6. Literature on Inheritance: A Summary of What Can Be Learnt

Abstract

The routines and progressions that have shaped the inheritance in human societies received extensive scholarly consideration. Studies in this field have explored and investigated the impact of legal and traditional rules of property transmission on the structures of the society and the models of political power. This review is not aimed as an exhaustive evaluation of the extant literature. Rather, it focuses on illustrating the diversity of the proposed explanations and draws some conclusions on what can be learnt.