Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/345

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

maternal kinship, and Leviticus advances as far as to expressly forbid marriage with father's sisters as well as with mother's sisters,[1] "whether they be born at home or abroad." Doubtless all these indications have their value; they are, however, only indications, and it is especially in placing them by the side of similar facts observed amongst other peoples where the existence of the maternal family and the familial clan is indisputable, that we are inclined to accord to them the same significance. In short, it is clear that the Hebrews early adopted paternal filiation and the patriarchate.

The memory of a distant epoch of confused kinship and of free sexual unions had, however, remained in Semitic tradition. Sanchoniathon, indeed, in his History of Phœnicia, says that the first men bore the name of their mother, because then the women yielded themselves without shame to the first comer.[2] Among the Berbers familial evolution is much easier to follow than with the Semites, and its lower phases are more evident. III. The Family among the Berbers.

During late years the meaning of the word "Berber" has become considerably widened. We are now inclined to consider as varieties of the same very old race the men of Cro-Magnon, the ancient inhabitants of the cave of Mentone, the ancient Vascons, the Cantabrians, Iberians, Guanchos, Kabyles, Berbers, and Touaregs, etc. All these peoples are thought to belong to one great human type, which we may call Berber, and of which numerous representatives still exist. Anterior to all Asiatic migration, and from the time of the stone age, this race seems to have occupied the south of Gaul and Spain, the Canary Isles, and Northern Africa. At the present day the most important epigonic groups of the Berber race are the Kabyles and the Touaregs of the Sahara. Several writers of antiquity have told us how the family of the ancient Berbers was formerly instituted, and we know de visu what

  1. Leviticus, xviii. 9.
  2. Eusebius of Cæsarea, Preparation of Gospel, i.