236 Facts Otherwise Explained. 



punaluan family as an explanation, it would be 

 open to most of the objections already urged 

 against the consanguine. Excluding it, then, how 

 are the phenomena to be explained ? It would 

 be aside from our present purpose to enter fully 

 into this matter. But as the main difference 

 between the Malayan and Turanian systems lies 

 in the fact that the one designates my sister s 

 children as my children, and the other as my 

 nephews and nieces, an explanation of the di 

 vergency may be found in the supposition that 

 while the old classificatory system, in general, re 

 mained in vogue, it became modified under the 

 organization into classes, through the separa 

 tion established between brothers and sisters by 

 the system of reckoning descent and inheritance 

 through females only. My sister s children be 

 long to her clan, mine to the clan of my wife. 

 A new designation, therefore, was needful, when 

 a rule broke up the old communal system in 

 which brothers and sisters children all belong to 

 the same group and, being of the same genera 

 tion, were designated by the same name. 



While the consanguine and punaluan families 

 supply an imaginary raison d etre for the Malayan 

 and Turanian systems of relationship, the syndy- 

 asmian and patriarchal families have not even 



