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Southern Africa

The system of patrilineal primogeniture traditionally prevalent among most southern Bantu tribes is demonstrated in marriage. African customary law distinguishes between "family rank" and "house rank". Family rank refers to the status of family members within the nuclear family, or household. In customary law, males held a higher rank than their female counterparts. A person's rank was ultimately determined by the principle of primogeniture. On the basis of that principle, oldest sons always had a higher rank than younger brothers and all sisters. That meant that females were always subjected to the authority of males and males alone were allowed to become family heads. The children of the first born son in his family group would hold a higher rank than any of the other children born of his siblings.

House rank simply refers to the hierarchy of the various households that constitute an extended family group. In a polygynous marriages, each marriage creates a separate family or house with the husband as the common spouse to all the families. Each house or separate family has a particular rank, depending on the order in which the wife married the husband. The wife married first is known as the main, or great, wife. The rank of the man's children, relative to each other, was solely dependent upon their mother's marriage rank. Any child born to the main or great wife, no matter its age, will always rank higher than any child born to the ancillary wives.^[1] In general the first son is considered superior to his siblings.^[2] The expansion of southern Bantu peoples like the Xhosa is attributed to the polygyny practiced by younger sons.^[3]

Among the the Shangana-Tsonga, Venda, Tswana, and the Southern Bantu in general, polygyny was practiced primarly among chiefs and the wealthy class. Several tribes among this group assign special ranks to the first, the first and second, or the first, second and third wives.The first wife among the Southern and Northern Sotho takes the lead in all domestic affairs and her eldest son is heir to the general household property and to the status of his father^[4][5] Patrilineal primogeniture practiced within the context of polygyny also determined how the property of a polygamist was distributed after his death.^{[5] [6]} Women could not inherit.^[7]

In Tswana myth, religion cultural practice and social organization, women are held as inferior and cannot inherit property. ^[8][9][5] Among the Kgatla society, a sub-group of the Tswana people, authority passes from father to eldest son. The younger sons of the then form and lead their own subdivisions of the main group. The Kgatla believe that their society was founded in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Most of the forty-eight wards in the central village of Mochuli today are headed by men claiming descent from younger brothers of chiefs descended from the original founder. The main village is physically arranged according to this principle. The homesteads of the chief and his immediate agnates occupy the center and ranged around this are forty-seven other groups of homesteads, each presided over by a ward head. The majority of ward members again claim to be related in the male line to the headman. All the males claiming descent from a common grandfather tend to be grouped together, and within such a sub-group a minimal unit is made up of an adult married male, occupying a homestead with his wife (or wives) and children. Thus the basic societal unit is the married male heading his own household, then the group consisting of his closest male agnates, then an aggregate of such groups forming a ward, and lastly the wards together forming the total society under the chief.^[10]

The Zulus also practiced patrilineal primogeniture, allowing only minimal grants of land to younger sons.^[11] Again, in cases of polygamy, the eldest son of the chief and his first wife inherited all his property and status and succeeded him. If this was not possible, it fell to the oldest living son of that son. Failing that, it went to his second son of his first wife. Failing that it went to the oldest living son of that son. Failing that it went down the birth order of sons or the oldest living son of that son. If none of the chief's sons are able to inherit, the succession will pass to the eldest son of the house first affiliated to the chief. Failing all heirs of this house the succession devolves upon the next affiliated house and so an according to the order of affiliation. Failing an heir in the chief's house or affiliated houses, the succession will pass to the eldest male in the family of second chief wife in a village, failing which, to the affiliate houses in order of their affiliation to her house. Only in the event of a failure in all these houses will the succession devolve upon the chief's oldest living brother.^[12] The eldest son of each wife inherited the property assigned to his mother's house.^[13]

Older Pondo boys held authority over their younger brothers and the eldest became the heir, taking responsibility for the family's property and his younger brothers, who would give him their earnings.^[14] Among the Swazi, the principle wife often enjoys no prominence until the death of her husband when her eldest son becomes the heir, the steward of an estate he will pass down to his eldest son.^[15][16] He also inherits his mother's property.^[17] If a man dies having married to two or more wives, the family will choose the principal wife and the oldest son of that wife or will become the main heir.^[15][18]

Customs of male primogeniture also prevailed among the Sotho. A polygynist's first wife is normally the senior wife, and her eldest son is generally the heir.^[19] Under Article 11 of the Laws of Lerotholi, this son takes over the administration of the estate upon death of the his father. He inherits the land together with the obligations attached to it.^[20]

The Ndebele also practice patrilineal primogeniture, as do the Xhosa.^[21][22][23]

West Africa

Inheritance among the Hausa is by also by primogeniture. A subgroup, the Maguzawa, are organized into small villages of patrilineal kin, though less tightly pyramidal than that of the southern part of the continent. Conversely, Muslim Hausa local organization is somewhat more complex and based on occupation, wealth, birth, and patron-client ties contribute to this.^[24] The husband with his wife or wives and their children is the smallest social unit. Other family members and their dependents may join this unit, forming a patrilocal extended family, a joint fraternal family, or both, all living in the same compound. The male head of the family rules the compound, which forms a joint agricultural unit. Each Muslim Hausa male may have four wives and as many concubines as he can support. Wives are ranked in the order of their marriages.^[25]

The village system under which a Hausa farm village operates is essentially a family farming unit called a gandu. A mature gandu was a patrilocal multiple-family household, at least two generations deep, comprising the nuclear families of the household head, his married sons, and their children.^[26] In it, sons or other male relatives worked a farm for the owner in exchange for a share of the food supplies.^[27] Some wealthier gida contained farm slaves and the descendants of slaves.^[28] On the death of the head the inheriting sons did not immediately divide the land and slaves but continued to work together, the eldest brother assuming the role of head. At this stage of the developmental cycle the gida became a frereche.^[29] As the families of the brothers matured, they divided the gandu, each forming brother becoming the head of a new one.^[27] While this system is in decline, it was functioning within the memory of those alive in the 1970s.^[30]

East Africa

The social organization system characteristic of most East African peoples was the segmentary lineage organization.^[31] Nevertheless, a system of ranking and patrilineal primogeniture similar to that of many southern African peoples seems to have traditionally prevailed among the Nilotic peoples of South Sudan. The eldest son of the first wife inheirited his father's land and house, and the land of every other house was inherited by the son of the wife of that house.^[32] A similar lineage system prevailed among the Lugbara^[33] or the Dinka.^[34]

Central Africa

Male primogeniture prevailed among the Azande,^[35] among Cameroonian peoples such the Masa,^[36] among eastern and northern Congo peoples like the Ngala, the Gbaya and the Mossi,^[37] and among the Songye and the Buduma. However in Angola, Gabon and most of the rest of Congo, lateral rather than lineal succession was the rule, and most Chadian peoples commonly divided land and livestock equally between all sons.

General

In traditional the Austronesian societies in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, East Timor, Brunei, Madagascar and Oceania, seniority of birth and of descent generally determined rank, often leading to the dispersal younger sons from younger branches,^{[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53]} a fact often cited by anthropologists as the cause of Austronesian expansion throughout Southeast Asia, Oceania and even Madagascar and Mauritius.^{[38][39][40][52]} Melanesian societies could either be dominated by the pyramidal clan as in african societies or by an egalitarian system of social organization as most Papuan societies, though even some Papuan societies, like that on Goodenough island, were characterized by a predominance of patrilineal primogeniture.^[38][45] In Micronesia, the system was matrilineal and brothers succeeded each other in order of seniority; when the line of brothers was extinguished, the eldest son of the eldest sister succeeded, and so on in each successive generation.^[54]

China

Patrilineal patriarchy prevailed in early China during the Longshan culture period and the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties.^[58][59]

Early records seem to indicate that the Longshan people were organized into segmentary lineages. Their political status was organized hierarchically.^[60]

In the Three Dynasties of ancient China, political status and power was based on one's distance away from the main line of patrilineal descent within a hierarchical system of segmentary lineages. Members of these lineages inhabited the walled towns which constituted stratified networks ruled by the state government. The king ruled simultaneously from the peak of the conical clan and the hierarchical state".^[61]

Families in Shang China were structured by patrilineal descent lines hierarchically organized within clans.^[62][63] Supreme power was vested in the senior line of the Zi clan.^[64] During the time of the Zhou dynasty, patrilineal primogeniture (the tsung-fa system) was also the norm.^[65] Strong traits of the tsung-fa system of patrilineal primogeniture survived in the lineage organizations of north China until the communist era.^[66] This type of unlineal descent-group later became the model of the Korean family through the influence of Neo-Confucianism, as Zhu Xi and others advocated its re-establishment in China.^[67]

In the society of the aboriginal Taiwanese Paiwan, the eldest child inherited, regardless of sex.

South Asia

In South Asia, the Aryans were also organized in a system of ranked patrilines where senior patrilines were superior to junior patrilines.^[68]

The Paite had a similar system, strongly based on primogeniture and patrilineality and reinforced by a characteristic system of name-giving.^[69]

A conical clan system also prevailed among the Nagas. In the beginning it vas based on a principle of male ultimogeniture, being very similar to Kachin gumsa; however, when all available land had been divided between communities in a given neighbourhood, male primogeniture became the dominant principle.^[70]

Inner Asia

The Mongols have a clan structure comprising ruling and subordinate clans. Elite clans are themselves internally divided into junior and elder lineages. In mongol kinship sons must be carefully distinguished according to seniority because of the complexity of inheritance rights, which involves not only seniority of birth but also of father's ancestry.^[71][72]

A strict fraternal hierarchy prevailed among Mongols, and a younger brother is equated with the category of slave.^[73][74] In another passage Ogodei, though being the Great Khan, still asks for the permission of his elder brother Chagatai to invade Cathay, and Tolui sacrifices himself for his elder brother Ogodei. This theme permeats mongol literature.^[75] The conical clan of Inner Asian peoples was divided into commoners and nobility. Both descended from the clan founder but were divided by war, migration, wealth and birth circumstances. Ancestral ties to a firstborn conferred seniority, but leadership status automatic. It had to be earned through group recognition of leadership abilities."^[76][77] Among Mongols, the marking of livestock reflected this system of social stratification.^[78] Some researchers deny the idea that the conical clan was the type of social organization prevalent in this group, but nevertheless found evidence that earlier-born sons (first sons when there were only two sons, and first and second sons when there were more than two) took on more leadership positions and had significantly more wives and children than their younger brothers.^[79][80] Mongol society is considered the paradigm of this type of society in the Asian steppe.^[74][81] Buryats, for example, validated land ownership at clan gatherings where "each component segment of the group was spatially arranged from right to left in order of genealogical seniority"^[82] Osman Aziz Basan, in his analysis of Oguz society, found this social structure to be the dominant one, but nuanced by the importance of other factors such as "merit", as in the case of Turkish and Yorük nomads.^[83]

Royal princes in the Ottoman Empire fought amongst themselves for the kingdom. It was almost always the eldest son, however, who succeeded in gaining the throne for himself, such as in the cases of Bayezid II, Mehmet III or Murad III. There was no rule of succession, but the first Ottoman sultans were all eldest sons and there are parallels between this and customs common among the Kazakhs in particular.^[84] Some scholars have also considered Kazakh society an especially good example of the Inner Asian conical clan,^[85][86] Uzbek traditional society has been analyzed under the same light.^[87] The development of conical clan structures has been linked to an increase in warfare and military expansionism in Central Asia.^[88][87]

In Iran, male primogeniture was the rule within the Qashqai confederacy, where there were three levels of leadership. Both Khan and headmen appropriated taxes and labor from members of their groups, though only the lineages of the Khans and Ilkhanis (paramount chieftains) constituted an aristocracy. Thus the Qashqa'i confederacy can be considered to have been a true chiefdom confederacy. This confederacy was a product of the interaction of nomads with the economy and institutions of the Persian state over the last 300 years.^[89]

Many anthropologists have contrasted the egalitarianism of Arab societies and the hierarchical tribalism of Turco-Mongol peoples^[89][90][91]

Japan, Korea, Vietnam

As can be seen from the former examples, societies based on lineage hierarchy are particularly common in central, east and southeast Asia. Lineage hierarchy was present even in the stem-family systems of Korea, Vietnam and Japan. In Korea, of the eldest son was the superordinate descent group, the stem family or main house. It was called the "big house," or taejong, while the houses of younger sons were subordinate descent groups called "small houses" or (sojong). It was through the stem family of the eldest son that the main line of descent was traced from generation to generation.^[92] Patrilineal primogeniture became prevalent during the time of the Choson dynasty.^[93][94] Even modern businesses are passed down according to male primogeniture in most cases.^[95] When adoption took place, it was between families of siblings and followed a pattern: a younger brother adopted a younger son of an older brother or an older brother adopted the oldest son of a younger brother. This reflects the status given older siblings, but it also made inheritance less complicated. If the oldest brother died childless, his next-youngest brother's family became the stem family. If the oldest brother decided to to adopt, choosing the oldest son of his younger brother made the transition of property to this nephew smoother when that time came.^[96]

In Japan, the main house, that of the eldest son, was called "honke", while the houses of younger sons were called "bunke". Younger houses were theoretically subordinate to the eldest house. There was a peculiar family type, the dozoku, which consistently reproduced this hierarchical arrangement.^[97] Remnants of this family type survived as late as the 1950s in Tohoku region of Japan.^[98]

The Viet were defined first and foremost by clans and viet surnames came from clans. The leader kept the vital records for members and was responsible for solving conflicts, protecting widows and orphans and being the moral example to the whole clan. Clans were composed of multi-generational families and the family revolved around the head, who was the grandfather or father. Rewards and punishments were his responsibility, as well as the physical, moral and educational welfare of family members.^[99] Families allocated land to be used for temple and ancestor worship, but the land reforms of the Communist party greatly altered this.^[100]

Myanmar

A different system prevailed among the Kachin.^[101] The Kachin gave most of the land to the youngest son (patrilineal ultimogeniture) and most of the moveable property to the eldest son (patrilineal primogeniture). The eldest brother then went out with a group of followers from his father's relatives and supporters and created a new domain for himself; the youngest brother stayed at home and guarded the shrine. His ritual status was highest. Middle sons and their descendants were ranked even below eldest sons and their descendants. In case of death or inability of the youngest son, the eldest son inherited the land as well, in preference to a middle son. This is reversed among the Kachin in Assam and the North Triangle.^[102] The Kachin stand in diametrical opposition to Austronesian societies with regards to rules of land and chieftainship succession.^[103]

North America

The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast were socially stratified. Northwest Coast peoples were organized into chiefs and their closest relatives, common people, and the enslaved. The chief and his relatives claimed the corners of houses for their dwellings and commoners lived in the remaining home space as tenants. Slaves had no rights or designated shelter. They could be enslaved because of debts or having been captured in raids.^[104]

The Straits Salish and the Vancouver Island Salish had separate terms for the oldest child, and the term for younger sibling was synonymous with the children of those siblings. This pattern was reflected to some extent in behavior. A fifth son in an aristocratic family and his first cousin were nearly indistinguishable from commoners.^[105] (1955:247)".

The oldest son shared, but controlled, the family's lands and directed their use. He decided how the family should express ritual.^[106]

William C. Sturtevant wrote about the Nootka in "Handbook of North American Indians: Northwest Xoast":

"Kinship and hereditary rank were fundamental in the organization of Nootkan society. Kinship terminology is lineal in parents' generation and Hawaiian in ego's generation, consistent with ambilineal descent and the option to shift residence. The generations are consistently distinguished, and within ego's generation, senior and junior lines are distinguished. Parents' older and younger siblings' children are called by the terms used for own older and younger siblings, and the distinction continues in subsequent generations, so that an old man might call a boy 'older brother' if the boy's grandparent was the older sibling of his own grandparent. This usage is consistent with the importance of primogeniture. Brother and sister treated one another with reserve, especially while unmarried. Those called brother and sister could not marry, even if remote cousins, but if kinship was so remote that links could not be traced it was possible "to marry one's own", usually to get back hereditary rights that had left a descent line. Parent-child relations were close, and grandparent-grandchild especially close, as children often stayed with grandparents. Aunts and uncles were like parents, and one helped oneself to their things without asking. With parents-in-law there was great familiarity. Step-father and step-daughter kept their distance. Descent was ambilateral and kinship traced in any line allowed an individual to claim membership in more than one local group. Residence with a given group activated membership in it as a kinsman, and while there the individual gave it his loyalty and participated in its activities. Although residence was mainly patrilocal, in the long run there was no set rule. People were constantly moving between groups. Rank was closely linked with kinship, positions, such as chief, being inherited by primogeniture. A chief (the native term, hawii, also means 'wealthy upper class') was simply the highest-ranking member of a kin group of whatever level. Rank was founded on inherited rights called tupa'ti, thought of as property, which governed the ownership and use of practically everything of value. Tupa'ti, depending on their nature, could be inherited by an eldest son, shared by several children, held by an eldest daughter until her marriage and then transferred to her brother, or given to a son-in-law as common alternatives. There was a sense of patrimony of rights in a local group to be kept as intact as possible as it passed down through successive chiefs. The inheritance of tupa'ti tended to be through males. Over generations a number of descent lines developed in a group in a ranked relationship made explicit at feasts and potlatches in the order of seating, serving, and gift receiving. Rank was also constantly embodied in the place occupied in the big house. The top chief and house owner occupied the right rear (right for one facing the entrance), the next in rank, a brother or other close kinsman, the left rear. In between might be the head's married sons. Left and right front corners belonged to the third and fourth ranked. Middle sides could be for fifth and sixth ranked. Such interior locations were hereditarily owned. By the entrance were the slaves, mostly war captives, who were significant as trade objects, protective attendants, and even sacrificial victims. Commoners (were either those living with a chief, often quite close relatives, or less definitely associated transients along the sides. They always belonged to some chief who addressed them as kin. Even secondary chiefs were mascim (commoner) to a head chief. Although rank was graded continuously, an upper stratum could be distinguished consisting of indisputable chiefs with potlacht seats and titles to resource sites plus closely associated supporters, generally immediate relatives. Chiefs were the nuclei of Nootkan society; they owned practically everything and ideally did not work but directed followers. A chief and his family wore richer dress, abalone and dentallum ornaments, sea otter or fur-trimmed robes, and decorated rain hats and owned powerful symbols. For the use of resource sites the chief collected a tribute in kind, of no fixed amount, with which he could give a feast. However, big sea or land mammals belomged to the hunter who gave a feast with his catch. A chief's sons and younger brothers were subsidiary chiefs, war chiefs, and speakers, but the eldest son nominally took the top position while still a youth to ensure succession, the father continuing to actually run affairs. Some younger brothers of chiefs became independent chiefs through conquest of other groups. Other avenues to chiefship were potlatching or marriage to a woman of high rank. A chief and his more distantly related commoners were interdependent, the maintenance of his high standing resting on the support of the commoners, who in return had their children named ceremonially, were assisted in marriages, often lent privileges for social use and even granted minor rights. The chief of a group was regarded as a father looking after his children, authoritarian but beneficent".^[107]

Irving Goldman thought that the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast could be related to the Polynesians. He wrote:

"For reasons that remain to be discovered, the Indian tribes of this area [NW Coast] share formal principles of rank, lineage, and kinship with Pacific islanders. The Kwakiutl, especially, seem very close to what I have designated as the "traditional" Polynesian society. They share with Polynesians a status system of graded hereditary ranking of individuals and of lineages; a social class system of chiefs ("nobles"), commoners, and slaves; concepts of primogeniture and seniority of descent lines; a concept of abstract supernatural powers as special attributes of chiefs; and a lineage system that leans toward patriliny, but acknowledges the maternal lines as well. Finally, Kwakiutl and eastern Polynesians, especially, associate ambiguity of lineage membership with "Hawaiian" type kinship, a fully classificatory system that does not distinguish between maternal and paternal sides, or between siblings and cousins".

Ranking by matrilineal primogeniture (the nephews of a man by an elder sister rank higher than his nephews by a younger sister) prevailed among the Natchez.^[108]

Mexico, Central America and South America

The conical clan was also the form of social organization among many peoples in Pre-Columbian America, like the Aztecs (calpulli),^[109] the Inka (in fact this anthropological concept was created by Kirchoff to describe the form of Inka social organization, the ayllu;^[110] see also Isabel Yaya's description of the Inca ayllu in her work "The Two Faces of Inca History: Dualism in the Narratives and Cosmology of Ancient Cuzco"^[111]) or the lowland tribes of Central and South America described by Kalervo Oberg.^[112]

Thomas Allan Abercrombie discusses the ayllu extensively as it exists today among the Aymara people in "THE POLITICS OF SACRIFICE: AN AYMARA COSMOLOGY IN ACTION": "The ranking of ayllus is (and was?) performed in an idiom derived from what is ... a central and divisive cleavage in the nature of the domestic group, birth order among siblings, who are contrasted not only by age but by their differing rights to leadership roles, fiesta-cargo offices, and property. ... Patrilines are not mere aggregates of patronym possessing men and their families, juxtaposed only because of rights in land. Rather, they are structured, internally hierarchical social units, in which collective action is both enabled by, and enables the creation of, formally recognized positions of authority.`... Within the "patristem family" -a group of brothers who have constructed houses around the patio of their father—authority is vested in the father until his death. Afterwards, however, it is the eldest brother, the jiliri or jiliri jilata, who is regarded as becoming the kamachiri. This works out at the level of the sibling group, but what about the group of patristem units, some with nearest linking ancestors beyond the reach of memory? There exists a notion of an informal collective body of jiliris within the hamlet and patriline which can act as a sole council of elders. On close inspection, however, it turns out that these jiliris are neither equal in status nor necessarily eldest brothers within their own patri-stem sibling groups! In fact, jiliri status outside the patristem unit (and this unit begins to fragment after the death of the father of the sibling group) depends on the combination of appropriate "leaderly" personal qualities and the individual's status in the "elder brother and herder-making" system of public ritual careers. Moreover, greatest authority, that accompanied by the power to impose sanctions by force, is said to reside in a body of officials known as the jach'a íilírís. the "great eldest brothers," that is, in ayllu level authorities also known as alcaldes, alguaciles, and íaías. It is almost certain that the name for this last office (the highest ranking of the three), is derived from the root jila, from which both jilata ("brother") and jiliri ("eldest" or "first [born]") are derived. The patrilineal hamlet as well as ayllu authority is also designated by terms related to herding roles. First, he is compared to the lead animal of the herd, the llantiru (from Sp.delantero, "one who goes before"). Secondly, he is known as the patriline's or ayllu's awatiri (herder), in which capacity the group which recognizes his authority becomes his rama (herd).... Upon his death, the sullk'iri may inherit the house and herd, but it is to the eldest son, not the youngest, that the status of kamachiri falls. And his comnmand extends into serious matters such as the allocation of lands and pastures within the sibling group, control over fallowing cycles, decisions about the opening of new fields (which may lead to warfare with neighboring groups), and the timing/itinerary of collective caravan expeditions to the valleys. In addition, it is the kamachiri who controls important ritual matters (related to herd fertility) which take place at the very altars he does not inherit. ... Like the llama llantiru, the role of eldest brother and the authorities who are called iilírí encode a principle of reproduction. First, as authority at the level of hamnlet, patriline, ayllu, and moiety, the jiliri conjoins the particular domestic groups of a hamlet ando patriline, the patrilines of the ayllu, and the ayllus of a moiety, by standing to all in an equivalent transitive relationship. The sullk'iri, on the other hand, reaps the rewards of inheritance, but is thereby irrevocably identified with the continuity of a particular household-that of his father—rather than with its reproduction. Like the llama-llantiru, the jiliri-llantíru owes his dominant position to control over herds, but here we refer to both animal and human ones. Unlike the youngest brother in the sibling group, who remains essentially a social extension of the father and a permanent dependant, the eldest brother receives the father's "command" (kamachiri), though he is exiled from his father's house and (to a degree) disinherited from his herd. His authority is, in fact, closely connected to his outward-directedness. The eldest brother could be said to be autonomous and self-generating-by establíshing his own house and herd, he is the embodiment not of the continuity of a house and herd (like the sullk'iri), but of the principle of reproduction of the very unit he is excluded from. As such, within and outside the patrigroup the jiliri also embodies the fertility (that is, the expansion) and generativity of the patriline. Like the llama llantiru, the jiliri-llantiru is associated with the conjunction of disparate herds in a new, unified herd. The jiliri's actual leadership role within the sibling group and patronymic hamlet amplifies these associations. The jiliri's "command" extends from the role of arbiter in intra-sibling group disputes, to that of leader of the conjoined brothers in disputes with other sibling groups within the hamlet or patriline. In addition, it is the jiliri who, stereotypically, decides when and where to go on annual trading trips, and conjoins multiple herds to make up the large caravan needed for a successful trip. it is men who are (or are becoming) jiliris who are the most likely to be able to establish a conjoint herd, garner sufficient labor, and otherwise mount a successful trade expedition. Such expeditions are crucially important source of foodstuffs, and are refracted within the collective ritual sphere in an inverse type of caravan trade (carrying foodstuffs to the ayllu-and moiety level "ladder" of the town for the fiesta, and returning empty-handed to the hamlet) through which the status of jach'ajiliri is achieved. But it is not only in his capacity to circulate foodstuffs that the stature of the jiliri is achieved, but in an attendant control over the circulation of the generative substances blood (wila) and fat (as a kind of solidified muju) among the human and animal, and the earthly and otherworldly realms. The point is not that only jiliris establish independent, conjoint households and herds, but that the opposed attributes of youngest and eldest brothers make them appropriate vehicles for representing two opposed facets of the household and herd: the fírst (typified by the youngest brother in dependant filial roles) is its continuity per se, as a particular unit; the second (typified by the eldest brother in independent founding-pater role) the general model or generative principIe of the household and herd as a type of social arrangement produced by, and reproducing, the patriline. Once he has begun his career, or continued an inherited one, the sponsor-jiliri joins the ranks of patriline-hamlet "fathers" and "elder brothers", and with it takes on, at the inter-domestic group level, what was, in the domestic group, the leadership roles of elder brother and father. This role is, of course, a function of the sponsor's "outward directedness", expressed in his ritual duties but represented as well in the terms of the asymmetric relations among exogamous patrilines within the ayllu. Patriline jiliris, like jilaqatas, are made, not born. But they are made in the image of the "self-made man" of K'ulta society, the eldest sons, who must build their households themselves through the control they achieve of herds and alliances. Marriage is but the fírst step towards becoming a collective elder brother, herd-leader, and herder of men. The asymmetrical nature of marriage alliances, however, does not make a man into a herder of men, but a subordinate member of the herds of his wife's brother and wife's father, and he will remain thus subordinated until he turns the relation on its head by becoming a herder of his own sisters' and daughters' husbands. Accomplishing this involves withholding one's children's inheritance and "seniority" as long as possible, just as it requires establishing oneself in the status of superior among equals among one's own sibling group".^[113]

In the Amazonia the conical clan survived the conquest and could be researched in situ by anthropologists. Michael J. Heckenberger writes about the xinguanos in "The Enigma of the Great Cities: Body and State in Amazonia":

"Hierarchical social relationships are described in terms of the degree of respect or "shame", ihuse (to be in a state of deference or "shame" [ihuse-ndagu] to a social superior), that one individual has for another. ... Children and their spouses are ihuse-ndagu to their parents and parents-inlaw, wives are to their husbands, younger siblings are to elder siblings, and, most notably in the present context, commoners are to the primary chiefs. This relationship is metaphorically represented in chiefly discourses where community members are called "my children", "my sons", or simply "children .... Structurally hierarchy is based on primogeniture within an otherwise cognatic kinship system, whereby the higher ranking individuals derive status form their relative position in the chiefly hierarchy. More or less similar structural patterns, variably referred to as status lineages, conical clans, or house societies, have been identified for a wide range of moderately stratified societies. It is typically the case in these other hierarchical societies that the temporal extension of birth order ranking is branching, what Firth (1936) called ramification, whereby chiefly lines (e.g., the oldest sons of oldest sons) become separated from subordinate lines (the youngest sons of youngest sons). Such a structure of hierarchically organized kin groups simultaneously divides society into upper strata (chiefs) and lower strata (non chiefs) while incorporating both in a unified structure".

The Tukanoan "are patrilineal and exogamous: individuals belong to their father's group and speak his language but must marry partners from other groups who speak other languages. Externally, groups are equal but different; internally each is made up of a number of named clans ranked in a hierarchy. The ancestors of these clans were the sons of the Anaconda-ancestor and their birth order, the order of emergence from their father's body, determines their position: higher ranking clans are collectively "elder brothers to those below. Clan rank is correlated with status and prestige and loosely correlated with residence: higher ranking clans tend to live in favoured downstream locations with lower ranking clans often living upstream or in headwater areas. Clan rank also has ritual correlates: top ranking clans, the "head of the Anaconda", are "chiefs" or "headmen" who control the group's dance ornaments and Yuruparí and sponsor major rituals; middle ranking clans are specialist dancers and chanters; below them come shamans; and at the bottom are servant clans, the "tail of the Anaconda", who are sometimes identified with the semi-nomadic "Makú" (A pejorative term with connotations of 'servant, slave, uncivilised, etc." ) who live in the interfluvial zones. This hierarchy of specialised roles and ritual prerogatives is most evident during collective rituals where genealogies are recited and where relations of rank and respect are emphasised. In a more subtle way, it is also reflected in everyday life. The inhabitants of a maloca are typically a group of closely related men, the children of the same father or of two or more brothers, who live together with their wives and children. When a woman marries, she leaves her natal maloca and goes to live with her husband. In symbolic terms, the maloca replicates the world in miniature and the maloca community is a both a replication and a future precursor of the ideal clan organisation described above. Here the father of the maloca community would be the Anaconda-ancestor of the whole group and his sons the ancestors of its component clans. In real life too, the eldest son and senior brother is typically the maloca headman and quite often his younger brothers are dancers, chanters or shamans, sometimes in appropriate order of birth".^[114]

Stephen Hugh-Jones writes about the Tukanoan in "Clear Descent or Ambiguous Houses ? A Re-Examination of Tukanoan Social Organisation": "Horizontal affinal exchanges between different groups have their complement in the vertical or hierarchical ordering of agnatic relations within each one. Each group, descended from an anaconda ancestor, is divided into a number of clans or sibs ranked according to the birth order of their founding ancestors, the anaconda's sons. Members of a given sib refer to other sibs as their elder or younger brothers. In theory, each sib should live in a single communal long-house or maloca; in practice the residence group typically consists of a sib-segment or minimal lineage, a group of brothers living with their parents and their in-married wives. The maloca community is the minimal exogamic unit and residence is virilocal: on marriage, wives move in whilst sisters move out. Tukanoan life is river oriented; in theory, and to some extent in practice, sib rank is reflected in spatial organisation. Senior sibs live downstream relative to junior sibs who live towards the headwaters. ... The headman and owner of the house is normally the eldest brother. He is treated with a certain amount of deference and has his compartment on the right hand side furthest to the rear; the compartments of married younger brothers are further towards the front whilst both unmarried youths and guests sleep near the front door. Each family represents a potential household and, in the end, tensions between them (typically over food, sex and authority) lead to the break-up of the group. ... Groups are divided into one or more sets of sibs internally ranked as elder/ younger brother as if the component sibs were a group of male siblings, the sons of the anaconda father. Sets of sibs, ideally numbering five (as in the primal house), claim specialised roles as their ritual prerogatives: the top sib are chiefs followed by chanter-dancers, warriors, shamans and servants in that order; in any given area, not all these roles are necessarily represented by extant sibs. Thought this caste-like division is expressed at sib level during ritual, in daily practice it operates only at an individual level. Male children should be given a name appropriate to their birth order and linked with the ritual role which they should adopt in adult life. In practice, the eldest brother is indeed usually the maloca headman and his younger siblings may also specialise as dancers, chanters and shamans according to seniority"^[115]

Jean Elizabeth Jackson wrote the following about the Tukanoan people in "The Fish People: Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia": "Vaupés sibs (clans) are named, ranked, exogamous, localized patrilineal descent groups. ... Sibs are named, and these names often refer to plant or animals. Sib names can also refer to sib ancestors and their immediate descendants; this is also true for the personal names owned by each sib. These personal names are given to infants in a prescribed order. The eldest son of the headman ideally is the first-born male of his generation and receives the first name on the list. This sib-supplied name fosters growth, for it associates the newborn child with a nurturing group of agnatic kinsmen. The infant becomes more human upon receiving a name, for it is an explicit affirmation of membership in the sib, entitling it to the power and nurturance available from the ancestors. ... The sibs in a given language group are ranked. The order of ranking is explained as corresponding to the order in which a group of brothers, the ancestors of the various sibs, emerged from the rocks at a particular rapids site. ... The ranking of sibs is continued today with the use of elder-younger sibling terms between members of different sibs. However, in some language groups the difference in rank between certain pair of sibs is so great that generational divisions are brought into play. This results in an unusual and initially surprising usage of cognatic terminology. A person who belongs to a considerably higher ranked sib than another will address the other as "uncle" or "grandfather". This seemingly incongruous state of affairs is explained by Tukanoans as follows: The first ancestors of all the sibs of one language group were brothers to one another. The eldest brother emerged from the rocks at the rapids first, and the youngest last. However, there were many brothers in the beginning, and obviously there were many years between the birth of the eldest and the youngest brother. By the time the youngest brother emerged at the rapids, the eldest was very old, and had great-grandchildren. Thus, although the eldest and youngest brothers called each other "brother"; because many years had passed between their births the younger brothers were addressing as "grandchild" those individuals in the eldest brother's sib who were close to them in age. This is why, today, when people of about the same age are heard using grandparent and grandchild terms to each other, it is the one who says "grandfather" and who is called "grandson" who is of higher rank. Sib rank is signaled in other ways as well. One method of indicating a sib's ver low rank is to impugn its origins with the claim that it is a "new" member of the language group, "who were our servants, who had to be taught how to build houses and speak our language. Then, taking pity on them, we adopted them as our youngest-brother sib."^[116]

Robin M. Wright writes about the Baniwa in "Umawali. Hohodene myths of the Anaconda, father of the fish: "Baniwa society is comprised of some six exogamous phratries, each consisting of 4-5 patrilineal sibs ranked according to the order of emergence of mythical ancestral brothers. Like their Tukanoan neighbors, sibs were once categorized (the system has suffered numerous changes due to a situation of permanent contact) according to a system of ritual roles as ciefs (enawinai), shamans, warriors, dancers, and servants (makuperi). ... The core of local communities is the male sibling group and, as on the phratric end sib level, male sibling ties form the basis of a system of hierarchical rank according to relative age. Traditionally, the agnatic sibling group of a community constituted the most important level of decision-making. Leadership is often exercised by the eldest brother of the local group. Oral histories indicate that warfare was an important dynamic in socio-political relations with Tukanoan and Maku peoples of the Uaupés, and that war chiefs frequently organized communities of younger-brother warrior sibs to conduct campaigns for the purposes of undertaking vengeance and capturing women and children. Warfare also has a fundamental importance in mythology".^[117]

The Gê-speaking peoples of the Amazonia were also organized in conical clan similar to those described above.

Some isolated lowland tribes of Central and South America have also preserved the conical clan as their form of social organization. Such is the case of the Koji people of Colombia.

In the South Cone, ranking by patrilineal primogeniture prevailed among the Mapuche.^[108]