1. Matriarchal social speculation in Chinese history
The only basis for the definition of the upper limit of Chinese matriarchal society in the middle and late Paleolithic periods of the Maba, Dingcun, and Shanshandong people is Morgan's explanation of the inevitability of matriarchy, rather than the archaeological or documentary empirical data of the Chinese Stone Age.
The commentator quoted Morgan as explaining that in the ancient Age of Obscurantism, the so-called Paleolithic Age, the result of the practice of group marriages by human beings, the interbreeding of gender relations and unrestricted group marriages must be the emergence of matriarchy. Morgan writes: "This is the oldest form of clan when the paternity of a child has not yet been determined and only the mother can be used as a criterion for identifying lineage." "
Morgan speculated that the so-called "intercourse between men and women" was the first stage of marriage in human history, mainly based on ethnographic materials written by some missionaries and travelers in the early 19th century.
Contemporary anthropologists have also found through in-depth investigation and study of the 175 surviving hunter-gatherers around the world that although these "living fossils" of human society are located in different ecological environments, such as the Eskimos living in the Arctic, the Indians in North and South America, the natives of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, or living in the icy Arctic, or inhabiting the mountains of North and South America, or in the tropical jungles of the Indian Ocean archipelago, or inhabiting the plateaus of the South Asian subcontinent. The ecological and natural environment is very different, but the social organization is very similar, that is, the "group" is generally used as a unit of activity, each "group" is about 20 people to more than 200 people, most of them are less than 50 people, and there are families under the "group".
More than half of these families belong to the nuclear family, and about one third belong to the stem family (i.e., the family organized by parents, grandparents and children. In this primitive family, monogamy was the most prevalent form. Anthropologists have speculated from this that from the time of the formation of human society, the most basic unit of production and life is likely to be a family of a pair of men and women who are temporarily or permanently married and their descendants.
Due to the natural differences in physical fitness between men and women, it is determined that the two sexes have learned to divide labor from the beginning. Within the family, women have children, take care of household chores and engage in some auxiliary gathering; while men are engaged in hunting animals, resisting beasts of prey, protecting the safety of families and groups, so that the sexes of the hunter-gatherer era have formed a gender-complementary relationship in economic life. Maintaining the survival of the group, in fending off predators and protecting the safety of the group, it plays a leading role in economic life and other social activities, and even the entire group is led by male leaders selected according to the principle of superiority - obedience.
Nevertheless, since human beings at this time were still in a group situation, practicing group inheritance, or there was no succession rule at all, it is difficult to say whether the Paleolithic age was a "matrilineal" or "patrilineal society".
Therefore, the hunter-gatherer society in which the Paleolithic People of China or the Ziyang, Dingcun, and Maba people lived was probably neither matrilineal nor patriarchal. From modern anthropological theories and ethnographic empirical materials, even if the mother-child relationship were to be confirmed as the first and most obvious connection, it would not necessarily lead to the existence of matriarchy in the Hunter-gatherer societies of the Stone Age. The reason is very simple: the so-called "matriarchal succession" in anthropology refers to the individual in society who inherits the mother's family name, family property such as tools, land, and everything else according to the relationship between the mother.
The Chinese Jin Yu says: "Xi Shaodian married yu Yu and gave birth to the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor. The Yellow Emperor took Ji Shuicheng, and the Yan Emperor became Jiang Shuicheng, so the Yellow Emperor was Ji and the YanDi was Jiang. ”
The historical situation reflected in this record is that after the men of the Shaodian tribe married the two surnames of Ji and Jiang in the Yu clan, the women with the surname of Ji gave birth to the Yellow Emperor and the women surnamed Jiang gave birth to the Yan Emperor. Although the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor were both born to men from the Shaodian tribe, they were surnamed Ji and Jiang respectively, and the Huang and Yan Emperors obviously grew up in the matrilineal surname and took the maternal surname. The Yellow Emperor not only took his mother's surname himself, but his children often had the same surname as their father.
The Chinese Jin also says:
There were twenty-five sons of the Yellow Emperor, and only two of them had the same surname, but Qingyang and Yigu were both their surnames. Qingyang, nephew of Fang Lei's clan, YiGu, nephew of Tongyu's clan. Those who are born with different surnames,...... Of the twenty-five sons of the Yellow Emperor, fourteen of his surnames were twelve: Ji, Xi, Deng, Ji, Teng, Zhen, Ren, Xun, Xun, And Xi.
The so-called "surname" in this record is actually the surname of the man who marries to the family of the wife under the dual marriage system, and the children born to the family name of the wife's family name. The reason why the 26 sons of the Yellow Emperor were "born with different surnames" was that 14 of the 25 sons were married to different surnames, and the children born to them were given the surname of the surname of the surname they married.
Since the two brothers Qingyang and Yigu married into their own surnames, the children of the two had the same surname. The rest of the sons who did not have a surname probably stayed in the Yellow Emperor's own surname and married their wives from outside the clan. The literature that the Yellow Emperor himself obtained the surname from his mother and that the Father and Son of the Yellow Emperor were "born with the same surname" shows that the Matriarchal System in China had begun to prevail during the time of the Yellow Emperor.
2. From matrilineal to patrilineal
According to the popular view in today's academic circles, the matriarchal society of ancient China disintegrated at the end of the Yangshao culture, about 5,000 years ago, and was replaced by a later patriarchal society. The coexistence of matriarchy and patriarchy in the Yellow Emperor's era is the documentary basis for the above popular views that scholars often cite. Until a few years ago, some people wrote that the fact that men marrying from their wives and women from their husbands during the Yellow Emperor's time coexisted at the same time was "a phenomenon peculiar to the transition period from matrilineal clan society to patrilineal clan society", which showed that "the yellow emperor era was a stage of transformation in which the matriarchy declined and the patriarchal system was established." "I think this statement does not conform to the historical reality of the era of Chinese legends."
Judging from the literature, after the Yellow Emperor, that is, in the legendary Five Emperors era, the Gaoyang clan, the Di Yao Gao Xin clan, the Di Yao Tao Tang clan and the Di Shun Youyu clan, their social organization was built with the matrilineal succession system as the core.
The so-called "surname" in ancient China is a symbol that characterizes the blood relationship between people, and people of the same blood in the same clan have the same surname, and no intermarriage is allowed between the same surname, so the "Explanation of The Interpretation of The Text" explains the surname: "Surname, born of the person." The ancient divine man and mother gave birth to a son because of heaven, so they were called the Son of Heaven, because they were born as surnames. The so-called "because of birth to take the surname" means that the male ancestors of several major surname families in ancient times all inherited the mother's surname. The historical records of the Yellow Emperor, Di Zhao, Di Yao, Di Shun and other major clan leaders from the mother's residence and from the mother's surname clearly tell us that after the Yellow Emperor, the matriarchy system still prevailed, and the view that the current popular matriarchy had disintegrated and replaced the patriarchal society during the Yellow Emperor's time at the time of the Yellow Emperor 5,000 years ago was completely untenable.
As mentioned above, originating in the "Five Emperors Era" about 5,000 years ago, several major surname groups in Chinese society prevailed in the matrilineal system, social organizations were constructed with the matrilineal heir rule as the core, the children were from the mother's residence, the lineage was calculated by the mother, and the property and bloodline were transmitted according to the matrilineal heir rule. This shows that Chinese society before the Xia, Shang, and Three Dynasties was a typical matriarchal society.
The matriarchy of ancient Chinese society was dissolved around the rise of the Xia Dynasty, that is, the lower limit of ancient Chinese matriarchal society was actually at the birth of the state, not the Neolithic period mentioned in the theory of time. From the historical documents, we can see that our definition of the lower limit of the era of ancient Chinese matriarchal society is not a nonsense of the main rules and speculations, but a judgment based on the social organization of several major surname groups active in the yellow river and the Yangtze River basin during the rise of the first dynasty in Chinese history.
The legend of Xia Yu, Yin Qi, Zhou Ren and Daye, "all fatherless, born of heaven", shows that the men of that era had not yet established their authority in the transmission of blood or lineage. Judging from the literature, the male lineage of the Xia, Yin, Zhou, Qin and other surnames, the Xia people trace back to The Gong, the Yin people go up to the Deed, "the Destiny of Heaven Xuan Bird, descending and giving birth to the Shang", the Deed above can no longer find the patrilineal lineage; the Zhou people go up to the Hou Ji, "The First Born People, Shi Wei Jiang Yuan", the Hou Ji above the Female Lineage; the Qin people go up to the Great Cause, the Daye above is the female lineage, and the "History of Qin Benji" suo implies that the Qin people "take the mother clan and the ancestors are ancestral". It can be seen that Yu, Qi, Abandoned, Daye and others are the transformation of the Xia, Yin, Zhou, Qin and other surname groups from the female lineage to the male lineage.
Did the Yin Qi and Zhou Ren era really enter the patriarchal society?
In fact, when Yu Qi abandoned the Great Cause, Xia, Shang, Zhou and other surname groups implemented a matrilineal system, in addition to the above-mentioned legend of "totem pregnancy", there are also a large number of documentary basis for the existence of matriarchy. From the perspective of anthropology and ethnology, many contemporary peoples who practice matriarchy are not "knowing their mothers but not their fathers", and the basic point of matrilineal society is that social organizations are constructed with the blood relations of the mother as the link and the matrilineal clan or the matrilineal family as the basic unit. In other words, matriarchy is the association of individuals with sexual kinship through women, in which each generation of children belongs to their mother's kinship.
Although a woman's sons and daughters are members of the same blood group, only daughters can link their bloodlines and pass them on to her children. Based on this, it is not difficult to find out from the records in the literature about the lineage inheritance and subordination of Yu, Qi, Ren and others: Xia Yu, Yin Qi, and Zhou Ren dynasty were indeed still in a matriarchal society.
Let's look at Xia Yu first. The "History of Xia Benji" says: "Xia Yu, the name is Wen Ming. ...... The name of the country is Xia Hou and the surname is Ji. Xia Yu's surname is 姒, and according to the literature, 姒 is the surname of the Xin tribe to which Yu's mother belongs, and the "History of Zhou Benji" "is to seek to have a Xin's Jiang Woman", and the justice quotes the "Shi Ben" Yun: "XinGuo, The surname of Xia, after Xia Yu, that is, Shan Yisheng and other people who ask for a Xin Jiang female devotee." It can be seen that Yu is surnamed after his mother's surname. Documentary records also indicate that Dayu lived not only from his mother's surname but also from his wife.
Second look at Yin Qi. According to the "History of Yin Benji" and other documents, Yin Qi's mother was Jian Di, the daughter of you, and Jian Di was the second concubine of Emperor Zhao, which shows that Yin Qi was the son of Emperor Yu, and the close relationship between Yu and the Yin people has been confirmed by the oracle bones excavated from Yin Ruins. According to the historical records, Yin Qi is a son's surname, and according to the "History of Yin Muji" zhengyi quoted "Imperial Century", Yin Qi's father Emperor Yu is "Ji" surname, it can be seen that Yin Qi is also "born from the mother", with the mother's surname as the surname.
Look at Zhou Ren again. According to the "History of Zhou Benji" and other documents, the abandoned mother Jiang Yuan was the daughter of the Tai clan, and the Shuowen Jiezi; "Tai, after Emperor Yan, was surnamed Jiang." However, the literature says that the Zhou people are surnamed Ji. Some researchers have questioned whether Zhou was in a matriarchal society at the time, why did he take the surname Ji and not from his mother's surname, Jiang? In fact, Zhou abandoned the surname Ji after he founded the country, and he lived from his mother in his early years and took his mother's surname as his surname.
The fact that the kingdoms of Xia Houyu, Yin Houqi, and Zhou Houji in the xia, shang, and Zhou dynasties prevailed from their mothers to their mothers, shows that the Chinese matriarchal society that originated in the era of the Yellow Emperor, the five emperors of the Xia Dynasty, the Emperor Yao, and the Emperor Shun, continued until the rise of the Xia Dynasty. The rise of the Xia Dynasty, according to literature and the research results of modern scholars, is roughly in the 21st century BC, more than 4,000 years ago. Thus, the lower limit of the era of ancient Chinese matriarchal societies was at the end of the Neolithic age or the beginning of the Bronze Age in the 21st century BC.
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