Ancient ‘female-centered’ society thrived 9,000 years ago in proto-city in Turkey
The old DNA from the burials of the Stone Age in Türkiye Proto-City, 9,000 years old, of Çatalhöyük, was a matriarchal company. Research finally confirms what experts have suspected for a long time: women and girls were key personalities from this agricultural society.
“With Çatalhöyük, we now have the model of social organization genetically lower than the oldest in societies producing food”, co-author of the study Mehmet SOMELAn evolving geneticist at the technical university of the Middle East in Türkiye, told Live Science in an email. “What turns out to be focused on women.”
The new research was published Thursday (June 26) in the journal Science.
Located in the Turkey-South Center, çatotalhöyük was built around 7,100 BC and was occupied for almost 1,000 years. The vast colony – distributed over 32.5 acres (13.2 hectares) – is known for its houses which have entered the roofs, burials under the floors of the house and the elaborate symbolism which included lively murals and a diverse range of female figurines.
When the archaeologist James Mellaart Thatalhöyük excavated In the early 1960s, he interpreted the many female figurines as proof of a matriarchal society which practiced the cult of the “mother goddess”, perhaps as a means of ensuring a good harvest following a major economic transition from food to Cereal agriculture.
In the 1990s, Stanford’s archaeologist, Ian Hodder, took the excavations to Çatalhöyük, and His research Rather suggested that society was largely egalitarian, without significant social or economic differences between men and women.
In relation: Rare and Neolithic “goddess” figurine discovery in Türkiye
To deepen the social organization of Çatalhöyük, in a new study, a team of researchers who included both Somel and Hodder analyzed the DNA 131 skeletons dated between 7,100 and 5800 BC which were buried under the floors of the house.
The researchers connected 109 people in 31 buildings and found that all parents in the first degree (parents, children and sisters and sisters) were buried together in the same building, while the second degree (uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces and grandparents) and third degree parents (such as cousins and the former of his first and hinterland) were often buried in neighboring buildings. This suggests that nuclear or extensive families played a role in the structuring of households in çatalhöyük, the researchers wrote in the study.
Matriarchy or just female lines?
But there was another interesting trend in intergenerational links between household burials, noted the researchers: they were mainly based on maternal lines.
“We were not particularly looking for these maternal links in buildings,” said Somel, but “it clearly shows that men centered on men have often documented in the Neolithic and bronze age in Europe were not universal.”
Ancient DNA analysis has also revealed the biological sex Infants and young children, which is not possible to do on the basis of skeletons alone that after puberty. Once the biological sex of these children has been determined, the researchers identified a trend linked to women in serious goods.
“The model of more buried donations for female babies was not something we expected either,” said Somel.
It is the oldest society where DNA evidence has revealed a social organization centered on women.
“To my knowledge, this constitutes the first systematic proof of such a Neolithic community permanently organized” “” Jens NotroffAn archaeologist at the German Archaeological Institute which was not involved in research, told Live Science in an email.
“We preferred to use” centered on women “instead of the matrilineal because the latter concerns the way people define parents,” said Somel. “Households Çatalhöyük could have been matrilinear, but we believe that the use of more general terms could be preferable. It is always good to be prudent,” he said.
But Benjamin ArbuckleArchaeologist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill who was not involved in the study, wrote from a perspective in Science that “if the sex models were reversed, there would probably be little hesitation to conclude that the patriarchal power structures were at stake”.
“This reflects the difficulty that many researchers have to imagine a world characterized by a substantial female power despite archaeological, historical and ethnographic evidence that the matriarical fields of power were and are widespread,” said Arbuckle.
It is now contrasts the patrilineal models observed in Neolithic Europe, said Notrofff, which “raises the intriguing question of when, how and why such a deep change in social organization has occurred”.
Analyzing the skeletons of Çatalhöyük to understand social relations is only the beginning, said Somel. To determine whether this site is unique or not is an important step.
“We are now producing similar data from previous companies in the region,” he said, “so I hope we will soon have an answer!”
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