Matrilineage

Matrilineality is a system in which one belongs to one's mother's lineage.

It may also involve the Inheritance of property or titles through the female line. However, the latter does not always hold; in some societies, titles or property went to the male Heir (s) of the nearest female Relative . (Basically, two such forms are: 1. from uncle to nephew, and 2. from grandfather to grandson.)

INTRODUCTION

A matriline is a Line Of Descent from a Female Ancestor to a Descendant (of either Sex ) in which the individuals in all intervening generations are Female . In a matrilineal Descent System (= uterine descent), an individual is considered to belong to the same Descent Group as his or her mother. This is in contrast to the more common pattern of Patrilineal Descent .

The uterine ancestry of an individual is a person's pure female ancestry, i.e. a matriline leading from a female ancestor to that individual.

On inheritance by matrilineal kinship (= uterine kinship), see Matrilineal Succession .

In some cultures, membership of a group is inherited matrilineally. For example, Jewish Law holds that one is a Jew if one's mother (rather than one's father) is a Jew.

Another example of a matrilineal culture is the Minangkabau culture of West Sumatra and Nair s of Kerala , India .

The fact that Mitochondrial DNA is maternally inherited enables matrilineal lines of individuals to be traced through genetic analysis.

JUDAISM

and the rest of Tanakh (the Jewish Bible).

Historians have cast doubt on the claim that Judaism has always been matrilineal. Indeed, there are several instances in the Bible where Jewish men marry gentile women without direct mention of the women converting. (The standard view among historians seems to be that the very notion of conversion with a Mikvah is postbiblical.) Apparently the offspring of such unions was considered to be Jewish; the Book Of Ruth claims such ancestry for King David himself; however, the Talmud (Yevamoth 47b) asserts that Ruth was a convert to Judaism, and derives the laws of proselytes from the exchange between Naomi and Ruth. Flavius Josephus refers to marriages between
Jewish men and Gentile women without much commentary, and seems
to assume that the offspring is Jewish (or, according to one
of his statements, " Half-Jewish ") (''Antiquities of the Jews'' 16.225, 18.109, 18.139, 18.141, 14.8-10, 14.121, 14.403); as is usual in prerabbinic texts, there is no mention

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Matrilineage