136 TABOO AND GENETICS 



mother. There seems Uttle doubt that the 

 framework of ancient society rested on the basis 

 of kinship, and that the structure of the ancient 

 gens brought the mother and child into the same 

 gens. Under these circumstances the gens of 

 the mother would have some ascendancy in the 

 ancient household. On such an established 

 fact rests the assumption of a matriarchate, or 

 period of Mutterrecht. The German scholar 

 Bachofen in his monumental work " Das Mutter- 

 recht " discussed the traces of female " author- 

 ity " among the Lycians, Cretans, Athenians, 

 Lemnians, Lesbians, and Asiatic peoples. But 

 it is now almost unanimously agreed that the 

 matriarchal period was not a time when women 

 were in possession of political or economic power, 

 but was a method of tracing descent and heri- 

 tage. It is fairly well estabhshed that, in the 

 transition from metronymic to patronymic forms, 

 authority did not pass from women to men, 

 but from the brothers and maternal uncles of 

 the women of the group to the husbands and 

 sons. Such a method of tracing descent, while 

 it doubtless had its advantages in keeping the 

 woman with her child with her blood kindred, 

 would not prevent her from occupying a de- 

 graded position through the force of the taboos 

 which we have described. (53). 



With the development of the patriarchal 

 system and the custom of marriage by capture 



