Organisation into clans more or less consanguineous, then into phratries and tribes, seems natural in many primitive societies; and outside the Greco-Roman world the barbarous populations of Europe had all adopted it. In these clans, has kinship begun by being confused? Has exogamy prevailed? On these particular points precise information is wanting; doubtless evolution cannot everywhere have been uniform. One thing is, however, certain, namely, that the Celtic populations have preserved the institution of the clan much longer than any others. In Wales and Ireland the clan was still the social unit; it was responsible for the crimes of its members, paid the fines and received the compensations. In Ireland, and surely elsewhere, there was an _ager publicus_ allotted amongst the members of the clans. Individualism prevailed in the end, as it did everywhere. A certain portion of the common soil, reserved in usufruct for the chiefs, was at last seized by them as individual property; but all the members of a clan were reputed as of kin, and at a man’s death his land was allotted by the chief amongst the other families of the clan or _sept_.[1099] These clans, however, were anything but exogamous, if we may believe Strabo, who affirms that the ancient Irish, like the Mazdeans, married, without distinction, their mothers and sisters.[1100] Irish marriage had in no way the strictness of the Roman marriage; temporary unions were freely allowed, and customs having the force of law safeguarded the rights of the wife.[1101] Other European barbarians, on the contrary, were exogamous, and prohibited under pain of severe punishment, as whipping or drowning, marriage between members of the same clan.[1102] The _mir_ of the southern Slavs may be considered as a survival of these ancient barbarous clans, sometimes endogamous, sometimes exogamous.