THE EVOLUTION OF DRAVIDIAN KINSHIP SYSTEMS IN OCEANIA: LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE. From: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute | Date: September 1, 2001| Author: HAGE, PER | COPYRIGHT 2001 Royal Anthropological Institute. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

In Allen's world-historical theory of kinship, humanity began with a tetradic-Dravidian system based on cross-cousin marriage and defined by alternate generation, prescriptive, and classificatory equations. In the course of time the dominant trend has been towards the irreversible breakdown of these equations in just this order. Comparative linguistic evidence is obviously crucial for an evaluation of Allen's theory and for similar grand theories of irreversible change in kinship s...