Ancient Society
In the late 19th century, almost all prehistorians and anthropologists believed, following Lewis H. Morgan's influential book "Ancient Society", that early human kinship everywhere was matrilineal. This idea was taken up by Friedrich Engels in "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State". The Morgan-Engels thesis that humanity's earliest domestic institution was not the family but the matrilineal clan soon became incorporated into communist orthodoxy. In reaction, most 20th century social anthropologists considered the theory of matrilineal priority untenable, although during the 1970s and 1980s, a range of feminist scholars often attempted to revive it.