DNA Unlocks Secrets of a Neolithic Society: Women at the Heart of Çatalhöyük

For decades, the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in central Turkey, has fascinated archaeologists. Its tightly packed mudbrick houses, wall paintings, and enigmatic figurines have sparked debates about how the people who lived there—around 9,000 years ago—organized their lives. Now, a groundbreaking study in Science has provided the clearest genetic evidence yet: women stood at the center of social life.

A Village Beneath the Soil

Excavations at Çatalhöyük revealed a unique practice: the dead were not buried in cemeteries, but beneath the floors of family houses. For years, researchers speculated about whether these burials reflected biological kinship or symbolic ties. Were households made up of extended families? Did men and women play equal roles?

The latest archaeogenetic project, led by teams from Hacettepe University, Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ), and the Çatalhöyük Research Project, set out to answer those questions by analyzing the ancient DNA of nearly 400 skeletons, including 131 individuals from 35 houses.

The Genetic Clues

What the scientists found was striking: most of the individuals buried beneath the same house were related through maternal lines. In other words, daughters remained in their childhood homes, while husbands were more likely to move in from elsewhere.

This pattern—known as matrilocality—suggests that women were the anchors of social and domestic life. “It doesn’t necessarily mean women dominated politically,” says study co-author Eva Rosenstock of the University of Bonn, “but it does show that households and family bonds were structured around them.”

Beyond Bones: What It Means for History

The implications reach far beyond Çatalhöyük. For decades, Western narratives of early farming societies assumed a patrilineal system, with men as the central figures in kinship and inheritance. These new results challenge that assumption.

The findings also give fresh context to the site’s famous female figurines and the prominence of women in Neolithic symbolism. Rather than being mere fertility icons, they may reflect real social structures where women’s presence was vital to continuity and cohesion.

A Society in Transition

The study emphasizes nuance. Matrilocal residence does not equal matriarchy. Instead, it suggests a balanced but female-centered fabric of life in one of the world’s earliest farming villages. And by revealing when and where different kinship systems emerged, archaeogenetics may help explain how patriarchal systems spread later in history.

Çatalhöyük, it seems, was not just a cradle of agriculture—it was a community where women shaped the rhythms of everyday life, from hearth to ancestry.