Clan System

A clan is a kinship-based social group whose members claim descent, whether directly traceable through genealogy or asserted symbolically through a common ancestor or founding figure, and clan systems have historically organized social identity, land rights, marriage rules and mutual obligation across a very wide range of human societies on every inhabited continent. Clans typically function as exogamous units, meaning members are expected or required to marry outside the clan, and clan membership commonly determines rights of inheritance, access to communal land or resources, and obligations of mutual defense and support among members regarded as kin regardless of the precision of the underlying genealogical claim. Clan-based social organization has taken many distinct historical forms, including the Scottish and Irish clan systems of the British Isles, agnatic lineage-based clans across sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, the totemic clan systems of Aboriginal Australian and Native American societies, and the extended patrilineal or matrilineal descent groups documented across East Asia, Polynesia and elsewhere, each combining the general clan principle of asserted common descent with locally specific rules of membership, leadership and obligation. As a general anthropological category, the clan is broader than any one of its specific historical instances, several of which, including the Scottish clan system and the Somali clan system, are catalogued elsewhere in this atlas as their own distinct named institutions.