The same remark holds of inferences from the general constitution of early society; a custom of matrilineal descent, for example, by no means carries totemism with it.
On the whole, therefore, it may be said that no questions of potestas seem to have exercised any influence in bringing about the transition from matrilineal to patrilineal descent.
I suggest compounds of pater and mater, not as being specially appropriate, but as being parallel to matrilineal and patrilineal, denoting descent in the female and male lines respectively.
The arrangement suggests that matrilineal descent prevails, but there is probably some error.
A rearrangement of patrilineal classes is necessary to make them equivalent to the organisations of matrilineal tribes; this cannot be shown in the tables; but full details will be found in the works of Spencer and Gillen.
At the present day the kinship may be matrilineal or patrilineal without affecting their right.
Membership of a phratry depends on birth and is taken directly from the mother (matrilineal descent) or father (patrilineal descent).
So far, therefore, as Australia is concerned, the removal theory falls to the ground; it cannot of course be disproved, but we are not justified in assuming that matrilineal descent and matria potestas are due to a custom of removal.
To this may be prefixed a further discussion of the origin of matrilineal descent with especial reference to Australian conditions.
Once turned into a fresh path by the necessity of showing how the correspondence could have arisen out of a matrilineal condition, it was not long before I saw how it might be accounted for in a very different way.
The society of this island is organised on the dual basis withmatrilineal descent in which a man must marry a woman of the opposite moiety.
The clan, it is true, whether matrilinealor patrilineal, tends at the totemic level of society to eclipse the family.
Does the mere fact that descent is matrilineal tend to imply on the whole that the mother's kin take a more active interest in her, and are more effective in protecting her from hurt, whether undeserved or deserved?
The difficulty urged is the grouping together of brothers’ sons who are not clansmen under a matrilineal organization with sisters’ sons who are.
From this point of view the relative in question is simply a father’s clansman with paternal descent, while with matrilineal descent the designations for the mother’s mother’s sister’s daughter et al.
If ‘unilaterality of descent’ rather than clan or gentile affiliation is the determinant here, then why is the Hidatsa variant uniformly found among matrilineal tribes and the Omaha variant uniformly with a gentile system?
All three tribes differ from the other Siouans, and indeed from all other Plains Indians in having matrilineal descent.
This will explain how it is that, even where matrilineal descent is in full force, we may find the patriarchal subjection of women.
Such marriages are intelligible only if we suppose that the queen had the power of conferring the kingdom upon her consort, which could only happen where matrilineal descent was, or had been, recognised.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "matrilineal" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word. Other words: affiliated; agnate; akin; allied; cognate; collateral; germane; kindred; related; uterine
