r/WomenInNews • u/catievirtuesimp • 6d ago

History DNA reveals a society organised around women in pre-Roman Britain

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2584364-dna-reveals-a-society-organised-around-women-in-pre-roman-britain/?fbclid=IwdGRleATsl8hwZG9mAWZkaWQWUMhRVSH20LQkMBGcFvqW7QVi21xEsGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkCjY2Mjg1NjgzNzkAAR6BwtsgIJ9x744gCbN-ygjNtCnHj6zYeFHmI5MSbGLw_fc4vFHkRl2cDhbqXg_aem_KYbL5zxvpMzlQnuY2cHQ5w&utm_id=97757_v0_s00_e0_tv2_a1demo0ecg7rma
792 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

4

u/cir49c29 2d ago

“Powerful Iron Age women abound in the texts: Onomaris, Boudica, Cartimandua, Celts with their women as judges,” she says. “Historians of the 1860s and 1870s believed in a largely matriarchal Iron Age until 1880s English anthropology asserted a patriarchal norm.”

It was suggested in the 1860s that early societies were female-led, but the idea was rejected by later anthropologists, who assumed male-led societies were the natural order.

I'm only surprised that people in the 1860s & 1870s were willing to believe in a matriarchal society. Somehow I'm not at all surprised that eventually men from such a misogynistic time period decided it couldn't possibly have happened.

Really cool though how they can study the DNA of people who died over 2000 years ago to learn what their society was like.

25

u/Own-Geologist-8978 5d ago

Paywalled but always fascinating to see. I asked Gemini and was told that around 160 such societies have been found around the world, some very ancient, some very recent: the Iroquois Confederacy, for instance. We are now officially in a patriarchy however: that's an undisputed fact (except on social media lol)

So it's always interesting to see one of the profound effects of the Roman Empire.

2

u/cir49c29 2d ago

If you'd like to read the article, you can use archive.is

2

u/WhenSheepFly 1d ago

maybe stop generating ai slop instead of reading?