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Updated: June 15, 2025
It was in such wise way the Egyptians arranged the difficult problem of the fusing of mother-right with father-right. In the very ancient civilisation of Babylon we find women in a position of honour, with privileges similar in many ways to those they enjoyed in Egypt. There are even indications that the earliest customs may have gone beyond those of the Egyptians in exalting women.
Not at all, however, to a change in my belief in mother-right, which, indeed, has now been strengthened, and, as I trust, built up on surer foundations. By a fortunate chance, I was advised to read Mr. Andrew Lang’s Social Origins, which work includes Mr. Atkinson’s Primal Law. I am greatly indebted to the assistance I have gained from these writers.
The mother-right and gyneocracy among the Iroquois here plainly indicated is not overdrawn. The mothers and their children, as we have seen, were of the same gens, and to them the house belonged. It was a gentile house. In case of the death of father or mother, the apartments they occupied could not be detached from the kinship, but remained to its members.
Atkinson’s Primal Law, as well as with other writers, all of whom have shown that promiscuity cannot be accepted as a stage in the early life of the human family. I have now to show how far this rejection of promiscuity affects our position with regard to mother-descent and mother-right. It is clearly of vital importance to any theory that its foundations are secure.
But it could not carry mankind to that family organisation from which so much was afterwards to develop. It was no more possible for society to be built up on mother-right alone than it is possible for it to remain permanently based on father-right. But there is another aspect of this question that I must briefly touch upon.
It is necessary to remember the close connection between these mother-right customs and the communal clan, which was a free association for mutual protection. This is a point of much interest. As we have seen, the undivided family of the clan could be maintained only by descent through the mothers, since its existence depended on its power to retain and protect all its members.
Mother-right has been discredited chiefly, as far as I have been able to find, because it is impossible to accept, at this early period, sexual conditions of the friendly ownership of women, entirely opposed to what was the probable nature of brute man. At this stage the eldest male in the family would be the ruler, and he would claim sexual rights over all the women in the group.
A study of existing tribes, and of the records of ancient civilisations, will yield any number of examples. History of Human Marriage, pp. 97-104. “The Position of Woman in Early Civilisations,” Sociological Papers, 1904. Unmistakable traces of mother-right may, indeed, be found by those, whose eyes are opened to see, in all races.
Mother-right is still in force in many parts of India, though owing to the influence of Brahminism on the aboriginal tribes the examples of the maternal family are fewer than might be expected. Among the once powerful Koochs the women own all the property, which is inherited from mother to daughter. The husband lives with his wife and her mother, and, we are told, is subject to them.
Spencer, Descriptive Sociology, Vol. V, p. 8, citing Petherick, Egypt, the Soudan, and Central Africa, pp. 140-141. A further striking example of mother-right is furnished by the Mariana Islands, where the position of women was distinctly superior.
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