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A widespread belief suggests that in some earlier eras of human history, women enjoyed equal status to men, or even ruled, leading to more harmonious and less violent societies. Then, male-dominated systems arose, bringing ages of strife and subjugation.

The Roots of the Gender System Discussion

This idea of female-led societies and patriarchy as diametrically opposed—following a sudden transition between them—was seeded in the 1800s via Marxist thought, entering anthropological studies despite limited evidence. Thereafter, it spread into popular consciousness.

Anthropologists, however, tended to be more sceptical. They documented significant variation in gender relations across cultures, including modern and past ones, and many theorized that such diversity was the standard in ancient times as well. Proving this proved challenging, partly because identifying biological sex—not to mention gender—frequently proved hard in ancient remains. But about two decades back, that shifted.

A Revolution in Ancient DNA

This so-called ancient DNA revolution—the ability to extract DNA from old remains and study it—enabled that abruptly it became possible to identify the sex of long-dead people and to examine their kinship ties. The chemical makeup of their skeletal remains—particularly, the ratio of elemental variants present there—revealed whether they had lived in different locations and experienced dietary changes. The evidence coming to light due to these advanced methods indicates that variety in gender relations was very much the rule in ancient eras, and that there was not a clear turning point when one system yielded to its mirror image.

Hypotheses on the Emergence of Patriarchal Systems

The Marxist theory, actually attributed to Marx’s collaborator, proposed that early societies were equal until agriculture spread from the Middle East approximately ten millennia back. Accompanying the more sedentary lifestyle and accumulation of wealth that agriculture introduced arose the need to protect that wealth and to set laws for its inheritance. When communities expanded, men monopolised the elites that developed to manage these affairs, in part because they were more skilled at warfare, and assets gravitated to the male line. Men were also more likely to remain in place, with their wives moving to live with them. Women’s subordination was often a consequence of these shifts.

Another theory, put forward by researcher Marija Gimbutas in the 1960s, held that woman-centred societies prevailed for longer in Europe—up to five millennia back—after which they were toppled by arriving, patriarchal migrants from the plains.

Evidence of Matrilineal Societies

Matrilinearity (where wealth is inherited through the female line) and female-resident patterns (where women remain in one place) often go together, and each are associated with greater female status and authority. In 2017, U.S. geneticists discovered that for over 300 years around the 900s AD, an elite mother-line group lived in Chaco Canyon, in modern-day New Mexico. Then, this June, Asian researchers reported a female-line farming community that thrived for nearly as long in eastern China, over 3,000 years earlier. Such discoveries join others, implying that female-descended societies have been present on every populated landmasses, at least from the advent of agriculture on.

Power and Agency in Ancient Societies

However, though they enjoy greater status, females in mother-line societies may not hold decision-making power. This typically stays the preserve of men—specifically of maternal uncles instead of their husbands. And because old genetic material and chemical traces can’t tell you much about women’s autonomy, gender power relations in ancient times remain a subject of discussion. Indeed, this line of work has prompted scholars to consider what they mean by power. If the wife of a king influenced his entourage through support and informal networks, and his decisions by counselling, did she hold less influence than him?

Experts have identified several examples of pairs sharing power in the bronze age—the era following those migrants arrived in the continent—and subsequent historical records confirm to high-status women influencing decisions in similar manners, continents apart. Maybe they did so in earlier times. Women exerting soft power in male-dominated societies could have existed before Homo sapiens. In his recent publication about sex and gender, Different, primatologist a noted scientist recounted how an dominant female chimp, a named individual, anointed a replacement to the top male—who outranked her—with a gesture.

Factors Shaping Gender Relations

Lately something else has become clear. While the theorist was likely broadly correct in associating property with patrilinearity, additional elements shaped sex roles, too—including how a community sustains itself. In February, Chinese and British scientists reported that historically female-line villages in a highland region have grown more gender-neutral over the past several decades, as they moved from an agricultural economy to a trade-focused one. Conflict additionally plays its part. Although female-resident and male-resident societies are equally warlike, notes anthropologist Carol Ember, internal strife—as opposed to battles against an external enemy—pushes societies towards patrilocality, because warring clans choose to keep their sons nearby.

Women as Hunters and Leaders

At the same time, evidence is mounting that women fought, pursued game and acted as shamans in the distant past. No role or position has been closed to them in all times and places. And even if female decision-makers may have been uncommon, they haven’t been nonexistent. Recent ancient DNA findings from an Irish university show that there were at least pockets of female-line descent throughout the British Isles, when ancient groups dominated the island in the iron age. Alongside archaeological evidence for women fighters and Roman accounts of women leaders, it appears as if ancient European women could wield hard as well as indirect authority.

Modern Female-Line Societies

Matrilineal societies still exist today—a Chinese group are an example, as are the Hopi of the southwestern U.S., descendants of those ancient lineages. Their numbers are declining, as national governments flex their male-dominant muscles, but they act as testaments that some extinct societies leaned more towards gender equality than many of our modern ones, and that all societies have the potential to evolve.