in early civilizations, before writing, oral familya family is group of people consisting of parents and children living together in a household; family members can also live away from parents or in a different household histories and genealogies were dependent upon memorythe power or process of remembering what has been learned; something remembered, kept in the mind for later recall; something remembered from the past; a recollection, usually a person in a community was assigned this task; sometimes this person used knot arrangements or beads to enhance the oral genealogical transmissions – important events were sometimes included in the long oral recitations of a family’s or clan’s genealogythe science of studying family history, tracing family origins, finding lines of descent
