ic peoples to the foremost rank
of civilization.[68]

[Footnote 68: Fenton's _Early Hebrew Life_, London, 1880, is an
interesting study of the upper period of barbarism; see also
Spencer, _Princip. of Sociol._, i. 724-737.]

It is not intended to imply that there is no other way in which the
change to the male line may have been brought about among other peoples.
The explanation just given applies very well to the Aryan and Semitic
peoples, but it is inapplicable to the state of things which seems to
have existed in Mexico at the time of the Discovery.[69] The subject is
a difficult one, and sometimes confronts us with questions much easier
to ask than to answer. The change has been observed among tribes in a
lower stage than that just described.[70] On the other hand, as old
customs die hard, no doubt inheritance has in many places continued in
the maternal line long after paternity is fully known. Symmetrical
regularity in the development of human institutions has by no means been
the rule, and there is often much difficulty in explaining particular
cases, even when the direction of the general drift can be discerned.

[Footnote 69: See below, p. 122.]

[Footnote 70: As among the Hervey Islanders; Gill, _Myths and
Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 36. Sir John Lubbock would
account for the curious and widely spread custom of the
_Couvade_ as a feature of this change. _Origin of
Civilization_, pp. 14-17, 159; cf. Tylor, _Early Hist. of
Mankind_, pp. 288, 297.]

[Sidenote: The exogamous clan in ancient America.]

In aboriginal America, as already observed, kinship through females only
was the rule, and exogamy was strictly enforced,--the wife must be taken
from a different clan. Indissoluble marriage, whether monogamous or
polygamous, seems to have been unknown. The marriage relation was
terminable at the will of either party.[71] The abiding unit upon which
the social structure was founded was not the family but the exogamous
clan.

[Footnote 71: "There is no embarrassment growing out of
problems respecting the woman's future support, the division of
property, or the adjustment of claims for the possession of the
children. The independent self-support of every adult healthy
Indian, male or female, and the gentile relationship, which is
more wide-reaching and authoritative