Family law refers to the regulation of personal and property relations of families or family members. However, in the sense of the integration of morality, religion, law, custom and art, family law, as a norm of family autonomy, has the same origin as law.

Both of them originated from primitive social habits and norms, and it was not until the emergence of "everyone", that is, the country, that they began to gradually separate and develop separately. In the process of the development of human society, the form of family has experienced a process of continuous evolution. Strictly speaking, the family in the present sense is very different from the family before the founding of New China, or it is more accurate to call the family in history. Undeniably, there were small families in ancient China, but they were attached to the clan or family.

Family law refers to the regulation of personal and property relations of families or family members. Family law in the modern legal sense is not law. However, in the sense of the integration of morality, religion, law, custom and art, family law, as a norm of family autonomy, has the same origin as law. Both of them originated from primitive social habits and norms, and it was not until the emergence of "everyone", that is, the country, that they began to gradually separate and develop separately.

In the process of the development of human society, the form of family has experienced a process of continuous evolution. Strictly speaking, the family in the present sense is very different from the family before the founding of New China, or it is more accurate to call the family in history. Undeniably, there were small families in ancient China, but they were attached to the clan or family.

Therefore, when discussing the family law before modern times, this paper refers to clan law or family law; When discussing the family law of the present family, it refers to the internal norms of individual families in the present society. "The norms of human society can be traced back to the customary norms of primitive society. Therefore, it is necessary for this paper to start with the customary norms of primitive society. There is a legal proverb in the west that says: "Where there is a society, there is a law, and where there is a law, there is a society. "

This sentence is true in reality. The country in which human beings live is the highest organizational form of society after entering the political society. "But this is just a general statement. It only describes the social state after the law came into being. " Therefore, it is more accurate to understand this proverb as "where there is society, there are norms, and where there are norms, there is society". Law itself, like morality, customs, religion and art, is a norm at first, so the study of law should start from the normative level.

"Social norms have emerged with the emergence of human society and developed with the development of human society. It is ubiquitous in any society. " Therefore, the study of norms should adopt a historical approach. The whole primitive society can be roughly divided into two periods: primitive group and clan commune, and the latter can be divided into matriarchal clan commune and paternal clan commune. The primitive social custom norm, or "the first social norm", is the consanguineous norm formed by the coexistence and life of primitive residents in a long historical period.

The evolution of human population has gone through more than 6.5438+million years, and the simple norms of primitive people before the clan commune cannot be tested, so the customary norms of primitive society we are talking about mainly refer to the customary norms during the clan commune period. As the most primitive blood group in human society, clan is not only the primitive form of clan and family, but also the primitive form of country. Therefore, as a primitive social customary norm to adjust the internal relations of clans, it has become a common historical source of family law and law.