Inheritance of property cannot occur unless the assets are regarded as belonging to individuals rather than to groups and unless the assets are of such permanence that they continue to exist and be useful beyond the death of the owner spouse. Among food gatherers and primitive hunters, it was not uncommon for personal items such as weapons or bowls to be destroyed after the owner's death to protect the survivors from the harassment of his spirit. Among the Papua of New Guinea and the Damara (Bergdama) of Namibia, the dead man's hut was abandoned or burned to banish the magic of the disease from which the owner had died. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Among the Herero of southwestern Africa, dead man's goats were slaughtered and eaten; this custom seems to be connected to the fear that they would be influenced by his magic and also to the belief that the spirits of the slaughtered goats followed the deceased owner into the spirit realm, where he would need them. The belief in providing for the needs of the dead appears to have been the root of the widespread custom of burying with the body or burning provisions, utensils, treasures, slaves or wives. Tombs have provided abundant evidence of such practices in Stone Age and Bronze Age cultures, as well as in the high civilizations of ancient Egypt and pre-Columbian Mexico. Another way to dispose of a dead person's effects was to distribute them among remote relatives and friends, as was the case with American Indian tribes such as the Delawares and Iroquois; a distribution of this type, in the absence of inheritance rules, could easily lead to quarrels and violence, as often happened among the Comanche Indians. The opinion of some Marxist writers that common ownership of all property, or at least of land, was once universal among humanity can be neither proved nor disproved. Group ownership was widespread but not universal among primitive and archaic farmers. Indeed, it 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 zadruga, that is, large groups of descendants of a common ancestor, continued until the 20th century. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get Custom EssayIn Western Europe, especially in the Alpine regions of Switzerland and Austria, it is still possible to find common ownership of pastures and woodlands, which developed from the earlier system of common ownership of village land. While in the past the colonization of new lands tended to be carried out by groups – for example, the German settlement in the regions east of the Elbe between the 10th and 13th centuries – Europeans who settled in North America, Australia, South Africa and other parts of the world during 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, led to new forms of communal land ownership: the kolkhozes of the former Soviet Union, the communes of the People's Republic of China, and the kibbutzim of Israel. Where land is owned jointly, the death of a member of the group does not result in an inheritance but rather in a reorganization of the duties and rights of participation in the produce of the land or rights of temporary use of the land itself.