At first glance, Çatalhöyük looks like any other archaeological marvel. Tightly packed homes. No roads. No temples. Just walls, bones, and the occasional fertility figurine. But new DNA evidence from this 9,000-year-old proto-city in central Turkey is totally changing what we thought we knew about early society.
According to a new study in Science, most of the people buried together at the site were related through their mothers. That may sound simple, but it hints at a social structure where women stayed rooted in their homes while men moved between them. It’s called matrilocality, and it’s the kind of thing that challenges long-held assumptions about who held power in the ancient world.
Researchers analyzed genomes from 131 people buried in 35 houses over hundreds of years. What they found was way more than family history. It was a glimpse into a system that favored maternal lines and possibly elevated the role of women in everyday life.
This 9,000-Year-Old City May Have Been Ruled by Women, DNA Reveals
“It seems that people moving among buildings are adult males, whereas people residing in them are adult females,” said Mehmet Somel, one of the study’s co-leads.
This wasn’t some fleeting anomaly. The pattern held steady for over a thousand years, even as other aspects of the society evolved. Early households were built around an extended family. Later ones showed looser ties, suggesting practices like fostering or adoption. But even then, the maternal connections stayed strong.
Archaeological clues have long hinted at something different about Çatalhöyük. There were no kings or communal buildings. Men and women appeared to share food and status. And young girls were buried with far more grave goods than boys, which could reflect cultural values that centered women from an early age.
None of this confirms that Çatalhöyük was a matriarchy. But it makes one thing clear. Early agricultural life wasn’t always ruled by men. This site suggests something more balanced, more flexible, and a lot more interesting.
“There’s no clear single factor that drives one type of organization,” Somel said. “We need to do more studies to really understand this.”
Still, it’s rare to find evidence of a world that didn’t just make space for women, but may have built itself around them.
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