Though they may not have been contemporaneous in all or even the majority of societies, it would seem that the former was in most cases the logical outcome of the latter, regard being had also to the man's natural function as protector of the family and provider of its sustenance.

But this transition from female to male kinship was a social revolution of the first importance.

Under the system of female descent there had been generally no transfer of clanship; both the woman and her partner or husband retained their own clans, and the children belonged to their mother's clan.

In the totemic stage of society the totem-clan was the vital organism, and the individual scarcely realised his own separate existence, but regarded himself as a member of his totem-clan, being a piece or fraction of a common life which extended through all the members of the clan and all the totem animals of the species.

They may have thought also that each species of animals and plants had a different kind of life, and consequently also each clan whose life was derived from, and linked to, that of its totem-species.