It is, therefore, not to be deplored that modern ethnographers emphatically reject the theory of the matriarchate. "No sociologist nowadays believes Bachofen's theory," says Professor Westermarck. An occasional feminist writer still builds on the theory, but I find Westermarck's statement in regard to the authorities justified.[2] It is quite true that in "a very considerable number of tribes" we find the habit of giving the mother's name to the child, and tracing through her whatever inheritance there be of rank or property. But there are serious objections to seeing in these practices a lingering trace of a former matriarchal rule. In at least an equal number of cases more complete research has found the opposite practice of tracing kinship through the father. In many of the tribes, where the female line is observed, the man rules even the home. In all cases where the female line is followed it is just as natural, at least, to trace the practice to a primitive promiscuity and uncertainty of paternity as to feminine domination. That, indeed, is the inference of the great majority of modern ethnographers. Westermarck dissents from them on this point of promiscuity (and, within limits that I will indicate, I agree with him); but he just as firmly rejects the matriarchate. It is surely possible that in the childhood of the race the man's share in the creation of children was unknown, and the child was the child of its mother. The evolution of woman has run on different lines than those suggested by Bachofen, and it is by no means easy to retrace them. The earliest phase, indeed, we have no hope of restoring with confidence. No authority now doubts that there have been human or semi-human beings on this planet for some hundreds of thousands of years, and that for the greater part of the time--that is to say, until near the end of the Old Stone Age--they were below the level of the existing savage. For my present purpose it matters little that we can only dimly perceive the outline of these early men and women in the thick mist of a remote past. With what evidence there is I happen to be well acquainted, but I will not enlarge on it. Those primitive humans certainly had no social or political structure, and so do not concern us. How the first social groups arose it is not agreed; but from the scattering of the early traces of men and from the habits of the larger apes I conclude (as Westermarck does) that the primitive humans wandered along the broad river-banks in family groups, and that larger communities arose later by the fusion or expansion of families. Probably enough there was a great deal of promiscuity when these communities were formed, and monandry would need to be developed afresh. Where there was this community of wives the practice of tracing descent through the mother would be inevitable. In any case, the origin of children would be a profound mystery to such lowly beings, and for ages the man's fatherhood would be unknown.