The earliest human institution was not the nuclear family. The latest research now indicates that it was the communistic, female-centred clan.

MARX AND ENGELS IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Since Engels’ actual words are today scarcely remembered, let me begin with a direct quotation. In the following passage, Engels celebrates Morgan’s ‘rediscovery of the original mother-right clan’:

‘The rediscovery of the original mother-right clan has the same significance for the history of primitive society as evolution has for biology and Marx’s theory of surplus value has for political economy. It enabled Morgan to outline for the first time the history of the family. Clearly this opens a new era in the treatment of primitive societies.’[6]

Engels went on to describe ‘the mother-right clan’ as ‘the pivot around which the entire science turns.’

women had cared for their children within a co-operative framework, sharing the burdens with their mother and other female relatives. One down-to-earth traditional custom made this possible. Throughout her life, a woman remained living in the same household with her mother and siblings. Children would be raised by a confederacy of mothers, daughters and sisters, backed up by male kin and possessing sufficient solidarity and authority to prevent any husband from taking them away or breaking them apart. A certain loose kind of ‘marriage’ was consistent with these arrangements, but in-marrying spouses had to agree to visit their brides within these women’s communal home. No woman could be privatised by her spouse or taken away.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4278656&forum_id=2#38357237)