Some cultures have patrilineal inheritance, where only male children can inherit, or matrilineal succession, where property can only pass along the female line. Others have egalitarian inheritance, without discrimination based on gender and/or birth order.
Africa
Southern Africa
The social structure prevalent among the southern Bantu informed their religious beliefs.THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE IN AFRICAN RELIGION WITH REFERENCE TO MARRIAGE AND DEATH AMONG THE ZULU PEOPLE http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/1263/01dissertation.pdf;jsessionid=7A24A1D4F03A6A1C023C9F7CAFBFFC47?sequence=4 The expansion of southern Bantu peoples, such as for example the Xhosa, is attributed to the fission of younger sons.
Patrilineal primogeniture prevailed among the Xhosa ("each eldest son, upon the death of his father, inherits all the property appertaining to his mother's house"THE TRANSKEIAN TERRITORIES OF SOUTH AFRICA: NOTES ON NATIVE LAW AND CUSTOMS Afr Aff (Lond) (1925) XXIV (XCV): 213-218 http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/XXIV/XCV/213.full.pdf), the Pondo, the Tswana,TSWANA http://dice.missouri.edu/docs/niger-congo/Tswana.pdf the Ndebele, the Swazi, the Zulus, the Sotho, the Tsonga, the Venda and most other southern Bantu peoples; among them in general the first son was conceived of as superior to his siblings.Winifred Hoernlé, "Social Organisation" in I. Schapera (ed.), The Bantu-speaking Tribes of South Africa (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1937), p. 71.N.J. van Warmelo, Kinship Terminology of the SOuth African Bantu (Pretoria Department of Native Affairs, Union of South Africa, 1931), p. 11.
The Zulus also practiced patrilineal primogeniture, allowing only minimal grants of land to younger sons.
Customs of male primogeniture also prevailed among the Sotho.BASELINE RESEARCH ON CULTURAL PRACTICES RELATED TO LAND TENURE SECURITY AND INHERITANCE RIGHTS FOR LESOTHO WIDOWS AND ORPHANS AND VULNERABLE CHILDREN FUNDED BY: CIDA VOLUNTARY SECTOR FUND PREPARED BY: HABITAT FOR HUMANITY LESOTHO AND FEDERATION OF WOMEN LAWYERS (FIDA-LESOTHO) JUNE 2008
Precedence within clans and tribes based on patrilineal primogeniture was also common among the Khoi and the Damara.
West Africa
The Hausa did not have the conical clan as their system of social organization (in Africa, this system predominated mostly among southern African peoples), but had a complex system of hereditary social stratification as well.
The British thought that the Hausa Law of Primogeniture was bad because it encouraged usury and mortgage.
East Africa
A system of ranking and patrilineal primogeniture similar to that of many southern African peoples seems to have traditionally prevailed among the Nilotic peoples of South Sudan with regards to land (the eldest son of the first wife was the heir of his father's land, residential and arable, and the land of each house was inherited by the heir of that house, i.e., the eldest son of the head wife in the house);PROPERTY AND VALUE—INTERPLAY AMONG THE NILOTES OF THE SOUTHERN SUDAN By FRANCIS M. DENG http://sjsudan.org/details.php?id=59&lang=en&target=r&title=PROPERTY%20AND%20VALUE%97INTERPLAY%20AMONG%20THE%20NILOTES%20OF%20THE%20SOUTHERN%20%20SUDAN thus, a similar lineage system prevailed among some Nilotic peoples like the Lugbara or the Dinka.
Central Africa
Sahlins considered the conical clan typical of some central African Bantu lineage organizations. Éric de Dampierre found this type of social organization to be prevalent among the Azande.
Patrilineal primogeniture also prevailed among the Songye and the Buduma, according to the Ethnographic Atlas.
Austronesia
General
In traditional Austronesian societies (roughly those of modern-day Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, East Timor, Brunei, Madagascar and Oceania), seniority of birth and of descent generally determined rank, often leading to the fission of those lowest in rank (younger sons from younger branches),Chapter 2. Hierarchy, Founder Ideology and Austronesian Expansion1 Peter Bellwood https://epress.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ch0235.pdfReconstructing Ancestral Oceanic Society PER HAGE https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/17127/AP-v38n2-200-228.pdf?sequence=1"LITTLE KINGDOMS": ADATAND INEQUALITY IN THE KEI ISLANDS, EASTERN INDONESIA by Todd Ryan Hooe B.A., St. Mary's College of Maryland, 1990 https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/11382/1/HooeT_Dissertation_ETD_3-20-12.pdfA Formal Analysis of Substantive Law: Kapauku Papuan Laws of Inheritance Leopold Pospisil Yale University http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1965.67.6.02a001000/pdfThe Megalithic Tradition of West Sumba https://www.sfu.ca/archaeology-old/dept/fac_bio/hayden/reports/sumba.pdfTORAJAN FEASTING IN SOUTH SULAWESI 2000 PRELIMINARY REPORT * By Brian Hayden Archaeology Department Simon Fraser University https://www.sfu.ca/archaeology-old/dept/fac_bio/hayden/reports/toraja.pdfWhere Have the "Entrepreneurs" Gone? A Historical Comment on Adat in Central Flores Sugishima Takashi* https://www.asafas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dl/publications/no_0601/06_sugishima.pdfThe Poetic Power of Place comparative perspectives on austronesian ideas of locality http://pure.au.dk/portal/files/36241420/Poetics_of_Place_book_1998_.pdf4. The Discourse and Practice of Precedence James J. Fox https://epress.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ch0471.pdfChapter 9. Precedence Among the Domains of the Three Hearth Stones: Contestation of an order of precedence in the Ko'a ceremonial cycle (Palu'é Island, Eastern Indonesia) Michael P. Vischer https://epress.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ch0921.pdf a fact often cited by anthropologists as the cause of Austronesian expansion throughout Southeast Asia, Oceania and even the Indian Ocean, in places such as Madagascar and Mauritius. Other terms have also been used to describe this type of social organization, such as "status lineage" (Goldman)VARIATIONS IN POLYNESIAN SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 1 By IRVING GOLDMAN http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document/Volume_66_1957/Volume_66,_No._4/Variations_in_Polynesian_social_organization,_by_Irving_Goldman,_p_374-390/p1 "apical demotion" (Fox) or "ramage" (Firth).FIRTH, RAYMOND W. We, the Tikopia. Sahlins also created the concept of the "Big Man", a type of man in Melanesian societies who becomes a leader not due to his fraternal birth order as in Polynesian societies, but to his ability and charisma. Melanesian societies could either be dominated by the conical clan as Polynesian societies or by an egalitarian system of social organization as most Papuan societies (though even some Papuan societies were characterized by a predominance of patrilineal primogeniture, like for example the society of Goodenough Island). In Micronesia, the system was matrilineal and brothers succeeded each other in order of seniority; when the line of brothers was extinguished, the eldest son of the eldest sister succeeded, and so on in each successive generation.
Polynesia
New Guinea
Richard F. Salisbury described a sort of conical-like clan structure similar to the Polynesian one, although of a much less developed nature, in New Guinea.
Asia
China
The ramage or conical prevailed in early China, during the Longshan culture period and the period of the Three Dynasties (Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties).
During the time of the Zhou dynasty, patrilineal primogeniture, also called the tsung-fa system, was also the norm.
The tsung-fa system was also called "extensive stratified patrilineage".Tao, Hsi-Sheng. Marriage and Family, Shanghai. 1934
Strong traits of the tsung-fa system of patrilineal primogeniture survived in the lineage organizations of north China until the communist era.
This type of unlineal descent-group later became the model of the Korean family through the influence of Neo-Confucianism, as Zhu Xi and others advocated its re-establishment in China.
South Asia
In South Asia, the Aryans were also organized in a system of ranked patrilines where senior patrilines were superior to junior patrilines.The Vedic Age, 1500-500 B.C. Pamela Price http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS2172/h10/undervisningsmateriale/his2172%20til%20forelesning.pdf
The Paite had a similar system, strongly based on primogeniture and patrilineality and reinforced by a characteristic system of name-giving:
A conical clan system also prevailed among the Nagas. In the beginning it vas based on a principle of male ultimogeniture, being very similar to Kachin gumsa; however, when all available land had been divided between communities in a given neighbourhood, male primogeniture became the dominant principle.
Inner Asia
Owen Lattimore wrote that the Mongols have a clan structure comprising ruling and subordinate clans, and that the elite clans are themselves internally divided into junior and elder lineages. Karl Kaser attributes the inexistence of different terms to designate an elder and a younger brother in European languages to the high prevalence of ultimogeniture among the European peasantry. Although male primogeniture came to be almost universal in the European aristocracy, peasants practiced both male primogeniture and ultimogeniture, and thus there was no overall preeminence of elder over younger brothers or vice versa. He says that among peoples of Inner Asian origin, by contrast, seniority between sons was emphasized, and thus there were separate terms to designate elder and younger brothers in their languages. Indeed, the Mongol kinship, for example, is according to Lévi-Strauss one of a type where sons must be carefully distinguished according to seniority, because of the complexity of the right of inheritance, which contemplates not only seniority of birth but also of patriline.Lévi-Strauss, C. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. The anthropologist Herbert Harold Vreeland, who visited three Mongol communities in 1920, published a highly detailed book with the results of his field study, "Mongol community and kinship structure", now publicly available. In this book he explained the ranking system prevalent in traditional Mongol communities.
A strict fraternal hierarchy prevailed among Mongols, and slave (bogol) is equated with the category of a younger brother in The Secret History. In another passage Ogodei, though being the Great Khan, still asks for the permission of his elder brother Chagatai to invade Cathay, and Tolui sacrifices himself for his elder brother Ogodei. In the Yuan shi it is told that Nayan, weeping and beating his head to the floor, refused to accept a princely title because he had an elder brother, Qurumchi, whom he thought ought to inherit it in spite of his lower ability; in the end Qurumchi inherited the title, but he consulted with Nayan in all affairs. Mongol literature is full of events of this kind. Models of opposition between the egalitarianism of Arab societies and the hierarchical tribalism of Turco-Mongol peoples have been developed by many anthropologists, such as Cuisenier, Beck,Beck, L. 1986. The Qashqa'i of Iran. New Haven: Yale University Press. Barfield, and Lindholm.Kinship Structure and Political Authority: the Middle East and central Asia
Some studies have found that Arab practices of endogamous marriage also benefitted elder sons and their lines of descent over younger sons and their lines of descent, thus contradicting the idea that in Arab societies, unlike in those of Inner Asia, fraternal birth order played no role at all in family relationships.