The ancient soñietes - patriarchal exogamy

Àíàòîëèé Ñåêðåòàðåâ
 txt 3.1. The scheme of gene pool exchange in communities (wedding rituals), in particular - N-degree patriarchal exogamy as one of the integrators of logocenoses.


   Let’s define ethnos as community, which is practically closed with regard to marriage, moreover, marriage that follows certain rituals, i.e. ethnos is a community that propagates itself due to coupling (with rear exclusions) only its own members, and certain, common for all ethnos ritual exists, which regulates the procedure of coupling. So according to such reasoning wedding ritual (ceremony) becomes one of the ethnos’ integrators.

  Let’s consider ethnos in which wedding ceremony is based on the principles of N-degree patriarchal exogamy. Let’s state the essence of this principle of ordering gene pool exchange in society.

  According to patriarchal exogamy men born in a specific family, as a rule stay with it (this is the sense of patriarchal order), while women born in the family have to be given to the men from other families (this is the sense of exogamy), i.e. gene pool exchange between families in the ethnos is done by women. Note that under such condition human genotype depends, first of all, on the predecessors of female line.      

Digression.
t_a_j__(Kyrg.) - 1) cognation is the kinship that is spread over whole kinfolks and tribes, it is thought that all person’s inclinations are handed down through this line; 2) the base of the verb with such content spectrum – lose in quantity, descend (say, from a slope), run away, - *Äæ18.2, 689*. Comment A.S.   Since in patriarchy men stay with their kin while women come to the kin from outside, from different kinfolks and tribes, and children are born different in their inclinations and characteristics, then variability of human characteristics of the same kin are explained first of all by mother’s, female – also more variable – gene component. That’s why father’s, male and mother’s, female components of human nature are perceived as constant and variable accordingly, that’s why it became another base for forming a chain of notions “male = local, crust, dry land”, “female = big, amorphous, water.” At the same time a woman born in a kin, herself serves as a symbol of loss, as far as she is supposed to quit the kin. The wise Kyrgyz perfectly illustrates the semantic link “daughter (a woman who is not a mother) is a loss”. “Daughter is for alien kin - *Äæ18.2, 946, ñò. “ýë “.
End of Digression.

As for N-degree kinship, it is seen in the fact that every man must know N degrees of his predecessors, namely – beside his father’s kin, N- 1 degrees of his predecessors on female line: the kin where man’s mother was born, the kin where his mother’s mother was born and so on. It is necessary because according to this principle a man must find his wife beyond these N degrees (that’s why this exogamy is N-degree). Note that the above statement means that there should be at least N + 1 degrees in an ethnos.

  A kin community is an "atom" of social structure in the studied situation. A kin community is integrated with kinship of male line, i.e. the base of a kin community is a set of men, who in ideal case are descendants of one man – the founder of the kin.

  Note that to each man from the N-degree exogamy ethnos there corresponds N-component symbolic complex, which includes the main symbol, complex epicentre, which is the father’s kin symbol, and N- 1 symbols of the kinfolks from which his mother, his mother’s mother and so on came – altogether N - 1 n ancestors of female line.

   More often N was equal to 5 or 7. It suits the ancient mentality, according to which head and the principal angles-joints were thought to be formants of human body, i.e. its organs treated, as carriers of the essence and shape of a human organism. There were the two most popular schemes of a human body composition:  head + 6 joints (N = 7), and head + 4 joints (N = 5) (see *smm Human organism.*). Communities that admitted this or that scheme were correspondingly called seven-degree or five-degree ones.

  E.g. the Kyrgyz were seven-degree ethnos. The following proves it: zz_e_t_e__(Kyrg.) - ancestors, origin - *Äæ18.2, 254*. Comment A.S. Compare to zz_e_t_i__( Kyrg.) - seven - *Äæ18.2 , 252*. The Kyrgyz were seven-degree ethnos, i.e. each Kyrgyz must know seven degrees of his ancestors, otherwise he was considered as “kul” – a slave. That is why we have a lexeme Ñàìå òîìó ìàºìî ëåêñåìó zz_e_t_e_s_i_z  - kinless.

  Let’s consider the sense of N-degree exogamy in detail.

  Suppose for simplicity N = 5. Let’s consider a specific kin whose symbol (name, totem, emblem, etc.) we denote as À. Then each family, married couple, consists of a man born in this kin and a woman born in other kin  has five-component “marriage” or “family” name - "À+ÂÑDE", where Ñ, D, E – are the kin symbols of the wife’s mother, her grandmother and great-grandmother, moreover, the last two on female line.

 So, the wife contributes to the family all, except the first, components of the family name.
 
  Note that all sons and daughters born in this family bear the same five-component family name until they marry.


  Suppose, a son of this married couple, a man "À+ÂÑDE" married a woman from kin F, who was born in the married couple named F + GHIJ
 Then "family" name of the husband and his wife, and maiden name of their children will look like A_+_F_G_H_I.

 Consider the changes that occurred in the names of the spouses.

.                husband                wife
maiden name                À_+_Â_Ñ_D_E                F_+_G_H_I_J
family, after-marriage name    A_+_F_G_H_I                A_+_F_G_H_I

  So, common after-marriage name of the spouses differs more from the husband’s maiden name, than from the wife’s maiden name. Only the first component of the husband’s maiden name goes to the after-marriage name of the married couple – the name of his father’s kin, the rest of the components of his maiden name is lost. The woman’s name gets less changes, in it instead of the kin where the woman was born, her husband’s father’s kin name appears at the first position; this new name creates a shift in the sequence of the components in the woman’s maiden name, as the result the last component of her name (in this case it is denoted as J) is dropped out the exogamy circle of the married couple. Note that sons born in this family then may marry women from the kin J.


   These schemes of regulating marriages or, more general, - of gene pool exchange between the ethnoses, were the principal innovations on the way of logoevolution. First, due to their exogamy these schemes prevented the community from degeneration, forcing men marry women from genetically remote kinfolks. Second, N-degree exogamy was just a part of the general regulating system of both space and time, and of communications. The base of this regulating system was the numerical system based on the same number N.   

To be continued.