Anthropologist who developed new insights into the origins of human societies
The anthropologist Sir Jack Goody, who has died aged 95, combined thorough fieldwork with an original intellect that led him to establish links between very different civilisations, and gave him a deep understanding of the processes of change. One of his most remarkable pieces of work was a comparison between the societies of ancient Greece and modern Ghana.
He was particularly interested in the transmission between the generations of both property and knowledge, in his work in northern Ghana. His comparisons of inheritance systems led him to the conclusion that, in medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic Church had resisted marriages between relatives for fear of losing bequests of property.
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