A worldwide view of matriliny: using cross-cultural analyses to shed light on human kinship systems.

ABSTRACT: Although matriliny and matrilocality are relatively rare in contemporary human populations, these female-based descent and residence systems are present in different cultural contexts and across the globe. Previous research has generated numerous hypotheses about which cultural traits are associated with the stability or loss of matrilineal descent. In addition, several studies have examined matrilineal descent with phylogenetic analyses; however, the use of language phylogenies has restricted these analyses to comparisons within a single language family, often confined to a single continent. Cross-cultural comparisons are particularly informative when they account for the relationships between widely distributed populations, as opposed to treating each population as an independent sample

SUBMITTER: Surowiec A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6664141 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature