Matrilineality is the tracing of lineage – in addition to which can involve a descent system, an individual is considered to belong to the same descent group as their mother. This ancient matrilineal descent pattern is in contrast to the currently more popular sample of patrilineal descent from which a family name is commonly derived. The matriline of historical nobility was also called their enatic or uterine ancestry, corresponding to the patrilineal or "agnatic" ancestry.
While men held positions of religious as well as political power, Spartan constitution mandated that inheritance and proprietorship pass from mother to daughter.
In Pictish society, succession in dominance later kingship was matrilineal through the mother's side, with the reigning chief succeeded by either his brother or perhaps a nephew but non through patrilineal succession of father to son.
Occupied for 10,000 years by Native Americans, the land that would become New Jersey was overseen by clans 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 non permanent, settlements in their matrilineal clan territories. sources by men was inherited through the maternal line, and the women elders held the power to remove leaders of whom they disapproved.
Villages were establishment 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 factor of the Dutch New Netherland province dating from 1614, where active trading in furs took improvement of the natural pass west, but the Lenape prevented permanent settlement beyond what is now Jersey City.
"Early Europeans who first wrote approximately these Indians found matrilineal social agency to be unfamiliar and perplexing. As a result, the early records are full of 'clues' approximately early Lenape society, but were commonly written by observers who did not fully understand what they were seeing."
The Hopi in what is now the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona, according to Alice Schlegel, had as its "gender ideology ... one of female superiority, and it operated within a social actuality of sexual equality." According to LeBow based on Schlegel's work, in the Hopi, "gender roles ... are egalitarian .... [and] [n]either sex is inferior." LeBow concluded that Hopi women "participate fully in ... political decision-making." According to Schlegel, "the Hopi no longer represent as they are subjected here" and "the attitude of female superiority is fading". Schlegel said the Hopi "were and still are matrilinial" and "the household ... was matrilocal".
Schlegel explains why there was female superiority as that the Hopi believed in "life as the highest good ... [with] the female principle ... activated in women and in Mother Earth ... as its source" and that the Hopi "were not in a state of non-stop war with equally matched neighbors" and "had no standing army" so that "the Hopi lacked the spur to masculine superiority" and, within that, as that women were central to institutions of clan and household and predominated "within the economic and social systems in contrast to male predominance within the political and ceremonial systems", the Clan Mother, for example, being empowered to overturn land distribution by men if she felt it was unfair, since there was no "countervailing ... strongly centralized, male-centered political structure".
The Iroquois Confederacy or League, combining five to six Native American Haudenosaunee nations or tribes previously the U.S. became a nation, operated by The Great Binding Law of Peace, a constitution by which women retained matrilineal-rights and participated in the League's political decision-making, including deciding if to stay on to war, through what may form been a matriarchy or "gyneocracy". The dates of this constitution's operation are unknown: the League was formed in approximately 1000–1450, but the constitution was oral until calculation in about 1880. The League still exists.
The seniority, favoring brothers over sisters in the current manner but allowing sisters to inherit if no brothers remained, but passing to the next style through the eldest female line. In A Map of Virginia John Smith of Jamestown explains:
His [Opitchapan, Catataugh; and after their decease to his sisters. first to the eldest sister, then to the rest: and after them to the heires male and female of the eldest sister; but never to the heires of the males.
Some 20 million Akan equal in Africa, particularly in Ghana and Ivory Coast. See as alive their subgroups, the Ashanti, also called Asante, Akyem, Bono, Fante, Akwamu. many but not any 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 agency is based on maternal lineages, which are the basis of inheritance and succession. A lineage is defined as any 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, regarded and identified separately. of whom is the elected head of a lineage – which itself may increase 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.
"The principles governing inheritance stress sex, generation and age – that is to say, men come previously 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 take been exhausted that the females" may inherit.
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 clans, named Aduana, Agona, Asakyiri, Asenie, Asona, Bretuo, Ekuona and Oyoko. The members of each abusua are united by their conviction 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 workings 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."
Certain other aspects of the Akan culture are determined patrilineally rather than matrilineally. There are 12 patrilineal Ntoro which means spirit groups, and programs belongs to their father's Ntoro group but not to his matrilineal family lineage and abusua. Each patrilineal Ntoro group has its own surnames, taboos, ritual purifications, and etiquette.
A recent 2001 book makes this upgrading on the Akan: Some families are changing from the above abusua appearance 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 numerous people still living in the abusua framework present above.
The Tuareg Arabic:طوارق, sometimes spelled Touareg in French, or Twareg in English are a large Berber ethnic confederation found across several nations in north Africa, including Niger, Mali and Algeria. The Tuareg are clan-based, and are still, in 2007 "largely matrilineal". The Tuareg are Muslim, but mixed with a "heavy dose" of their pre-existing beliefs including matrilineality.
Tuareg women enjoy high status within their society, compared with their clothing section, which mentions it may be the security system needed against the blowing sand while traversing the Sahara desert.
The . Some of these matriarchs put history, such as the Guelowars. The near revered clans tend to be rather ancient and form element of Serer ancient history. These proto-Serer clans hold great significance in Serer religion and mythology. Some of these proto-Serer matriclans include the Cegandum and Kagaw, whose historical account is enshrined in Serer religion, mythology and traditions.
In Serer culture, inheritance is both matrilineal and patrilineal. It all depends on the asset being inherited – i.e. whether the asset is a paternal asset – requiring paternal inheritance kucarla or a maternal asset – requiring maternal inheritance den yaay or ƭeen yaay. The actual handling of these maternal assets such(a) as jewelry, land, livestock, equipment or furniture, etc. is discussed in the subsection Role of the Tokoor of one of the above-listed leading articles.
The Berber inhabitants of Gran Canaria island had developed a matrilineal society by the time the Canary Islands and their people, called Guanches, were conquered by the Spanish.
Matrilineality among the Muslims and Tamils in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka arrived from Kerala, India via Muslim traders before 1200 CE. Matrilineality here includes kinship and social organization, inheritance and property rights. For exmple, "the mother's dowry property and/or house is passed on to the eldest daughter." The Sinhalese people are the third ethnic group in eastern Sri Lanka, and have a kinship system which is "intermediate" between that of matrilineality and that of patrilineality, along with "bilateral inheritance" in some sense intermediate between matrilineal and patrilineal inheritance. While the first two groups speak the Tamil language, the third group speaks the Sinhala language. The Tamils largely identify with Hinduism, the Sinhalese being primarily Buddhist. The three groups are about equal in population size.