Archeologists make surprising discovery at hidden ancient city site

Daily Mail​

30-06-2025

Archeologists have unearthed additional evidence that women, not men, ruled an ancient city in Turkey which has been buried for thousands of years.
The discovery could rewrite what we know about the earliest days of civilization and about gender roles throughout history, experts say.
In a landmark study published in journal Science, researchers analyzing ancient DNA from nearly 400 skeletons at Catalhoyuk, a remarkably well-preserved Neolithic settlement in southern Turkey, revealed powerful clues that this early civilization operated under a matriarchal system.
The settlement, a warren of mudbrick homes and goddess-like statues dating back to 7100 BCE, has long been a source of mystery and wonder. Experts have long suspected that women and girls were key figures in this agricultural society.
But DNA analysis now confirms that women were buried with far more grave goods than men - and that daughters stayed with their maternal households, while sons often left.
The astonishing find has electrified the archeological world, challenging generations of assumptions about who held power in humanity's earliest cities and suggesting that the world's first great urban cultures may have rested on the shoulders of women.
The vast settlement - spread over 32.5 acres (13.2 hectares) - was already known for its sprawling homes, elaborate art, and mysterious goddess-like figurines.
Now, the latest genetic evidence has provided clues that women were not only the spiritual symbols of Catalhoyuk but may have been its true rulers.
In a painstaking investigation spanning more than a decade, a team of geneticists, archeologists, and biological anthropologists extracted DNA from the skeletons of over 130 people buried beneath the floors of 35 separate houses at the site.
In total, nearly 400 individuals have been recovered in graves at Catalhoyuk, a city once bustling with life for more than a thousand years.
What they found was extraordinary: a strong genetic pattern showing maternal connections within the buildings.
Women and their daughters were consistently buried together, while men seemed to arrive from outside, suggesting they married into the households of their wives.
Researchers believe that as many as 70 to 100 per cent of female offspring stayed attached to their maternal homes across generations, while males moved away.
And the evidence of women's elevated status does not end there. Grave goods such as precious ornaments, tools, and other offerings were found five times more often in female burials than in male ones, a clear sign of preferential treatment and status in death that mirrored social power in life.
Dr. Eline Schotsmans, a co-author of the study and research fellow at the University of Wollongong's School of Science in Australia, urged modern audiences to rethink outdated assumptions about ancient gender roles.
The idea that a Neolithic city could have been matriarchal is not new in myth or folklore.
Catalhoyuk's iconic clay statues depicting rounded, powerful female figures have long teased the possibility of a society with women at the helm.
But this new DNA evidence offers the first scientifically grounded window into how such a social structure might have worked in practice.
Benjamin Arbuckle, an archeologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who was not involved in the study, wrote in a perspective in Science that 'if the sex patterns were reversed, there would likely be little hesitation in concluding that patriarchal power structures were at play.'
'This is reflective of the difficulty that many scholars have in imagining a world characterized by substantial female power despite abundant archeological, historic, and ethnographic evidence that matriarchal fields of power were and are widespread,' he added.