The two moieties make alternate appearances.
In reaction [83], R and R′ represent the hydrocarbon moieties (Ch3(CH2)n−) of two fatty acid molecules.
The first holds good, for example, for the Australians, for whom natural things are associated with cultural groups (moieties, sections, subsections, phratries, clans, or the association of persons from the same sex).
Among the Wiradjuri, an Aboriginal people who traditionally lived in New South Wales Australiaa), totem clans are divided among two subgroups and corresponding matrilineal moieties.
In Inca society every town and every city was divided physically and socially into two halves or moieties, hanan (upper) and hurin (lower).
In some tribes the clans number 40 or more, as among the Mundurukú; they are generally organized into two groups so that the whole tribe comprises two exogamous moieties.
Instead of using clans, some Pueblos grouped lineages directly into two units called moieties.
Caillois has described at length the social mechanism of nonliterate societies, in which the group is divided into two complementary subgroups (moieties), and has interpreted the tabus and the necessary interrelationship of the moieties as expressions of sacredness.
