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One persistent notion claims that in certain earlier periods of human history, women enjoyed similar status to men, or even dominated, leading to happier and less violent societies. Subsequently, male-dominated systems arose, bringing centuries of strife and subjugation.

The Roots of the Matriarchy vs. Patriarchy Debate

The concept of matriarchy and male-led societies as diametrically opposed—following a sudden switch between them—originated in the 1800s through Marxist thought, entering archaeology despite little proof. Thereafter, it permeated into public consciousness.

Social scientists, however, were often less convinced. They observed great variation in gender relations across cultures, including contemporary and historical ones, and some suspected that such diversity was the norm in prehistory as well. Confirming this proved difficult, partly because determining physical sex—not to mention gender—frequently proved hard in old skeletons. But around two decades back, that changed.

The Breakthrough in Genetic Analysis

The so-called genomics era—the ability to recover DNA from ancient bones and study it—meant that suddenly it became possible to identify the sex of ancient people and to trace their family connections. The chemical makeup of their skeletal remains—particularly, the proportion of elemental variants found there—revealed whether they had lived in various locations and experienced shifts in nutrition. The evidence emerging thanks to these advanced methods shows that variety in gender relations had been absolutely the rule in prehistory, and that there was no clear watershed when a particular model gave way to its mirror image.

Hypotheses on the Rise of Male-Dominant Systems

One influential idea, actually attributed to Marx’s collaborator, proposed that early societies were equal until farming expanded from the Near East about 10,000 years ago. With the settled lifestyle and building up of resources that farming introduced arose the need to protect that property and to set rules for its succession. As populations expanded, men monopolised the elites that formed to manage these matters, in part because they were more skilled at fighting, and assets passed to the male line. Male kin were additionally more likely to remain in place, with their wives relocating to join them. Women’s subordination was often a byproduct of these changes.

An alternative view, proposed by researcher a Lithuanian scholar in the 1960s, was that woman-centred societies prevailed for an extended period in Europe—until 5,000 years ago—after which they were toppled by incoming, patriarchal nomads from the steppe.

Findings of Matrilineal Societies

Female-line descent (where property is inherited through the mother’s side) and female-resident patterns (where women remain in one place) often co-occur, and each are associated with greater women’s standing and authority. In 2017, American geneticists discovered that for over 300 years during the 900s AD, an high-status matrilineal group lived in Chaco Canyon, in modern-day the southwestern U.S.. Later, this June, Asian researchers reported a female-line agricultural community that thrived for nearly as long in eastern China, more than three millennia prior. These findings join previous evidence, suggesting that matrilineal societies have been present on every populated landmasses, at least from the arrival of farming on.

Power and Agency in Ancient Societies

However, even if they enjoy greater status, women in mother-line societies may not make decisions. That typically stays the domain of men—just of women’s brothers rather than their spouses. And since old genetic material and chemical traces can’t tell you a great deal about female agency, sex-based hierarchies in prehistory remain a matter of discussion. In fact, this line of work has forced scholars to ask themselves what they understand by power. If the female consort of a king shaped his court through support and informal networks, and his own policies through advice, was she any less powerful than him?

Experts have identified multiple instances of couples sharing power in the metal age—the era after those migrants arrived in the continent—and subsequent written accounts confirm to elite women shaping decisions in such ways, continents apart. Perhaps they did so in earlier times. Females exerting soft power in patriarchal societies could have predated Homo sapiens. In his 2022 book about gender roles, Different, primatologist Frans de Waal recounted how an alpha female chimp, a named individual, chose a replacement to the alpha male—who outranked her—with a gesture.

Factors Shaping Sex Roles

In recent years something else has emerged. While Engels may have been broadly right in associating property with patrilinearity, other factors affected sex roles, as well—including how a society makes a living. Recently, Chinese and British researchers found that traditionally matrilineal villages in a highland region have grown more gender-neutral over the last 70 years, as they moved from an farming-based system to a trade-focused one. Conflict additionally plays its part. Although matrilocal and male-resident societies are equally warlike, says anthropologist a Yale expert, internal strife—rather than war against an outside group—prods societies towards male residence, because fighting groups choose to have their male offspring nearby.

Females as Hunters and Authorities

At the same time, evidence is accumulating that women engaged in combat, pursued game and served as shamans in the distant past. Not a single position or role has been closed to them always, everywhere. And though women leaders were perhaps rare, they were not absent. New genetic analyses from Trinity College Dublin demonstrate that there were no fewer than pockets of matrilinearity throughout the British Isles, when Celtic tribes controlled the land in the iron age. Alongside archaeological evidence for female warriors and ancient descriptions of women leaders, it appears as if ancient European women could wield hard as well as soft authority.

Modern Matrilineal Societies

Matrilineal societies persist today—a Chinese group are one case, as are the Hopi of the southwestern U.S., heirs of those ancient lineages. Their numbers are declining, as state authorities flex their male-dominant influence, but they act as reminders that some extinct societies leaned more towards gender equality than numerous of our modern ones, and that every culture have the capacity to evolve.