Do matriarchal societies really exist?

When I first answered this question, I didn't realize that so many people would read it, and I'm afraid that some of the statements are too casual and may lead to misunderstandings. Now I would like to add and revise the following:

1. Matrilineality mainly refers to a system of descent and succession, not "matriarchy".

The system of succession may be bilateral or monophyletic, the latter emphasizing only one of the two sexes, such as the paternal or maternal line. . such as patrilineal or matrilineal. Matrilineal succession is the opposite of the familiar principle of patrilineality.

In matrilineal societies, the social status of men and women is complex, but it is also unlikely that women dominate men. If a comparison must be made, it is still different from patriarchal societies, where male-centeredness is prevalent, and there are a number of instances where men and women have roughly equal status.

Examples of matrilineal societies that have been observed and scientifically documented by cultural anthropology (ethnography) are the Nayars of Kerala, India, prior to the 19th century, the Khasi and Garo of Assam, most of the Indian tribes of North America in the 16th century (with the Iroquois Indians being the best known), and up to the middle of the 20th century, the Pueblo Indians and Navajo Indian tribes of North America, the Alaskan Some Inuit in North America, some Navajo Indian tribes, some Minangkabau in Alaska, some Minangkabau in Indonesia, some Australians in Oceania, some tribes in Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia, the Basques in the Pyrenees Mountains, the inhabitants of Galicia in Spain, the Kassians and Ashanti in Africa, and some ethnic groups in Zambia, Ghana, C?te d'Ivoire, Benin, etc., and some Naxi in Yongning District of China, some Lahu in Lancang, Amis in Taiwan, etc., are still the most important tribes in North America. and the Amis of Taiwan, etc., still have remnants of the matrilineal system.

Anthropological data show that matrilineal systems are practiced by about 15 percent of the world's ethnic groups, mostly in agricultural societies, but less so in hunter-gatherer and nomadic societies.

2. Whether matrilineal society is a necessary stage of human society

The idea that matrilineality precedes patrilineality as the two stages of human evolution was first put forward by Bachofen, and was elaborated upon by Morgan with the example of the Iroquois. Later, it was recognized by Ma and En, and became an important part of the Marxist view of history. The 19th century scholars, we should not be harsh; however, we can not ignore a number of new materials in the past hundred years, not to mention unlimited up line, the different points of view as "trying to negate the laws of human historical development, so as to prove the eternity and rationality of the system of private ownership and capitalism".

This, unlike the question of whether matrilineal societies exist, is an ephemeral question, and so requires archaeological and historical research, or other perspectives that provide a time scale, such as molecular anthropology and historical linguistics.

In contrast to anthropological participant observation, archaeological remains reflect a dead society that does not speak for itself, but provide sufficient temporal depth. It is now generally accepted that the main livelihoods of the Paleolithic were hunting and gathering, that the gender division of labor during this period was one in which men dominated hunting (which primarily meant the killing of animals as a part of the process) while women dominated gathering and domestic life, that hunting contributed to the refinement of upright walking and the development of group cooperation, and that meat was a direct contributor to the enlargement of the brain capacity and was more energy-intensive than a vegetarian diet, and thus from the point of view of the economic base it would seem that men dominance. The transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural production meant that the male image of the former heroic and agile hunter had to give way to that of the honest and willing farmer, a process that was not easy, and which was more closely related to the female-dominated small-seeded plant-gathering that had preceded agriculture, especially grain cultivation, than to the domestication of animals, which had not yet been perfected. Also, men hunted before the domestication of animals, and it is conceivable that as prey became scarcer (in fact, as early as the end of the Paleolithic period, with the extinction of large animals, the rewards of hunting were already diminishing), and food production developed, the male contribution to society diminished, and it became possible to create a female-dominated society (over a period of thousands of years), and it was not surprising that women still had to deal with the affairs of the family. It was only natural that a matriarchal society would form, since women were still the ones who handled the family affairs. For example, there is no significant difference in the quantity and quality of the burials of men and women, there are agricultural tools in the burials of women, there is no custom of burying men and women together or burying men with women, and the sculptures of human figures or idols are generally female figures, etc. The status of men is obviously higher than that of women. The status of men was obviously higher than that of women after the late Neolithic period, which was accompanied by the development of social complexity, and probably originated from the fact that men gained the advantage in the more and more complicated handicrafts and more and more frequent wars, and also gradually excluded women from the field of agricultural production, and the concrete evidence is contrary to what was mentioned before, i.e., there are more men than women in the high-grade tombs, and the custom of burying a man and a woman together appears, and there are no men and women buried together in tombs. The specific evidence is the opposite of the previous one, namely, there are more men than women in the high-grade tombs, the practice of joint burial of men and women, the gender difference in the burials and daily necessities in the houses is becoming more and more obvious, women are more and more withdrawn from the field of agricultural production tools, and the object of reproduction worship has become a man. Although most of the archaeological evidence can not directly infer kinship and inheritance system, but after all for the existence of matriarchal society provides the possibility and theoretical proof.

Many matrilineal societies have no documentation of their own, and their own histories have been passed down either orally, or simply written down by other groups or traced back to distant descendants in unreliable texts. In the case of Chinese history specifically, early family names with the female character are indirect evidence, as are the myths and legends of several peoples about their ancestors (especially the myths of sentient beings). Not only do modern anthropologists record modern natives, but historians also record the natives of their time, as has been the tradition in Chinese historiography since the Shiji (史记), which is a less "scientific" and biased observation, but also a valuable historical source that contains clues to the existence of matrilineal societies in many peoples. In addition, China's cultural and documentary traditions are continuous, and it is clear from the literature how the status of women declined step by step from the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the two Han Dynasties, the Sui and Tang Dynasties, to the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties (several ethnic minorities went through a similar process after they entered the Central Plains, only a bit faster), and from this it can be inferred, where did the earlier women's rights come from? The existence of a matriarchal society could be a plausible explanation. (This paragraph is purely personal speculation)