Matrilineality
Matrilineality, at times called matriliny, is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which people identify with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritance of property and titles. A matriline is a line of descent where a person inherits his or her mother's lineage. In a matrilineal descent system, individuals belong to the same descent group as their mothers. The matriline of historical nobility was also called their enatic or uterine ancestry, in contrast to the patrilineal or "agnatic" ancestry. The matriline is also sometimes referred to as the "distaff" side or "spindle" side.
Early human kinship
Scholars disagree on the nature of early human, that is, Homo sapiens, kinship. In the late 19th century, most scholars believed, influenced by Lewis H. Morgan's book Ancient Society, that early kinship was matrilineal. Friedrich Engels took this up in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. This thesis that our first domestic institution was the matrilineal clan, not the family, became communist orthodoxy. However, by the 20th century most social anthropologists disagreed, although during the 1970s and 1980s, feminist scholars often revived it.In recent years, evolutionary biologists, geneticists and palaeoanthropologists have found indirect genetic and other evidence of early matriliny. Some genetic data suggest that over millennia, female sub-Saharan African hunter-gatherers have lived with their maternal kin after marriage. Also, when sisters and their mothers help each other with childcare, the descent line tends to be matrilineal. Biological anthropologists now largely agree that cooperative childcare helped the large human brain and human psychology to evolve. Most primate species have males dispersing from their birth group and are thus materilinear, though chimpanzees and humans appear to be largely paterilinear.
Matriliny is often tied to matrilocality, which shows significant nuance. Pastoralists and farmers often gravitate toward patrilocality. However, studies show that hunter-gatherer societies have a flexible philopatry or practice multilocality; matrilocality and patrilocality are not the only possibilities. Flexibility leads to a more egalitarian society, as both men and women can choose with whom to live. So, for example, among the pygmy Aka Peoples a young couple usually settles in the husband's camp after the birth of their first child. However, the husband can stay in the wife's community, where one of his brothers or sisters can join him. Kinship and residence in hunter-gatherer societies may thus be complex and multifaceted. Supporting this, a re-check of past data on hunter gatherers showed that about 40% of groups were bilocal, 22.9% matrilocal, and 25% patrilocal. It is also worth noting that during the 20th century, the dominant position on cultural evolution and the evolution of kinship was the monolinear system, which assumed a gradual transition from matrilineality to patrilineality. At the moment, modern anthropologists refute this theory, proving the flexibility of transition models and the fact that the transition could be carried out in both directions depending on various external and internal factors.
Matrilineal surname
Matrilineal surnames are names transmitted from mother to daughter, in contrast to the more familiar patrilineal surnames transmitted from father to son, the pattern most common among family names today.Cultural patterns
In some societies, membership was—and, in the following list, still is if shown in italics—inherited matrilineally. Examples include many, if not most, Native North American groups: the Cherokee, Choctaw, Gitksan, Haida, Hopi, Iroquois, Lenape, Navajo and Tlingit among others; the Cabécar and Bribri of Costa Rica; the Naso and Guna people of Panama; the Kogi, Wayuu and Carib of South America; the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra, Indonesia and Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia; the Trobrianders, Dobu and Nagovisi of Melanesia; the Nairs, some Thiyyas & Muslims of Kerala and the Mogaveeras, Billavas & the Bunts of Karnataka in south India; the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo of Meghalaya in northeast India and Bangladesh; the Ngalops and Sharchops of Bhutan; the Mosuo of China; the Kayah of Southeast Asia; the Basques of Spain and France; the Akan including the Ashanti, Bono, Akwamu, Fante of Ghana; most groups across the so-called "matrilineal belt" of south-central Africa; the Nubians of Southern Egypt & Sudan; the Tuareg of west and north Africa; and the Serer of Senegal, The Gambia and Mauritania. The title of the Rain Queen in South Africa is inherited via matrilineal primogeniture: dynastic descent is matrilineal, with only females eligible to inherit.Genetic evidence shows matriliny, and matrilocality, among Celts in Iron Age Britain. As other data indicate patriarchy in the Early Bronze Age, this may indicate a rare patriarchal to matrifocal transition. There is evidence of matrilineal royal descent, from maternal uncle to nephew, in early Iron Age Celtics in continental Europe. There is evidence of matriliny in Pre-Islamic Arabia among a subclan of the Amarite tribal confederation of Ancient Saba; the wider society there was overwhelmingly patrilineal. Genetic data has also established matriliny and matrilocality of an elite among Ancestral Pueblo People, from 8th to 11th century AD, in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. The initial people of Micronesia practiced matrilocality, as seen in ancient DNA. Ancient DNA from a late neolithic site in Northern China, dated around 2700 BCE, showed both matrilocality and possibly a general preference for the maternal bloodline as opposed to affinal kin.
Clan names vs. surnames
Matrilineal groups are often made up of matrilineal clans, at times with descent groups or family groups each with a separate female ancestor. Sometimes the male ancestor, that is, the partner of the female ancestor where known, is mentioned as the ancestor though the clan is matrilineal. Surnames in these situations may follow several patterns. The clan name may be the surname, handed down matrilineally. The clan name may be tracked but not used in the personal names. This is true of the Minangkabau, for instance, who mostly use just one name. It is also true of the Akan, who do use two names, but do not inherit the second name, hence making it a surname but not a family name. The surname may also be the name of the descent group.Care of children
While a mother normally takes care of her own children in all cultures, in some matrilineal cultures, particularly matrilocal ones, an "uncle-father," termed a social father, will take care of, and be guardian to, his nieces and nephews instead of his sons. The biological father plays little role in child rearing.Matriliny in specific ethnic groups
Africa
Akan
Some 20 million Akan live in Africa, particularly in Ghana and Ivory Coast. Many but not all of the Akan still 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 maternal 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."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.
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, named 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 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 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 groups, and everyone belongs to their father's Ntoro group but not to his family lineage and abusua. Each patrilineal Ntoro group has its own surnames, taboos, ritual purifications, and etiquette.
A recent 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.