In a groundbreaking discovery using DNA technology, Chinese scientists have found evidence of a prehistoric matrilineal society in East China, marking a huge stride in studies of early human social organization.
At a news conference on Thursday in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province, scholars from Peking University and the Shandong Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology unveiled their findings on a two-clan matrilineal community at the Fujia archaeological site in the province's Guangrao county, dating back to between 2750 BC and 2500 BC.
Their findings on the matrilineal society — one in which ancestral descent is traced through maternal rather than paternal lines — were published on Wednesday in the science journal Nature.
