In his adaptation to a somewhat unfavorable environment the Australian native has to rely on accumulated detailed knowledge . . . of a certain piece of country. A boy begins to acquire this knowledge about the country of his own horde from a very early age. If he left his own country, say at marriage, this knowledge would be lost and he would have to start over again to learn all that he would require to know about the country to which he moved. Everywhere it is the men who not only control their own activities of hunting or fishing but also control and direct the women’s activities of collecting vegetable food. It must be remembered that the territory of a horde is normally more than one hundred square miles in area and that one of the characteristics of Australia is the discontinuous distribution of plants and animals, so that a given species may be found in abundance in a limited area, and then no more specimens may be found over a wide radius until another local patch is reached. The local knowledge possessed by the men is therefore of great importance, and the patrilineal descent of the horde is of very real advantage to the aborigines in their adaptation.¹

¹Radcliffe-Brown, A.R.n/an/an/an/a, "The Social Organization of Australian Tribes," , 1: 439.