Class 59 gave you the kinship words. This class explains where they came from — and it is one of the most remarkable social facts about Kerala. For several centuries a substantial part of Kerala society was matrilineal. Be precise: matrilineal is not matriarchal. Women did not rule. Descent, family membership and property inheritance passed through the mother's line rather than the father's. മരുമക്കത്തായം (marumakkathaayam) the matrilineal system മക്കത്തായം (makkathaayam) the patrilineal system, the one most of the world uses തറവാട് (tharavaadu) the ancestral joint family house and estate — everyone descended from a common female ancestor belonged to it കാരണവർ (kaaranavar) the senior-most male, usually the eldest maternal uncle, who managed the estate സംബന്ധം (sambandham) a marriage in which the husband visited his wife at her tharavaadu A man's heirs were not his own children. They were his sister's children — because his children belonged to their mother's tharavaadu, not his. Which is why അമ്മാവൻ (ammaavan), mother's brother, carries a weight in Malayalam that "uncle" carries in almost no European language. Anthropologists call it the avunculate, and Kerala's version is one of the best-documented cases on record. In this class: • How a tharavaadu actually worked, day to day • Why Malayalam splits maternal and paternal relatives systematically • ഇളയമ്മ, വലിയമ്മ and the logic behind "younger mother" • How and when the system was dismantled Quizzes below. Dr. Reshmi R Nair — SpeakMalayalam.