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One persistent notion suggests that in some earlier periods of human history, females enjoyed similar status to men, or even ruled, leading to happier and less violent societies. Then, the patriarchy emerged, bringing centuries of conflict and subjugation.

The Roots of the Gender System Debate

This concept of female-led societies and patriarchy as polar opposites—with a decisive transition between them—was seeded in the 19th century through Marxist theory, influencing archaeology despite little evidence. Thereafter, it spread into popular consciousness.

Social scientists, by contrast, were often more sceptical. They documented great variation in gender relations across human societies, both contemporary and past ones, and some suspected that this variety was the norm in prehistory as well. Proving this proved challenging, in part because identifying biological sex—let alone gender—was often tricky in old skeletons. But around 20 years ago, everything changed.

The Breakthrough in Ancient DNA

This so-called genomics era—the ability to extract DNA from ancient bones and analyse it—enabled that abruptly it became possible to determine the gender of long-dead individuals and to examine their kinship ties. The isotopic composition of their bones and teeth—specifically, the proportion of elemental variants found there—revealed whether they had lived in various places and undergone shifts in nutrition. The evidence coming to light thanks to these advanced methods indicates that diversity in sex roles had been very much the norm in ancient eras, and that there was not a definite turning point when a particular model yielded to its opposite.

Hypotheses on the Rise of Patriarchal Systems

One influential idea, in fact credited to Engels, suggested that early societies were equal until farming spread from the Middle East approximately 10,000 years ago. Accompanying the more sedentary lifestyle and building up of wealth that farming introduced came the necessity to protect that property and to establish rules for its inheritance. When communities grew, men took over the elites that formed to manage these affairs, partly because they were better at fighting, and assets passed to the paternal lineage. Male kin were additionally inclined to remain in place, with their wives moving to live with them. Women’s subordination was frequently a byproduct of these changes.

An alternative theory, put forward by researcher a Lithuanian scholar in the 1960s, held that female-oriented societies dominated for an extended period in Europe—until five millennia back—when they were overthrown by incoming, male-ruled nomads from the steppe.

Findings of Female-Line Societies

Female-line descent (where property passes down the female line) and matrilocality (where women remain in one place) frequently go together, and both are associated with higher female status and authority. In recent years, U.S. scientists reported that for more than 300 years during the 10th century, an elite matrilineal group inhabited a canyon site, in what is now the southwestern U.S.. Later, in a recent study, Asian researchers reported a female-line farming community that flourished for a comparable duration in eastern China, over three millennia prior. These findings add to previous evidence, suggesting that female-descended societies have existed on every populated continents, at least from the arrival of farming on.

Influence and Agency in Prehistoric Societies

However, though they possess greater standing, females in matrilineal societies may not make decisions. This typically stays the domain of men—just of women’s brothers rather than their spouses. And since ancient DNA and chemical traces can’t tell you a great deal about female agency, gender power relations in prehistory continue to be a subject of discussion. Indeed, such research has prompted researchers to ask themselves what they understand by power. If the female consort of a king shaped his court through support and back channels, and his own policies by advice, did she hold less influence than him?

Experts have identified multiple examples of couples ruling jointly in the bronze age—the era after those nomads came in Europe—and later written accounts confirm to elite women influencing policies in similar manners, across the globe. Maybe they did so in earlier times. Females wielding soft power in patriarchal societies could have predated Homo sapiens. In his recent publication about sex and gender, Different, ape expert a noted scientist recounted how an alpha female chimp, Mama, chose a replacement to the alpha male—her superior—with a kiss.

Factors Influencing Sex Roles

In recent years something else has become clear. Although Engels may have been generally correct in linking property with male-line inheritance, additional elements affected gender relations, too—including how a society makes a living. In February, international scientists reported that traditionally female-line villages in a highland region have become less gender-biased over the past several decades, as they moved from an agricultural economy to a market-oriented one. Struggle additionally has a role. Although female-resident and male-resident societies are equally prone to conflict, notes anthropologist Carol Ember, within-group disputes—as opposed to battles against an outside group—pushes societies towards male residence, because fighting groups prefer to keep their male offspring close.

Females as Warriors and Authorities

Meanwhile, proof is mounting that women engaged in combat, hunted and served as spiritual leaders in the distant past. No role or position has been closed to them in all times and places. And even if women leaders were perhaps rare, they were not absent. Recent genetic analyses from an Irish university show that there were at least instances of female-line descent throughout the British Isles, when Celtic tribes controlled the island in the metal period. Combined with physical finds for female warriors and Roman accounts of female tribal chiefs, it looks as if Celtic women could wield hard as well as soft power.

Contemporary Matrilineal Societies

Mother-line societies still exist today—the Mosuo of China are one case, as are the a Native American tribe of the southwestern U.S., heirs of those ancient lineages. These communities are dwindling, as state authorities flex their male-dominant influence, but they act as testaments that certain vanished societies tilted more towards gender equality than many of our modern ones, and that every culture have the potential to change.