Chastity is an unknown virtue among these natives." ~ Bronislaw Malinowski, 1922
Named for Denis de Trobriand, first lieutenant in France's 1793 D'Entrecasteaux South Sea Expedition, the Trobriands were made famous by Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who studied them during World War I and wrote a classic monograph about the precocious sexuality of the islanders, The Sexual Life of Savages. He found it to be one of the few truly matrilineal societies, tracing ancestors only through the mother's side of the family, meaning that a man's children do not belong to his lineage, but his wife's. It sounds like a Christian missionary's nightmare, but for me a dream come true, and the perfect place to spend a birthday... listen to the report:
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