The Spice Girls need to move aside, as girl power may have started 9,000 years ago.

Archaeologists have unearthed additional evidence that women, not men, ruled an ancient city in Turkey that 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. 

Researchers conducted a groundbreaking study that was published in Science, which involved the analysis of ancient DNA from around 400 skeletons found at Çatalhöyük. This Neolithic settlement located in southern Turkey is known for its exceptional preservation, shedding light on the possibility of a matriarchal society.

Çatalhöyük, with its mudbrick structures and statues resembling goddesses, dates back to 7100 BCE and has fascinated experts for years. The prevailing belief has been that women and girls held significant roles in this agricultural community.

Analysis of the DNA now supports this theory by revealing that women were buried with a greater number of valuable items in their graves compared to men. Additionally, the study found that daughters tended to remain in their maternal households, while sons typically moved away.

The astonishing find has electrified the archaeological 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.  

Archaeologists have uncovered a bombshell at the hidden ancient city of Çatalhöyük that had been buried for thousands of years – evidence that women, not men, may have ruled society 

Women were buried with far more grave goods than men – and that daughters stayed with their maternal households, while sons often left suggesting the world’s first great urban cultures may have rested on the shoulders of women

Now, the latest genetic evidence has provided clues that women were not only the spiritual symbols of Çatalhöyük but may have been its true rulers. 

In a painstaking investigation spanning more than a decade, a team of geneticists, archaeologists, 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 Çatalhöyük, 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 percent 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.

A excavation site is seen at Çatalhöyük which was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2012. New finds are being encountered at Çatalhöyük, where about 8,000 people lived together during the Neolithic period

The research is a culmination of 31 years of excavation and the analysis and marks one of the most important geological studies in recent history

 In total, nearly 400 individuals have been recovered in graves at Çatalhöyük, a city once bustling with life for more than a thousand years. Bones found at the site can be seen above

The city of Çatalhöyük, located in Turkey, flourished around 7000 BC with a population of 1,000 and these days is one of the largest Neolithic sites found to date (pictured)

Çatalhöyük was composed entirely of domestic buildings with no obvious public buildings

Çatalhöyük is a tell of a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5600 BC and flourished in 7000 BC

The idea that a Neolithic city could have been matriarchal is not new in myth or folklore. 

Çatalhöyük’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 archaeologist 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 archaeological, historic, and ethnographic evidence that matriarchal fields of power were and are widespread,’ he added.

The implications go far beyond Turkey. Only months ago, a separate team of researchers studying the late Iron Age in Britain published evidence in Nature showing that women in Celtic communities also held powerful positions through maternal kinship. 

Analyzing DNA from 57 graves in Dorset, scientists revealed that two-thirds of the buried individuals came from a single maternal lineage – suggesting that women maintained community ties while men likely migrated in after marriage.