Descent traces its origin to persons who were ancestors. These ancestors were real beings. Descent thus is geneological. It links the present generation with the preceding generations. (A) Is the ego. His father was (B), his grandfather was (C), and his great grandfathers were (D), and so on and so forth.
Descent, thus, traces a person’s origin to the one who created the generation. Anthropologists have defined descent in many ways. According to Meyer Fortes:
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A descent group is an arrangement of persons that serves the attainment of legitimate social and personal ends.
Fortes has defined descent group with reference to his study of African tribes. He stresses on the social functions of the group. He does not take into consideration the biological origin of the members of the descent group.
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G.P. Murdock, who is the celebrated expounder of the concept of social structure, says:
Descent refers solely to a cultural principle whereby an individual is socially allocated to a specific group of consanguineal kinsmen.
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A consanguineal group, according to Murdock, is that which a blood group is. And, thus, the members of a descent group essentially are members of a blood group.
When the descent membership is traced for generations, the members born out of this group are the members of the descent group. There are some characteristics which are common to a descent group:
(1) Members of a descent group trace their origin to a single ancestor who happened to live in the past.
(2) The ancestor is a living being, a reality.
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(3) The ancestor is never mythological or fictitious.
(4) The members of a descent group are united by blood ties.
(5) Marriage and sexual relations are not allowed among the descent group, since they belong to the same ancestor.
(6) Members of a descent group are also related to inheritance and succession.
Anthropologists have found certain types of descent. The following types are generally referred:
(i) Unilateral Descent:
The members of this descent group trace their origin to a single ancestor. Most of the societies in the world traditionally give the father’s side a certain priority, since the father’s surname passes on to the children.
(ii) Bilateral Descent:
In some societies descent is traced to two ancestors male and female. This is called bilateral descent. Bremnes has hinted at the difficulties to base unilineal principle in counting both the descent groups matrilateral and patrilateral. It is said that the bilateral way of kin reckoning creates problems in the construction of genealogies.
“For each generation one move back in time, the number of kin is doubled. We have two parents, four grandparents-, eight great grandparents, sixteen great-great grandparents, and so on.
Genealogies, thus, tend to be shallow in this kind of society-most persons are unable to name ancestors more than three or four generations back.”
(iii) Patrilineal Descent:
The descent in a patrilineal system includes at least ego’s siblings, father father’s siblings and the children of the men in the group. Father’s sister’s children, however, do not belong to ego’s group, but to her husband’s group.
(iv) Matrilineal Descent
The matrilineal descent includes both female and male relatives of mother, mother’s mother and mother’s mother. One’s father, however, belongs to a different lineage, namely, his own mother’s lineage. The matrilineal system is a mirror image of the patrilineal one.