Mosuo

Following our discussion during the last class and Ed's recent post: here's a system that can be called matriarchal  and it can be found in China. Matriarchy here does not mean that there are no men like e.g. in Alapine valley in Alabama. Mosuo is a small village where women's roles are different from what we are used to: they are famous for their practice of "walking marriage", meaning that women can choose a partner as they wish (as opposed to China on the whole, where arranged marriages are still popular), they are not attached to one family and couples do not live together. They do not have a written language and their economy is most agrarian. But that is what some people call "the last matriarchy". Check it here: http://www.mosuoproject.org/mosuo.htm