New archaeological findings challenge the patriarchal narrative of prehistory and raise an uncomfortable question: When did we start erasing women from history?
For generations, history books have portrayed the Neolithic as a world of strong men and passive women. But the unearthed bones tell a very different story. In sites from Çatalhöyük to the Iberian Peninsula, osteological analyses reveal that many tombs with lavish grave goods—once automatically attributed to men—actually belong to women. Their femurs show signs of intense physical activity, their hips bear the marks of multiple childbirths… and their arms display the same spear marks as the men’s.
British archaeologist Lucy Walker, in her groundbreaking 2022 study, showed that 60% of Neolithic burials with power tools (command staffs, ceremonial axes) biologically belonged to women. "We’ve been led to believe that female leadership was exceptional, when in fact it was systematic," she asserts. The error, according to Walker, stems from what she calls "the sword bias": the tendency to associate any ritual object with the male gender.
The transition to patriarchy was neither natural nor inevitable. The evidence points to three key factors:
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The domestication of animals (which required greater physical strength)
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The first forms of property inheritance
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The rise of warrior cults
But the process took millennia. In the case of the Lady of Baza (Granada), from the 4th century BCE, we still see a ruler buried with all her symbols of power.
These findings are not just historical curiosities. They challenge the very foundations of our social order. If patriarchy is not “natural” but constructed, what other power structures do we take for immutable that are actually fragile constructions?
As Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich wrote: “History is written by the victors, but the truth pulses underground, in the silent bones waiting their turn to speak.”
Perhaps true progress does not lie in inventing something new, but in remembering what we once were. Those Neolithic women—buried with their axes and seeds—show us that female leadership is not a “modern conquest,” but an ancestral right that was taken from them. Their story confronts us: How much talent have we lost as a society by silencing the voices of half of humanity for millennia? Today, when a girl picks up a prehistory book and sees only men hunting, her role models are being stolen. But boys too are being robbed—of the chance to imagine a world where power has no gender.
The bones of our foremothers have spoken. Now it’s our turn to write the next chapter. One in which it’s no longer necessary to "prove" that women can lead, because archaeology—and life—have already proven it. Where strength is not measured in muscles, but in collective intelligence. Where we finally understand that no society flourishes when half of its members walk with their feet buried in oblivion.
The Neolithic left us a message hidden for centuries: the balance between the feminine and the masculine does not weaken a civilization. Imbalance does.
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