ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches the basic mechanics of exchange and constraint as they operate in human kinship systems. There is constraint in all systems, even our own, represented by the negative taboo on incestuous mating. The social system of a group of nonhuman primates is the breeding system; this is what it is about, and this was the case with our prehuman primate ancestors. It was then the evolution from prehuman breeding systems to human kinship systems that was the crucial turning point in our hominization. It follows that many general features of our species-characteristic behavior, which we now apply in numerous cultural subsystems, had their origin in the processes that led to this transition. In human society exogamy is rarely purely local, and interband alliances do not depend on this. As long as some marriages are made between different groups then alliances will hold.
