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Updated: June 15, 2025
Firstly, exogamy and totemism, whether they be in origin distinct or not, tend in practice to go pretty closely together. Secondly, lineage, or the one-sided system of reckoning descent, is more or less independent of the other two principles. It is certainly not the fact that, wherever totemism is in a state of vigour, mother-right is regularly found.
The taking of the name of the mother arose as a matter of course, and was adopted simply as being the most convenient custom. It is manifest that mother-descent has no connection with a period of promiscuity. Quite the reverse. All the conditions of mother-right arose out of the earliest movements towards order and regulation in the relationships of the sexes, and were not the result of licence.
See pp. 156-161. The point of interest is, of course how far mother-right may be accepted, as at one period, having existed. The earliest direct evidence is the account given by Strabo of the Iberians of ancient Spain. And first it is important to note that the Iberians belonged to the Berber race, now widely regarded as the parent of the chief and largest element in the population of Europe.
It is time now to turn to the actual subject of this investigation, in order to see how far the theory of mother-right has been helped by the lengthy examination of the patriarchal group. Since the publication of Das Mutterrecht much has been written that has tended to raise doubts as to the soundness of the matriarchal theory, at least in the form held by its early supporters.
To this evidence may be added that in Germany up to a late period the mother could be the guardian of her children; that a wife had to be bought by the husband, both she and her children remaining under the guardianship of her father. All this points to mother-right and the existence of the maternal clan.
My mistakes will be corrected by others with more knowledge than I can claim; and if my theory of mother-right has any merit, it will be established in more competent hands. The vast majority of investigators on these questions are men.
If this is denied, the only conclusion that suggests itself to me is that, those who seek to diminish the power of mother-right have done so in reinforcement of a preconceived idea of the superiority of the man as the natural and unchanging order in the relationships of the sexes. One suspects prejudice here.
The father has no kinship with his children, who belong to their mother’s clan; what he earns goes to his own matriarchal stock, and at his death his bones are deposited in the cromlech of his mother’s kin.” Such testimony cannot be put aside. I wish it were possible for me to give a detailed account of this people, there is so much that is of interest to us in their mother-right customs.
Such sexually jealous conduct on the part of savage man was likely to be true; it was much easier to accept this than the state of promiscuous intercourse, with its friendly communism in women, in which I had hitherto believed. I really was very much disturbed. For I was still unshaken in my belief in mother-right. How were the two theories to be reconciled?
In some cases the whole property of the husband was made over to the wife, and when this was done, it was stipulated that she should provide for him during his life, and discharge the expenses of his burial and tomb. These unusual proprietary rights of the Egyptian wife can be explained only as being traceable to an early period of mother-right.
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