matriarchial

Updated: June 7, 2025

One is the condition of affairs in a remote matriarchial period, when descent was reckoned always through the maternal line, and the fatherhood in each generation was obscure or unknown or commonly left out of account; and the other is the fact so strange and difficult for us to realize that among some very primitive peoples, like the Australian aborigines, the necessity for a woman to have intercourse with a male, in order to bring about conception and child-birth, was actually not recognized.

Edward Carpenter - Pagan and Christian creeds: their origin and meaning