the.com/matrilineal
Your family tree, traced through the mothers — because someone always knew who the mother was.
means Describing descent, inheritance, or kinship reckoned through the female line rather than the male.
from From Latin mater (mother) plus linea (line) — literally the mother-line, coined in the early 1900s by anthropologists mapping kinship.
Not matriarchyTracing through mothers, not ruling by them.
IroquoisClan membership passed strictly through the mother.
Practical logicMaternity was always certain, paternity historically less so.