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Patrilocality refers to when a newlywed couple lives close to or near the husband's family. The practice has been found in around 70 percent of the world's modern human cultures that have been described ethnographically.
Impact of patrilocality on contrasting patterns of paternal and maternal heritage in Central-West Africa
Masinda Nguidi, Verónica Gomes, Carlos Vullo, Pedro Rodrigues, Martina Rotondo, Micaela Longaray, Laura Catelli, Beatriz Martínez, Afonso Campos, Elizeu Carvalho, Victoria O. Orovboni, Samuel O. Keshinro, Filipa Simão & Leonor Gusmão Scientific Reports volume 14, Article number: 15653 (2024) Cite this article
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Abstract Despite their ancient past and high diversity, African populations are the least represented in human population genetic studies. In this study, uniparental markers (mtDNA and Y chromosome) were used to investigate the impact of sociocultural factors on the genetic diversity and inter-ethnolinguistic gene flow in the three major Nigerian groups: Hausa (n = 89), Yoruba (n = 135) and Igbo (n = 134). The results show a distinct history from the maternal and paternal perspectives. The three Nigerian groups present a similar substrate for mtDNA, but not for the Y chromosome. The two Niger–Congo groups, Yoruba and Igbo, are paternally genetically correlated with populations from the same ethnolinguistic affiliation. Meanwhile, the Hausa is paternally closer to other Afro-Asiatic populations and presented a high diversity of lineages from across Africa. When expanding the analyses to other African populations, it is observed that language did not act as a major barrier to female-mediated gene flow and that the differentiation of paternal lineages is better correlated with linguistic than geographic distances. The results obtained demonstrate the impact of patrilocality, a common and well-established practice in populations from Central-West Africa, in the preservation of the patrilineage gene pool and in the affirmation of identity between groups.
The Hausa showed the highest diversity of Y-Chr haplogroups, with the most frequent lineage R-V88 not being present in the Yoruba and Igbo samples.
The main haplogroups contributing to the separation of Hausa from Yoruba and Igbo are (1) A-M13 and R-V88, only present in Hausa; and (2) E-M2 sub-lineages [E-M2* (xM191) and E-M191] that are prevalent in Yoruba and Igbo and less frequent in Hausa (Fig. 2). The haplogroup A-M13 has the highest frequency in Nilo-Saharan populations from East Africa21,53, but was detected in other Chadic populations with frequencies similar to Hausa48. The haplogroup R-V88, which is the most frequent in Hausa, has been associated to the dispersion of the Chadic languages and described at high frequencies in the region of Chad, north Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger59,60. The haplogroups E-M191 and E-M2* (xM191) are contributing to separate the West populations from the remaining, with Yoruba and Igbo having more than 90% frequency of these haplogroups. These are the most frequent lineages in sub-Saharan Africa, being absent or underrepresented in most populations from the North and East regions, outside the Niger-Congo family. Haplogroup B-M150* (xM109) also contributed to the separation of the three groups. Although present with low frequency, this haplogroup is more frequent in the Hausa than in the other two groups. It was not found in other Chadic groups, being frequent in Nilo-Saharan populations from East Africa21,53.
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Cultural practice of kinship locality based on uniparental lineage will of course affect population genetics with typically one parental lineage being local while another is flow from the outside, although there are exceptions.
What makes Africa unique is that there still exists a substantial proportion of matrilineal cultures as well.
^ Note that despite whatever parental lineage is used the locality of residence can be based on factors other than direct parentage such as ambilocal (either parent), avunculocal (maternal uncle), or neolocal (new) residence.
Another thing to keep in mind is that cultures change over time and there is a significant trend of matrilineal cultures switching to patrilineal ones. One can see evidence of this in West and Central Africa where the oral traditions admit that maternal lineage was once followed in the past but was eventually replaced by paternal lineage but in practice most of these cultures are bilateral (acknowledging kinship from both parents). Interestingly, the indigenous religious traditions preserve the matrilineal/matricentric elements like the chief deity being the queen mother goddess, female oracles/shamans and female elders acting as family priestesses like in Igbo and Yoruba peoples despite being patrilineal.
Kinship in Africa Kinship and Descent Kinship is often based on relationships of descent in which kin groups define themselves as descendants of shared ancestors. In one type of descent group—the lineage—all members know, or believe they know, their exact relationships to one another. The clan, another type of group, is larger than a lineage. Members recognize that they are all part of the group but do not know how they are related to each other. They may, for example, believe that they share a common ancestor but be unable to trace all the links from their own lineages to that ancestor. Anthropologists who study kinship have identified four major types of descent: patrilineal, matrilineal, double, and bilateral. Africa includes all of them.
There have been countless studies done trying to explain the causes of the kinship shift from matrilineal to patrilineal. One major explanation is that patrilineage is associated with pastoral cultures while matrilineage is associated with horticultures and the former economic mode tends to dominate the latter.
However this explanation does not take into account that there are matrilineal pastoral cultures that exist and many more that once existed in the past while at the same time there are patrilineal agricultural cultures.
I can't find it at the moment, but there was an excellent counter-essay Max Dashu wrote in response to an essay about this theory that patrilineage/patriarchy is identified with pastoral nomadism.
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