Strictly
speaking, therefore, there has never been a matriarchal stage of social
evolution, but rather a maternal or metronymic stage.
We have already said that this stage was probably the primitive one. How
are we to explain, then, that primitive man reckoned kinship through
mothers only? Was this due, as Morgan thought, to a primitive practice
of promiscuity which prevented tracing relationships through fathers?
The reply is, that among the many maternal peoples now well known, among
whom relationships are traced through mothers only, we find no evidence
of the practice of general promiscuity now or even in remote times. The
North American Indians, for example, had quite definite forms of the
family life and were very far removed from the practice of promiscuity,
though they traced relationship through mothers only. It is evident that
the causes of the maternal family and the maternal system of
relationship are not so simple as Morgan supposed. What, then, were the
causes of the maternal system? It is probable that man in the earliest
times did not know the physiological connection between father and
child.
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