In the pastoral stage the man had the main
burden of caring for the flocks and herds. Under such circumstances
nothing was more natural than that the authority of the owner of the
family property should gradually become supreme in all matters, and we
find, therefore, among all pastoral peoples that the family is itself a
little political unit, the children taking the father's name, property
and authority passing down along the male line, while the eldest living
male is usually the ruler of the whole group.
(4) After all these causes came another factor--ancestor worship. While
ancestor worship exists to some extent among maternal peoples, it is
usually not well-developed for some reason or other until the paternal
stage is reached. Ancestor worship, being the worship of the departed
ancestors as heroes, seems to develop more readily where the line of
ancestors are males. It may be suggested that the male ancestor is apt
to be a more heroic figure than the female ancestor. At any rate, when
ancestor worship became fully developed it powerfully tended to
reenforce the authority of the patriarch, because he was, as the eldest
living ancestor, the representative of the gods upon earth, therefore
his power became almost divine.
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