A story without stereotypes: what DNA tells us about ancient women

For more than 150 years, archaeologists believed that in prehistoric societies, women did not hold leadership positions, but men made key decisions. However, a study published in the journal Live Science has shown that the development of methods for analyzing ancient DNA has forced scientists to take a fresh look at previous discoveries. It turned out that many well-established ideas were based not so much on facts as on the interpretations of researchers of their time. About how genetics is changing the perception of the role of women in ancient times — in the material "Izvestia".

When the past turned out to be different from what it was imagined.

For decades, archaeologists have interpreted the findings based on the idea that power in ancient societies belonged exclusively to men. One example was a 4,000-year-old tomb near Stonehenge, discovered back in 1801. The ornate burial site was considered male for more than 200 years, until ancient DNA analysis revealed that the remains belonged to a woman— a skilled jeweler.

Such mistakes were not isolated. So, in 1972, British archaeologist David Clarke called the settlements "centers of exchange of goods, livestock and women," actually considering women as an object of exchange. And in 1986, Peter Hinton argued that the rich funeral gifts in women's graves do not indicate the high status of the woman herself. In his opinion, the jewelry only demonstrated her husband's wealth, since matriarchal societies, as he believed, had never existed.

However, since the 1970s, archaeologists in Germany have begun to find evidence of the existence of women of very high social status in the early Iron Age. Later, studies of burial grounds in France and Great Britain showed that men and women were often buried on equal terms, and analysis of skeletons showed that some women actually fought against Rome.

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Genetics is changing the way we think about Early Societies

The real turning point occurred thanks to the research of ancient DNA. In 2025, an international group of almost 50 scientists presented the results of a study of the Neolithic settlement of Chatal Huyuk, which existed between about 7000 and 6000 BC. The analysis showed that burial traditions gave priority to daughters and descendants in the female line, which suggests inheritance through the female line.

The authors of the article note that this conclusion turned out to be unexpected, although back in the 1960s and 1970s, researcher Maria Gimbutas suggested that archaeological evidence from Chatal Huyuk might indicate the existence of a prehistoric society, which she called matriarchal. However, many archaeologists of that time rejected this hypothesis.

At the end of the 20th century, a different point of view prevailed. The spread of agriculture was associated with the "domestication" of not only animals, but also women, and female figurines found in Chatal Huyuk and other settlements were usually interpreted as symbols of pregnancy and fertility. Later, the researchers noticed that many of the images, on the contrary, reflected older women or menopausal women.

Now, the genetic data has once again drawn attention to Gimbutas' ideas. According to the author of the article, these data open up the possibility that the Neolithic agricultural revolution could be associated with women's rights to land. However, the study does not prove this hypothesis.

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There was no single model

At the same time, the author emphasizes that societies in which inheritance went through the female line were not universal. For example, a study of the Hazleton North long mound in the English county of Gloucestershire, published in 2022, revealed signs of polygyny: DNA analysis showed that four women buried in the monument had a common male partner. In the same year, a study of Bronze Age monuments in the Orkney Islands indicated that the origin there was traced along the male line, and women left their native communities after marriage.

In recent years, new evidence of the existence of matrilineal societies has emerged. In 2024, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology reported the first scientific confirmation of matrilineal dynastic succession in the Early Iron Age, when both origin and land were passed down the female line. And in 2025, researchers discovered signs of matrilocality and matrilineal ancestry in the Late Iron Age in Dorset County. In addition, data on 13 generations of female inheritance in Yorkshire of the 3rd century BC, as well as several other monuments of the Late Iron Age in Britain, where a similar system can be traced, are known today.

According to the author of the article, the accumulated data show that ancient societies were much more diverse than previously thought. Some communities could be built around male lines of kinship, others around female lines, and others combined different models. Therefore, the main task of modern archaeologists is to abandon universal schemes and be prepared for the fact that new discoveries will once again change the perception of the past.