional merantau is changing to include teenage women, in addition to teenage men, leaving their hometown for a few years of school and/or work before returning to start a family; nowadays fewer young adults return except for an annual visit. Now the traditional clan bighouse often falls into disuse as its families feel freer to live in their own smaller modern house built next door. This erosion is due partly to the high upkeep on the old houses and partly to the desire for a modern lifestyle. To assure the continuation of the famous bighouse curved roof, the "government" has mandated that public buildings, such as banks and filling stations, must have a "Minangkabau roof". (A version of this paragraph can also be found in a different context, in the Minangkabau article's A 2009 update subsection.)
India
Several communities in South India practiced matrilineality, especially the Nair
Nair
Nair , also known as Nayar , refers to "not a unitary group but a named category of castes", which historically embody several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom bore the Nair title. These people historically live in the present-day Indian state of Kerala...
in the state of Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
and the Bunts in the states of Kerala and Karnataka
Karnataka
Karnataka , the land of the Kannadigas, is a state in South West India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act and this day is annually celebrated as Karnataka Rajyotsava...
. The system of inheritance was known as Marumakkathayam
Marumakkathayam
Marumakkathayam is a matrilinear system of inheritance which was followed by all Nair castes including of Royal Families, some of the Ambalavasis, Arayars, Ezhava, some tribal groups and Mappilas in North Malabar of Kerala state, South India. Unlike other Brahmin families, Payanoor Nambootiris...
in the Nair community or Aliya Kattu
Aliya Kattu
Aliya Kattu was, a matrilineal system of tracing origin practiced by many Tulu communities in the area now known as Karnataka...
in the Bunt community, and both communities were subdivided into clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
s. This system was exceptional in the sense that it was one of the few traditional systems in western historical records of India that gave women some liberty and the right to property.
In the matrilineal system, the family lived together in a tharavadu
Tharavadu
Tharavad is a system of joint family practised by people in Kerala, especially Nairs. Tharavadu was a legal entity like a Hindu Undivided Family as per Indian Income Tax laws, and was entitled to own properties. The others, like Namboothriris, Ezhavas, Christians and Muslims also now refer to...
which was composed of a mother, her brothers and younger sisters, and her children. The oldest male member was known as the karanavar and was the head of the household, managing the family estate. Lineage was traced through the mother, and the children belonged to the mother's family. All family property was jointly owned. In the event of a partition, the shares of the children were clubbed with that of the mother. The karanavar's property was inherited by his sisters' sons rather than his own sons. For further information see the articles Nair
Nair
Nair , also known as Nayar , refers to "not a unitary group but a named category of castes", which historically embody several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom bore the Nair title. These people historically live in the present-day Indian state of Kerala...
and Bunts.
The Marumakkathayam system is not very common in Kerala and Karnataka these days for many reasons. Society has become much more cosmopolitan and modern. Men seek jobs away from their hometown and take their wives and children along with them. In this scenario, a joint-family system is no longer viable. But conceivably, there might still be a few tharavads that pay homage to this system.
Akan
Some 20 million AkanAkan people
The Akan people are an ethnic group found predominately in Ghana and The Ivory Coast. Akans are the majority in both of these countries and overall have a population of over 20 million people.The Akan speak Kwa languages-Origin and ethnogenesis:...
live in Africa, particularly in Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
and Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire
The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...
. (See as well their subgroup, the Ashanti, also called Asante
Asante
Asante may mean:*The Ashanti people of Ghana*The Ashanti Confederacy, a pre-colonial state in West Africa.*Asante Kotoko, a football club*Empire of Ashanti The ancient state of the ashanti that was powerful around the West African region...
.) Many but not all of the Akan still (2001) practice their traditional matrilineal customs, living in their traditional extended family
Extended family
The term extended family has several distinct meanings. In modern Western cultures dominated by nuclear family constructs, it has come to be used generically to refer to grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, whether they live together within the same household or not. However, it may also refer...
households, as follows. The traditional Akan economic, political and social organization is based on matrilineal lineages, which are the basis of inheritance and succession. A lineage is defined as all those related by matrilineal descent from a particular ancestress. Several lineages are grouped into a political unit headed by a chief and a council of elders, each of whom is the elected head of a lineage — which itself may include multiple extended-family households. Public offices are thus vested in the lineage, as are land tenure and other lineage property. In other words, lineage property is inherited only by matrilineal kin.
Each lineage controls the lineage land farmed by its members, functions together in the veneration of its ancestors, supervises marriages of its members, and settles internal disputes among its members.
The political units above are likewise grouped into eight larger groups called abusua
Abusua
Abusua is the name in Akan culture for a group of people that share a common maternal ancestor. The Abusua line is passed through the Blood.There are several Abusua which transcend the different ethnic subgroups...
(similar to clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
s): Aduana, Agona, Asakyiri, Asenie, Asona, Bretuo, Ekuona and Oyoko. The members of each abusua are united by their belief that they are all descended from the same ancient ancestress. Marriage between members of the same abusua is forbidden. One inherits or is a lifelong member of the lineage, the political unit, and the abusua of one's mother, regardless of one's gender and/or marriage. Note that members and their spouses thus belong to different abusuas, mother and children living and working in one household and their husband/father living and working in a different household.
According to this source of further information about the Akan, "A man is strongly related to his mother's brother (wɔfa) but only weakly related to his father's brother. This must be viewed in the context of a polygamous society in which the mother/child bond is likely to be much stronger than the father/child bond. As a result, in inheritance, a man's nephew (sister's son) will have priority over his own son. Uncle-nephew relationships therefore assume a dominant position."
"The principles governing inheritance stress sex, generation and age — that is to say, men come before women and seniors before juniors." When a woman’s brothers are available, a consideration of generational seniority stipulates that the line of brothers be exhausted before the right to inherit lineage property passes down to the next senior genealogical generation of sisters' sons. Finally, "it is when all possible male heirs have been exhausted that the females" may inherit.
Certain other aspects of the Akan culture are determined patrilineally rather than matrilineally. There are 12 patrilineal Ntoro
Ntoro
The Ntoro is the genetic aspect of the father which the Akan people believe is passed on to this children. The Akan believe that the Ntoro does not die with the father instead it goes down to the man’s children or if the children are not alive to his nephews and nieces...
(which means spirit) groups, and everyone belongs to their father's Ntoro group but not to his (matrilineal) family lineage and abusua. Each Ntoro group has its own surnames, taboos, ritual purifications, and etiquette.
A recent (2001) book provides this update on the Akan: Some families are changing from the above abusua structure to the nuclear family
Nuclear family
Nuclear family is a term used to define a family group consisting of a father and mother and their children. This is in contrast to the smaller single-parent family, and to the larger extended family. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple, but not always; the nuclear family may have...
. Housing, childcare, education, daily work, and elder care etc. are then handled by that individual family rather than by the abusua or clan, especially in the city. The above taboo on marriage within one's abusua is sometimes ignored, but "clan membership" is still important, with many people still living in the abusua framework presented above.
China
Originally, Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
surnames were derived matrilineally, although by the time of the Shang Dynasty
Shang Dynasty
The Shang Dynasty or Yin Dynasty was, according to traditional sources, the second Chinese dynasty, after the Xia. They ruled in the northeastern regions of the area known as "China proper" in the Yellow River valley...
(1600 to 1046 BCE) they had become patrilineal. The Chinese character
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
for "surname" (姓) still contains a female radical, suggesting its matrilineal etymology
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
.
Archaeological data supports the theory that during the Neolithic period, Chinese matrilineal clans evolved into the usual patrilineal families by passing through a transitional patrilineal clan phase. Evidence includes elaborate and highly adorned burials for young women in early Neolithic Yangshao culture
Yangshao culture
The Yangshao culture was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively along the central Yellow River in China. The Yangshao culture is dated from around 5000 BC to 3000 BC. The culture is named after Yangshao, the first excavated representative village of this culture, which was discovered in 1921...
cemeteries, but increasing elaboration of male burials toward the late Neolithic period. http://www.jstor.org/view/00027294/ap020470/02a00030/8?frame=noframe&userID=808760ec@uchicago.edu/01cce4405c00501b90a70&dpi=3&config=jstor
Relatively isolated ethnic minorities such as the Mosuo
Mosuo
Known to many as the Mosuo , but known often to themselves as the Na, the Mosuo are a small ethnic group living in Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces in China, close to the border with Tibet...
(Na) in southwestern China are highly matrilineal, and use matrilineal household/family names (see the General practice section of the Mosuo
Mosuo
Known to many as the Mosuo , but known often to themselves as the Na, the Mosuo are a small ethnic group living in Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces in China, close to the border with Tibet...
article).
Tuareg
The Tuareg (Arabic:طوارق, sometimes spelled Touareg in French, or Twareg in English) are a Berber
Berber people
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...
ethnic group found across several nations in north Africa, including Niger
Niger
Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
, Mali
Mali
Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...
and Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
. The Tuareg are clan-based, and are (still, in 2007) "largely matrilineal".
Tuareg women enjoy high status within their society, compared with their Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
counterparts and with other Berber tribes: Tuareg social status is transmitted through women, with residence often matrilocal. Most women could read and write, while most men were illiterate, concerning themselves mainly with herding livestock and other male activities. The livestock and other movable property were owned by the women, whereas personal property is owned and inherited regardless of gender. Remarkably, men wear veils but women do not. This custom is discussed in more detail in the Tuareg article's clothing section, which mentions it may be the protection needed against the blowing sand while traversing the Sahara desert.
The Tuareg are Islamic, in their own fashion.
Judaism
Matrilineality in Judaism is the view that people born of a Jewish mother are themselves JewishJudaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
. The conferring of Jewish status through matrilineality is not stated explicitly in the Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
, though Jewish oral tradition
Oral Torah
The Oral Torah comprises the legal and interpretative traditions that, according to tradition, were transmitted orally from Mount Sinai, and were not written in the Torah...
maintains this was always the rule, and adduces indirect textual evidence. In biblical times, many Israelites married foreign women, and their children appear to have been accepted as Israelite without question; the Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
understands that the women in question converted to Judaism. (See the above-mentioned main article for more information. This section, Judaism, is simply a shortened version of that main article.)
In the Hellenistic period, some evidence indicates that the offspring of intermarriages between Jewish men and non-Jewish women were considered Jewish; as is usual in prerabbinic
Rabbinic Judaism
Rabbinic Judaism or Rabbinism has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Talmud...
texts, there is no mention of conversion on the part of the Gentile spouse. On the other hand, Philo of Alexandria
Philo
Philo , known also as Philo of Alexandria , Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew, was a Hellenistic Jewish Biblical philosopher born in Alexandria....
calls the child of a Jew and a non-Jew a nothos (bastard), regardless of whether the non-Jewish parent is the father or the mother.
The Mishnah
Mishnah
The Mishnah or Mishna is the first major written redaction of the Jewish oral traditions called the "Oral Torah". It is also the first major work of Rabbinic Judaism. It was redacted c...
(Kiddushin 3:12) states that, to be a Jew, one must be either the child of a Jewish mother or a convert to Judaism. The Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
(Kiddushin 68b) derives this law from the Torah. The relevant Torah passage (Deut. 7:3-4) reads: "Thy daughter thou shalt not give to his son, nor shalt thou take his daughter to thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods."
With the emergence of Jewish denominations
Jewish denominations
Jewish religious movements , sometimes called "denominations" or "branches", include different groups which have developed among Jews from ancient times and especially in the modern era among Ashkenazi Jews living in anglophone countries...
and the modern rise in Jewish intermarriage in the 20th century, questions about the law of matrilineal descent have assumed greater importance to the Jewish community at large. The heterogeneous Jewish community is divided on the issue of "Who is a Jew?
Who is a Jew?
"Who is a Jew?" is a basic question about Jewish identity and considerations of Jewish self-identification. The question is based in ideas about Jewish personhood which themselves have cultural, religious, genealogical, and personal dimensions...
" via descent; matrilineal descent still is the rule within Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
, which also holds that anyone with a Jewish mother has an irrevocable Jewish status, and matrilineal descent is the norm in the Conservative movement
Conservative Judaism
Conservative Judaism is a modern stream of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s.Conservative Judaism has its roots in the school of thought known as Positive-Historical Judaism,...
. Since 1983, Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism (North America)
Reform Judaism is the largest denomination of American Jews today. With an estimated 1.5 million members, it also accounts for the largest number of Jews affiliated with Progressive Judaism worldwide.- Reform Jewish theology :Rabbi W...
in the United States of America officially adopted a bilineal policy: one is a Jew if either of one's parents is Jewish, provided that either (a) one is raised as a Jew, by Reform standards, or (b) one engages in an appropriate act of public identification, formalizing a practice that had been common in Reform synagogues for at least a generation. Karaite Judaism, which includes only the Tanakh
Tanakh
The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...
in its canon, interprets the Torah to indicate that Jewishness passes exclusively through the father's line. See the above-mentioned main article Matrilineality in Judaism
Matrilineality in Judaism
Matrilineality in Judaism is the view that people born of a Jewish mother are themselves Jewish. The Torah does not explicitly discuss the conferring of Jewish status through matrilineality, and in apparent contrast to this position, the Tanakh provides many examples of Israelite men whose...
for more-complete context and sources.
See also
- Family nameFamily nameA family name is a type of surname and part of a person's name indicating the family to which the person belongs. The use of family names is widespread in cultures around the world...
- List of matrilineal or matrilocal societies
- Married and maiden namesMarried and maiden namesA married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....
- PatrilinealityPatrilinealityPatrilineality is a system in which one belongs to one's father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritance of property, names or titles through the male line as well....
- Blanca de La Cerda y LaraBlanca de La Cerda y LaraBlanca Fernanda de la Cerda y Lara was a Spanish noblewoman.She was the daughter of Fernando de la Cerda and Juana Núñez de Lara, called "la Palomilla"....
, matrilineal ancestor (1317–1347) of Queen Victoria and other European royalty. - Mater semper certa estMater semper certa estMater semper certa est is a Roman-law principle which has the power of praesumptio iuris et de iure, meaning that no counter-evidence can be made against this principle...
, "the mother is always certain" – until 1978 and in vitro pregnancies. - Mitochondrial EveMitochondrial EveIn the field of human genetics, Mitochondrial Eve refers to the matrilineal "MRCA" . In other words, she was the woman from whom all living humans today descend, on their mother's side, and through the mothers of those mothers and so on, back until all lines converge on one person...
, the oldest female ancestor of all humans alive.