The Balder-myth is familiar to us all. He is a "rare exotic," entirely out of place in that circle of berserker gods and brutal giants who lived in or over against the Norse Valhalla, but would have found himself at home in the land and times of Dionysus. Have we possibly here an intrusion of a far more ancient religious element which even the rude dwellers in a harsh Northland could not forget, and would not allow to die? Usually accompanying the cult of the goddess we find frequent and wide-spread traces of a related trend of thought, mother-right (Mutterrecht), maternal kinship, matriarchy: under which were generally included the reckoning of descent in the female line, rights of inheritance by the daughter, hence female rights of property and general high social and economic position of woman. These features need not be united--they may appear separately, one here and another there. We are probably not studying a system of thought or law, but a general tendency of life.[167] Mother-right, to use the most general term, survived, partially at least, down to historic time in Egypt. It persisted in Asia Minor. Perhaps it crops out in the story of the Amazons. We find traces of it in ancient law and custom in northern Europe. Says Hoernes: "Among the Greeks, Romans, Celts, Germans, and Slavs, remains of mother-right occur even in historic times."[168] Wundt thinks that maternal kinship was once universal.[169] We have no time or room to discuss the origin of mother-kinship. We may yet find that it and mother-right represent distinct forms of a deep-seated universal tendency, often of independent origin, occurring usually together but sometimes separate. Something akin to mother-right, and to a high position and dominating influence of woman in the family and in society, is only what we should expect at this time. We have seen that women were the first great discoverers and inventors; discoverers and founders of all our household arts and crafts as well as of most of our science. Women were the first spinners and weavers, the first potters. They were the first herbalists and botanists and the first household physicians. In the care of the children they were compelled to be alert, quick-minded, ready for all sorts of emergencies. Paleolithic man was a mere hunter; the rest of the time he ate and loafed. The woman provided the vegetable food, as well as much of the animal, and became the first gardener or farmer. She introduced tillage of the ground, and thus became economically by far the more important member of the partnership, and she probably had by far the more alert, quick-witted brain.