The world’s earliest seafarers who reached remote Pacific islands nearly 3,000 years ago were a matrilocal society, with communities organized around the female lineage, researchers said, citing studies of ancient DNA.
The research, based on genetic sequencing of 164 people who lived 2,800 to 300 years ago, suggested that some of the earliest inhabitants of islands in Oceania had population structures in which women almost always remained in their communities after marriage, while men left their mother’s community to live with that of their wife.
This pattern is strikingly different from that of patrilocal societies, which appeared to be the norm in