arms, and the like; this 25 is illustrated by the primitive customs which at first sight seems to contradict it, of the interment of the warrior's arms, etc., with him, for these were so buried because they were supposed to be necessary for his use in the continuous life which he was to lead in the land of shadows.
This primitive community took the form of a narrow and exclusive group based on the kinship, real or supposed, of its members. The three integral bodies in this society are the Gens, the Tribe, and the þeoð or People. The Gens is a group founded on actual blood relationship, in which intermarriage is forbidden; it cannot exist separately therefore, but must have another Gens for its complement: thus, since no “Eagle” man can have sexual intercourse with an “Eagle” woman, there is at hand a “Wolf”-gens for intermarriage.
These Gentes have a tendency to coalesce and form the Tribe, in which kinship is still supposed, but is not necessarily actual; as time goes on, the Gentes tend to lose their autonomous 26 existence in the Tribe; but the Tribe in its turn tends to merge itself into a higher unity, the þeoð or People, which is a federation of tribes, and in which the formal traditional kinship is in general merely mythical.
The opinion first put forward by Bachofen is now commonly held, that, at first, descent in the Gens was traced wholly through the mother, and that consequently the women were the recognised predominant element therein, the stock historical instance being that of the Lycians, as mentioned by Herodotus.
Among the Oriental Races at this period the patriarchal family had tended to supersede the Gens as the unit of social life. In Europe something the same in essence, but modified in form, grew up as the Roman Familia, of which we shall treat later on. It may be added that the existing conditions of life among the Bedouins in Arabia seem to show a