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 her husband.  Here we have once more the working of sympathetic magic, where the slightest contact works contamination.

We have in other connections alluded to the seclusion of young girls in Korea, among the Hindus, among the North American Indians, and in the South Seas.  One of the most beautiful examples of this custom is found in New Britain.  From puberty until marriage the native girls are confined in houses with a bundle of dried grass across the entrance to show that the house is strictly taboo.  The interior of these houses is divided into cells or cages in each of which a girl is confined.  No light and little or no air enters, and the atmosphere is hot and stifling.

The seclusion of women after marriage is common among many peoples.  In the form in which it affected western civilization it probably originated among the Persians or some other people of central Asia, and spread to the Arabs and Mohammedans.  That it did not originate with the Arabs is attested by students of their culture.  It was common among the Greeks, whose wives were secluded from other men than their husbands.  In modern Korea it is not even proper to ask after the women of the family.  Women have been put to death in that country when strange men have accidentally touched their hands.[36, p.341]