South African tribes, if a wife steps over her
husband's assegais, they are considered useless from that time and are
given to the boys to play with. This superstition rings many changes and
is current among the natives of all countries.

The taboos which have thus been exemplified and reviewed are based on
the feeling that woman is possessed of a demonic power, or perhaps of a
_mana_ principle which may work injury; or else upon the fear that she
may contaminate man with her weakness. It is very probable that many of
these taboos originated even as far back as the stage of society in
which the line of descent was traced through the mother. There seems
little doubt that the framework of ancient society rested on the basis
of kinship, and that the structure of the ancient gens brought the
mother and child into the same gens. Under these circumstances the gens
of the mother would have some ascendancy in the ancient household. On
such an established fact rests the assumption of a matriarchate, or
period of Mutterrecht. The German scholar Bachofen in his monumental
work "Das Mutterrecht" discussed the traces of female "authority" among
the Lycians, Cretans, Athenians, Lemnians, Lesbians, and Asiatic
peoples. But it is now almost unanimously agreed that the matriarchal
period was not a time when women were in possession of political or
economic power, but was a method of tracing descent and heritage. It is
fairly well established that, in the transition from metronymic to
patronymic forms, authority did not pass from women to men, but from the
brothers and maternal uncles of the women of the group to the husbands
and sons. Such a method of tracing descent, while it doubtless had its
advantages in keeping the woman with her child with her blood kindred,
would not prevent her from occupying a degraded position through the
force of the taboos which we have described.[53]

With the development of the patriarchal system and the custom of
marriage by capture or purchase, woman came to be regarded as a part of
man's property, and as inviolate as any other of his possessions. Under
these circumstances virginity came to be more and more of an asset,
since no man wished his property to be denied by the touch of another.
Elaborate methods for the preservation of chastity both before and after
marriage were developed, and in many instances went so far as to
consider a woman defiled if she were accidentally touched by any other
man than