I’m not entirely sure what bastard children and women being portrayed as whores has to do with a race choosing to die out? I also don’t understand why women seem to carry the burden of the title whore when it takes two to tango. I’m sure that in most cases the guy knows what he’s getting in to.
But I guess that is beside the point I got from the original post.
I feel it has to do a lot with how you view your lineage. If you trace it from the father’s side then males can only spread their seed by mating with someone of another surname. But if you track it through the mother’s side then you have more leeway. As couples marry, the name passes on to the new lineage and the sheer number of available partners reduces. If you trace it through the woman then one clan may have many names but only a few direct descendants. It also helps to eliminate the slander of women for continuing the lineage. Which when a man does it he is called a stud for siring so many children.
Celtic society
"there is plenty of evidence of ancient societies where women held greater power than in many societies today. For example, Jean Markale's studies of Celtic societies show that the power of women was reflected not only in myth and legend but in legal codes pertaining to marriage, divorce, property ownership, and the right to rule.”
- Margot Adler
Matrilineality is a system in which descent is traced through the mother and maternal ancestors. Matrilineality is also a societal system in which one belongs to one's matriline or mother's lineage, which can involve the inheritance of property and/or titles. A matriline is a line of descent from a female ancestor to a descendant (of either sex) in which the individuals in all intervening generations are mothers – a mother line. In a matrilineal descent system an individual is considered to belong to the same descent group as her or his mother. This matrilineal descent pattern is in contrast to the more common pattern of patrilineal descent from which a family name is usually derived. The matriline of historical nobility was also called her or his enatic or uterine ancestry, corresponding to the patrilineal agnatic ancestry.
Example cultures or societies include the Cherokee, Choctaw, Gitksan, Haida, Hopi, Iroquois, Lenape, Navajo, and Tlingit of North America; the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra, Indonesia and Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia; the Nairs of Kerala and the Bunts of Karnataka in south India; the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo of Meghalaya in northeast India; eastern Sri Lanka; the Mosuo of China; the Basques of Spain and France; the Akan including the Ashanti of west Africa; the Tuaregs of west and north Africa; most Jewish communities; and the Serer of Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrilineality
In these societies it is possible for men to sire many offspring and women to maintain long standing and strong lineages.
