Abstract
Patrilineal kinship structures are among the most complex manifestations of the impact of kinship on human social life. Despite the fact that such structures take highly diverse forms across cultures, that they are absent in many human societies and, moreover, that they are not observed in other primate species, a comparative analysis of human and nonhuman primate societies reveals that human kinship structures have deep evolutionary roots and clear biological underpinnings. I argue here that the first patrilineal kinship structures came into being as the emergent products of the combination, in the course of human evolution, of ten biologically grounded components, seven of which are observed in our closest relative, the chimpanzee, the remaining three being consequences of the evolution of pair-bonding in humans. This indicates that contemporary patrilineal kinship structures are not cultural creations, but cultural constructs that built upon, and diversified from a rich biological substrate. The same reasoning applies to many other complex human kinship phenomena, such as marital arrangements. I conclude that models and theories from cultural anthropology must be compatible with the relevant biological evidence.
Highlights
There seems to be a growing appraisal by cultural anthropologists that some of the most basic kinship features that humans share with other primates, such as kin groups, kin recognition, the tendency to favor one’s kin, incest avoidance, and many others, reflect our common evolutionary history and biological heritage with those species (e.g., Godelier 2004; Jones 2004, 2010; Hill et al 2011; Shenk and Mattison 2011; Trautman et al 2011; Elssworth and Walker 2014; Schenk 2014; Hames, 2014; Stone 2014)
The reasons I focus on patrilineal kinship structures are threefold: they are among the most complex manifestations of the impact of kinship on human social life, they illustrate the potency of kinship in generating group-level social structures, and they occupy a preponderant place in the anthropology of kinship (e.g., Stone 2014)
Group fissions along paternal kinship lines are well documented in humans (Evans-Pritchard 1940; Chagnon 1979; Hunley et al 2008; Walker and Hill, 2015). According to this reasoning the key event that brough about the evolution of the first patrilineal kinship structures in hominins was the combination of a chimpanzee-like social organization – essentially, a multimale-multifemale group composition and a pattern of male philopatry – with a mating system featuring stable breeding bonds
Summary
There seems to be a growing appraisal by cultural anthropologists that some of the most basic kinship features that humans share with other primates, such as kin groups, kin recognition, the tendency to favor one’s kin, incest avoidance, and many others, reflect our common evolutionary history and biological heritage with those species (e.g., Godelier 2004; Jones 2004, 2010; Hill et al 2011; Shenk and Mattison 2011; Trautman et al 2011; Elssworth and Walker 2014; Schenk 2014; Hames, 2014; Stone 2014). From ego’s perspective, sisters and cousins are collateral kin belonging to the same sex, generation and age group, but while sisters are separated from ego by two parent-child links, cousins are by four The fact that those factors affect how nonhuman primates interact with their kin does not imply that animals conceptualize sex differences, relative age, ascending versus descending generation, lineal distance, and collateral distance. Three of these (components 1, 6 and 8) are phylogenetically primitive and rather common features of primate societies that are neither specific to kin-
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