Art. XI.—Notes on Prof. Tylor's “ Arabian Matriarchate.” propounded by him, as President of the Anthropological Section, British Association, Montreal, 1884.

Extract

In p. 7, col. 5, of the Times newspaper for Saturday, 30th August, 1884, may be read the following paragraph of the opening Address of Prof. E. B. Tylor, President of the Anthropological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, delivered in Montreal, Canada, on the day before that date : “ The comparison of peoples according to their social framework of family and tribe has been assuming more and more importance since it was brought forward by Bachofen, M'Lellan, and Morgan. One of its broadest distinctions comes into view within the Dominion of Canada. The Esquimaux are patriarchal, the father being head of the family, and descent and inheritance following the male line. But the Indian tribes further south are largely matriarchal, reckoning descent not on the father's but on the mother's side. In fact, it was through becoming an adopted Iroquois that Morgan became aware of this system, so foreign to European ideas, and which he supposed, at first, to be an isolated peculiarity. No less a person than Herodotus had fallen into the same mistake over two thousand years ago, when he thought the Lykians, in taking their names from their mothers, were unlike all other men. It is now, however, an accepted matter of anthropology, that in Herodotus's time, nations of the civilized world had passed through this matriarchal stage, as appears from the survivals of it retained in the midst of their newer patriarchal institutions.