We cannot know for sure how early human groups organized themselves, or how individuals saw themselves in terms of their relations within the group. Anthropologists use the term ‘kinship’ to denote this web of social relations.
Concepts of kinship vary widely between different societies, indicating that kinship is a cultural construct rather than biologically determined. Although there are, for example, good evolutionary reasons to avoid incest, taboos that govern who may marry whom vary enormously, and often have less to do with genetics than with economics, gender ideas and power dynamics within kinship groups.
The smallest kinship group is the family, but what makes up a family varies widely from culture to culture. In some, it refers to the nuclear family (biological parents and children), in others extended families live together or in close proximity, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and so on. In some cultures, marriage is monogamous, in others polygamous – a man takes several wives, or a woman several husbands. Serial polygamy (where individuals take a succession of partners) has become a feature of Western societies, as have same-sex partnerships. Biotechnology has brought new variations – IVF, donor sperm and donor eggs, surrogacy. Humans may also declare those who have no biological connection to be their relations, as happens with adoption. In some cultures, for example among the Inupiat people of Alaska, children can choose who their parents are. In some parts of Malaysia, if you eat rice with a person, they become your kin.
Contemporary hunter-gatherers live in bands of just a few families, totalling no more than a few dozen individuals. The different families are allied via marriage, friendship, common descent and common interest. Bands are egalitarian rather than hierarchical, although certain individuals may have higher status owing to gender or age. It is likely that our own hunter-gatherer ancestors had similar systems of kinship.
As societies grew more complex, a greater variety of kinship systems emerged. The idea of descent, for example, is prone to enormous variation. Some societies trace ancestry through the mother (matrilinear descent), some through the father (patrilinear), some through both, while in others the individual can choose to define themselves either through the paternal or maternal line.
Larger groups in which each individual claims the same common ancestor are known as clans (from Gaelic clann , ‘progeny’). Sometimes it is not a common ancestor that unites the clan, but a sense of common kinship with a totem, a spirit-being associated with a particular plant or animal. In some parts of the world, members of a clan cannot marry each other.
Clans are sometimes regarded as tribes, or, more often, subgroups of tribes. Tribes were the largest social groups before the development of states, and even today (for example in parts of Africa) they identify themselves as independent or outside of states. What unites them is kinship relations and sometimes a sense of common ancestry. They are typically rooted in a particular place (even if they are nomadic), and often have their own language or dialect.
Status
Although hunter-gatherer bands are notably egalitarian, larger social groupings usually display some degree of social stratification in which certain individuals, families or elites have more status – power, prestige, wealth – than others. Clans and tribes typically have chieftains, often associated with success in hunting or war, but they may also honour other important individuals, such as priests or shamans, or people skilled in a particular craft.