This paper studies the influence of marine ecology on social institutions of inheritance and descent. In a sample of 79 small-scale horticultural fishing communities in the Solomon Islands, and in samples of 186 to 1,267 societies across the world, we find that coral reef density systematically...

Reef density predicts the prevalence of matriliny in a sample of 186 societies across the world and in a sample of 59 small-scale horticultural fishing communities in the Solomon Islands. We show that this result holds even controlling for common descent by relying on variation within...