MORGAN.) DESCENT IN FEMALE LINE IN ARCHAIC PERIOD. 5 
In the ancient gens descent was limited to the female line. It embraced all 
such persons as traced their descent from a supposed common female 
ancestor, through females, the evidence of the fact being the possession of 
a common gentile name. It would include this ancestor and her children, 
the children of her daughters, and the children of her female descendants, 
through females, in perpetuity, while the children of her sons and the 
children of her male descendants, through males, would belong to other 
gentes, namely, those of their respective mothers. Such was the gens in 
its archaic form, when the paternity of children was not certainly ascer- 
tainable, and when their maternity afforded the only certain criterion of 
descents. 
This state of descents which can be traced back to the Middle Status 
of savagery, as among the Australians, remained among the American 
aborigines through the Upper Status of savagery, and into and through 
the Lower Status of barbarism, with occasional exceptions. In the Middle 
Status of barbarism the Indian tribes began to change descent from the 
female line to the male, as the syndyasmian family of the period began to 
assume monogamian characteristics. In the Upper Status of barbarism 
descent had become changed to the male line among the Grecian tribes, with 
the exception of the Lycians, and among the Italian tribes, with the exception 
of the Etruscans. Between the two extremes, represented by the two rules 
of descent, three entire ethnical periods intervene, covering many thou- 
sands of years. 
As intermarriage in the gens was prohibited, it withdrew its members 
from the evils of consanguine marriages, and thus tended to increase the 
vigor of the stock. The gens came into being upon three principal con- 
ceptions, namely, the bond of kin, a pure lineage through descent in the 
female line, and non-intermarriage in the gens. When the idea of a gens was 
developed, it would naturally have taken the form of gentes in pairs, because 
the children of the males were excluded, and because it was equally necessary 
to organize both classes of descendants. With two gentes started into being 
simultaneously the whole result would have been attained, since the males 
and females of one gens would marry the females and males of the other, 
and the children, following the gentes of their respective mothers, would be 
