Elsewhere scarcely a trace remains, and this was also the condition of things with the classical races of antiquity; so much so, indeed, that even great thinkers like Sir Henry Maine and M.Fustel de Coulanges, with the examples only of India, Greece and Rome before them, did not recognise the system of female descent, and thought that the exogamous clan with male descent was an extension of the patriarchal family, this latter having been the original unit of society.

The wide distribution of exogamy and the probable priority of the system of female to that of male descent were first brought prominently to notice by Mr.M'Lennan.

Still a distinct trace of the prior form survives here in the special relationship sometimes found to exist between a man and his sister's children.

This is a survival of the period when a woman's children, under the rule of female descent, belonged to her own family and her husband or partner in sexual relations had no proprietary right or authority over them, the place and authority of a father belonging in such a condition of society to the mother's brother or brothers.

Among the Halbas a marriage is commonly arranged when practicable between a brother's daughter and a sister's son.