Inheritance of property can only take place if property is considered to belong to individuals rather than groups and unless the property is of such permanence that they continue to exist and be useful beyond the death of the owner. Among primitive food gatherers and hunters, it was not uncommon for personal effects such as weapons or bowls to be destroyed after their owner's death in order to protect survivors from the assaults of their spirit. Among the Papuans of New Guinea and the Damara (Bergdama) of Namibia, the dead man's hut was abandoned or burned in order to banish the magic of illness whose owner was dead. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Among the Herero of southwest Africa, dead man's goats were slaughtered and eaten; this custom seems to have been linked to the fear of being affected by his magic and also to the belief that the spirits of slaughtered goats would follow the dead owner into the spirit realm, where he would need them. The belief in providing for the needs of the dead seems to have been at the origin of the widespread custom of burying with the body or burning victuals, utensils, treasures, slaves or wives. Tombs have provided ample evidence of such practices in Stone Age and Bronze Age cultures as well as the high civilizations of ancient Egypt and pre-Columbian Mexico. Another way of disposing of a dead person's effects was to distribute them to distant relatives and friends, as in the case of Native American tribes such as the Delaware and Iroquois; Such distribution, in the absence of inheritance rules, could easily lead to quarrels and violence, as frequently occurred among the Comanche Indians. The view of some Marxist writers that common ownership of all property, or at least of land, was once universal among humanity can neither be proven nor disproven. Collective ownership is widespread but by no means universal among primitive and archaic farmers. It indeed persisted into modern times in India and parts of Africa and Asia, and played a considerable role in the development of the Teutonic and Slavic peoples of Europe. In Serbia, land ownership by zadrogas, large groups of descendants of a common ancestor, continued into the 20th century. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized document from our expert writers now. Get Custom EssayIn Western Europe, common ownership of pastures and woods, originating from the old system of common ownership of village land, still exists, particularly in the Alpine regions of Switzerland and Austria. While previously the colonization of new lands tended to be carried out by groups – for example, the German colonization of areas east of the Elbe between the 10th and 13th centuries – Europeans who settled America North, Australia, South Africa and South Africa. other parts of the world, in the 18th and 19th centuries, viewed individual ownership of land as most conducive to efficient use. In the 20th century, socialist ideas, combined with large-scale mechanization, resulted in new forms of common land ownership: the collective farms of the former Soviet Union, the communes of the People's Republic of China, and the kibbutzim of Israel. Wherever land is held in common, the death of a member of the group results not in inheritance but rather in a reorganization of duties..