One clear example of this from Sakaltutan has already been given, and to my knowledge at least three patrilineal groups had died out or left the village within recent memory. Morrison (1938, Chap. II) reports that about nine per cent of the whole village territory of Alishar was abandoned fields. He also says, it is true, that some ninety per cent of this abandoned land was still claimed, but by I932, the end of free land was already in sight; and a claim to abandoned land is easily made but much more difficult to establish unless one is able to work it. Neighbours, he tells us, were liable to filch unworked land.
So long then as the population is kept stable by a high death rate, this type of domestic cycle, with its implications of a high degree of social mobility up and down over the generations, can revolve indefinitely.
In the new situation, sons are still as much desired as ever. They are still a source of prestige, religious as well as secular; they form an armed guard for the defence of the household, and they enable father to take his ease. Even in the past sons who could not be absorbed as extra labour on the household lands could increase household income as labourers, servants, shepherds or migrants. But when household land does not expand in proportion to the male labour force, fission leaves each son with less land than he is capable of working. One or two may succeed in acquiring extra by inheritance through women, by