Matrilineal

By Deane Barker • •

Given that every human is necessarily the product of a male and female human, every step in our ancestry forks. Every person has a mother and a father. Each of their mother and father also has a mother and father, etc. Every generation is a fork.

“Matrilineal” means tracing ancestry through the mother – it literally means “mother line.” Taking the “mother’s fork” in each generation.

A “matrilineal society” is one that customarily traces heritage through maternal lines, rather than paternal (“patrilineal”).

Why I Looked It Up

In Cutting for Stone, a character realizes who someone’s father is, and comments on why they had never pondered the question before:

Was I the only one to not know this? […] True, in a matrilineal society, one accepted these things and didn’t ask about a father when none was present.

Links from this – Cutting for Stone September 21, 2021
Absolutely stunning novel. I had heard of the book for years. My mother was born in Ethiopia in the 1940s (my grandparents were missionaries from New Zealand), and several people had told me that the story in the novel resembled my mother’s experience there as a child. The book was purchased for me...