Sec.7.1 Culture and society. Wlkon have language, softly spoken and hissing in sound. As mentioned above, it was thought by early morphologists to be a mere system of signal-cries (albeit elaborate) rather than a true language, but this was long ago disproved. Wlkon have no trouble learning our kind of language too, even as adults.

Their material culture remains pre-metalurgic, though they were quick to appreciate the utility of metal implements, mainly knives and hatchets, which they treat well and handle efficiently; and cooking vessels, which ditto. Both of these goods are highly valued.

They wear no clothing apart from decorative items (ribbons around the neck or tied in the males’ manes; bracelets; necklaces fashioned with great labor from shells, hard pods, and stones). With contact, and the introduction of metal objects, both vulcid and rupellid wlkon early developed a taste for simple ring body decorations, now tokens (depending on custom) either of married status or just sexual maturity. These are, mostly among females, earrings; and for males, the nipples are pierced. Almost immediately there arose variation in detail depending on clan, e.g. rings in both nipples, in only the left, or the right; rings in both ears, and so on. These are now virtually badges of clan membership.

Wlko have primitive ceramics, little more than bowls of no great size and flat dishes, for food preparation and storage. The females plait well-made slings and carriers for the bowls out of fibrous water-plants similar to our reeds and sedges. They plait similar implements, of more porous weave, for trapping fish and crustaceans.

The males and females participate almost equally in the capture of waterlife. Males capture most game, though it seems to be a standing cultural joke that the wlkwim are actually better at it. Both sexes gather plants, roots, nuts, and fruit, not, it appeared to me, because of a sense of shared responsibility but because of the enjoyment of one another’s company. Accordingly, nursing mothers are often included in such parties even though they contribute little to the common effort.

Sec.7.2 The reproductive and basic social unit is the family group. These groups are federated into clans. These clans are known by numbers, that is, when in a morphology report like this one speaks of Clan 24 or the like, that is actually the wlko terminology, not the morphologist’s. Why the clan numbers are all even has yet to be explained. The Clan/Family relationships are complex, but the wlko seem to have no trouble keeping track of their elaborately interwoven kinship and all that it entails for matters of marriage and taboo. The system, and the large Wlko vocabulary for it, is discussed at length in Jerome, with corrections in Hashimoto.

The essence of it is that, first, a family group qua group "belongs" to the wives’ clan, but the offspring "belong" to the clan of the parent of opposite sex. That is, male offspring belong to their mothers’ clan; female offspring to their fathers’ (pre-marriage) clan. Since marriage is strictly exogamous, degree of relatedness in the genetic sense plays no role in mate selection or sexual and reproductive taboos. Male twins’ first cousins on their fathers’ side, or even half-sisters sired by their father(s) from a wlkwy of a different clan from their own mother, are eligible spouses; fairly remote cousins on their mothers’ side are incestuously taboo. And for mating purposes, the exogamy rules apply to both the male parents’ own (native-born) clan and the mothers’ clan.

The great majority of stable family groups consist of: two male co-mates, who are most often twin brothers, and one or two female co-mates (also most often twins). A sizable minority, perhaps a sixth of the total, have only one female co-mate. Perhaps two percent of family groups consist of a single male and female, though this kind of family group is inherently unsustainable and generally is a temporary state of affairs (more on this subject under "reproduction", below). Several morphologists who have studied the wlko have reported, either by hearsay or observation, the occasional instance of a stable three- or four-member group consisting of one male wlko, a wlkwy (or two), and a male monux. This author has observed one such family unit, and enters a report, Appendix B, below. This is the only type of mixed species stable family unit on record–among the wlko or anywhere else.

Sec.7.3 Kits are born in pairs, commonly identical twins. In the event of kits of different sexes, or the death of a male twin, since a single male is literally unmarriageable, efforts are made either to adopt a male of roughly the same age as the male, prior to puberty, or conversely give over one’s male for adoption by a family group with a single male kit or, failing that, two male kits, making up a threesome polyandry. Curiously, in these adoptive situations, the taboo barriers by common agreement seem often to be lowered. The subject needs more study. In any case, the later the adoption is, the less likely it is for such adoptive pairs to develop fully co-mate bonds of affection and duty. (In adoptive situations it is unusual, but not rare absolutely, for kits of either sex to be raised in a group of three–two twins and an outsider. This is of course more common in males than females, since a single female is marriageable, a single male, as mentioned, usually is not. Isserstädt reports one known instance of a family group consisting of three males and three females.)

Sec.7.5 Young are typically born three to five years apart, and sexual maturity and independence is reached at about nine or ten years (males) and eleven or twelve (females). Once they are "opened", male juvenile twins become sexually active, with one another, more or less at puberty. Offspring as old as 18 or even 20 have been recorded as still residing in the family group with their parents, though marriage at 15 or 16 is the norm.