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A widespread belief suggests that in some earlier periods of human history, women enjoyed equal standing to men, or perhaps ruled, leading to happier and more peaceful societies. Then, the patriarchy arose, ushering in ages of conflict and oppression.

The Origins of the Matriarchy vs. Patriarchy Discussion

This idea of female-led societies and patriarchy as polar opposites—following a decisive transition between them—was seeded in the 1800s through Marxist theory, influencing archaeology with little evidence. From there, it spread into public consciousness.

Anthropologists, however, were often less convinced. They documented great variation in gender relations across cultures, including modern and past ones, and some suspected that such diversity had been the standard in prehistory too. Confirming this proved difficult, partly because determining biological sex—let alone social gender—frequently proved hard in ancient remains. Then around 20 years ago, that changed.

The Breakthrough in Ancient DNA

This much-touted genomics era—the ability to extract DNA from old remains and study it—enabled that suddenly it became possible to determine the gender of ancient people and to trace their kinship ties. The chemical makeup of their skeletal remains—specifically, the ratio of isotopes present there—indicated whether they had resided in various locations and experienced shifts in nutrition. The picture emerging due to these advanced methods indicates that variety in sex roles was absolutely the norm in ancient eras, and that there was no clear watershed when one system gave way to its opposite.

Hypotheses on the Emergence of Patriarchal Systems

The Marxist theory, in fact attributed to Marx’s collaborator, proposed that early societies were equal before agriculture spread from the Middle East about 10,000 years ago. Accompanying the settled lifestyle and building up of resources that agriculture introduced came the necessity to protect that property and to establish rules for its inheritance. As populations grew, men monopolised the elites that formed to coordinate these affairs, in part because they were better at fighting, and wealth gravitated to the male line. Men were also more likely to stay put, with their wives relocating to live with them. Female oppression was frequently a consequence of these shifts.

An alternative view, proposed by researcher a Lithuanian scholar in the mid-20th century, was that woman-centred societies prevailed for an extended period in the continent—until 5,000 years ago—when they were overthrown by incoming, male-ruled migrants from the plains.

Evidence of Female-Line Societies

Matrilinearity (where wealth is inherited through the mother’s side) and matrilocality (where women remain in one place) often go together, and both are linked with greater female status and influence. In recent years, American geneticists discovered that for more than three centuries around the 900s AD, an high-status mother-line group lived in a canyon site, in modern-day New Mexico. Then, this June, Chinese researchers identified a matrilineal farming community that thrived for a comparable duration in eastern China, more than three millennia prior. Such discoveries join previous evidence, suggesting that female-descended societies have existed on every populated landmasses, at least from the advent of agriculture on.

Influence and Agency in Prehistoric Societies

However, though they enjoy higher status, women in matrilineal societies don’t necessarily make decisions. That generally stays the preserve of men—just of maternal uncles rather than their husbands. And because old genetic material and isotopes don’t reveal much about women’s autonomy, sex-based hierarchies in ancient times remain a subject of debate. Indeed, this line of work has forced scholars to consider what they mean by authority. Suppose the wife of a king influenced his entourage through support and informal networks, and his own policies through advice, did she hold less influence than him?

Experts know of multiple examples of couples sharing power in the bronze age—the period following those nomads came in the continent—and later historical records confirm to elite women influencing policies in such ways, continents apart. Perhaps they did so in earlier times. Women exerting soft power in male-dominated societies may even have predated Homo sapiens. In his recent publication about sex and gender, a titled work, primatologist Frans de Waal recounted how an dominant female chimp, a named individual, chose a replacement to the alpha male—her superior—with a gesture.

Elements Shaping Sex Roles

Lately another aspect has become clear. Although Engels may have been broadly right in linking wealth with male-line inheritance, other factors shaped gender relations, too—including how a society sustains itself. In February, international scientists reported that historically matrilineal villages in Tibet have grown less gender-biased over the past several decades, as they transitioned from an farming-based system to a trade-focused one. Conflict additionally has a role. Although female-resident and male-resident societies are equally prone to conflict, says researcher Carol Ember, internal strife—as opposed to war against an external enemy—prods societies towards patrilocality, because fighting groups prefer to keep their sons nearby.

Females as Warriors and Authorities

At the same time, evidence is accumulating that women fought, pursued game and served as shamans in the ancient world. No role or role has been closed to them in all times and places. And though women leaders may have been uncommon, they were not absent. New ancient DNA findings from an Irish university demonstrate that there were no fewer than pockets of matrilinearity throughout Britain, when Celtic tribes dominated the land in the iron age. Combined with physical finds for women fighters and ancient accounts of women leaders, it looks as if ancient European women could exercise hard as well as indirect power.

Contemporary Matrilineal Societies

Mother-line societies persist nowadays—a Chinese group are one case, as are the Hopi of the southwestern U.S., descendants of those ancient lineages. These communities are declining, as national governments assert their patriarchal influence, but they act as testaments that certain vanished societies leaned more towards sex parity than many of our present-day ones, and that every culture have the potential to evolve.