Prehistory of Kinship

Abstract

As observed in recent centuries, the contemporary variety of kinship systems reflects millennia of human migration, cultural inheritance, adaptation, and diversification. This review describes key developments in prehistoric kinship, from matricentric hominin evolution to the Neolithic transition to agriculture and the heterogeneous resilience of matriliny. Starting with our hominin ancestors, kinship evolved among a cooperative breeding species to multilevel group structure among human hunter-gatherers, to substantial kinship changes brought on by the origins of intensified farming, to permanent settlements and unequal resource access. This review takes the approach that new forms of subsistence facilitated new equations of reproductive success, which changed cultural norms of kinship systems and heritable wealth. Subsequently, the formation of complex societies diminished kinship as the primary organizing principle of society. The article describes new methodologies and theoretical developments, along with critiques of bioarchaeological interpretations of prehistoric kinship. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology Volume 51 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

A Simple Model of the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

“…Among modern hunter-gatherers, for instance, the Gini coefficient is around 0.17 [ 4 ]. Gini coefficients are estimated between 0.35 and 0.46 in early farming societies [ 4 ] as resource access began to be inherited over generations [ 12 ]. In early complex state societies, estimated Gini coefficients include 0.57 at Cahokia (Mississippian N. America), 0.53 at Dadiwan in Late Yangshao China, 0.52–0.54 at Herculaneum and Pompeii in the Roman Empire, 0.62 at Mayan Tikal, and 0.68 at Kahun in Middle Kingdom Egypt [ 4 ].…”

“…In prehistory, the likely prerequisites for the origins of state societies include intensified agriculture, which not only supported larger populations of increasingly diverse specializations, but also the unequal access to resources that gave rise to inherited wealth inequalities and status hierarchies [ 4 ]. Thousands of years before state societies, for example, early Neolithic societies show the beginnings of inter-generational wealth transmission [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ] that became an inherent feature of social complexity [ 15 , 16 ].…”

Descent, marriage, and residence practices of a 3,800-year-old pastoral community in Central Eurasia

“…Although older approaches (Marxist, Weberian, and Eurocentric) emphasized an early divergence in family structures between the Orient and the Occident, more recent ethnohistorical research suggests continuity across Bronze Age Eurasia due to similar production systems and comparable modes of holding and transmitting property ( 4 , 5 ). Changes in kinship patterns and family organization have also been discussed in the context of major shifts in subsistence and production activities; most notably the emergence of agricultural economies in the Neolithic, and the development of pastoral elites in the Bronze Age ( 6 ). Scientific approaches that allow us to assess the validity of these narratives in light of prehistoric data, and with reference to the three dimensions of kinship—descent, marriage, and residence ( 7 )—have only recently emerged.…”

A genetic window into the human social past

“…Kinship, or what links together members of the same family, fundamentally structures the web of relationships in human societies. Over the last few centuries, ethnographers have chronicled a remarkable range of kinship systems around the world, in which blood ties can be essential to irrelevant ( 1 ). Patrilineality represents the most frequent system, with family membership solely deriving from the father’s lineage.…”