The Australian scientist helping to re-write the story of civilisation

As she painstakingly excavated bones left behind by the inhabitants of the settlement known as the world’s first city from their dry, sandy graves, Dr Eline Schotsmans gazed across the fields surrounding her dig site to a volcano in the distance.

More than 8500 years ago, these ancient villagers from Catalhoyuk in Turkey – a leading contender for the world’s oldest farming settlement – made wall paintings of the same twin-peaked volcano she could see on the horizon.

“It’s one of the few moments in my life that I suddenly understood what it is to feel the ancestors,” Schotsmans, an expert in archaeo-anthropology from the University of Wollongong, said.

Dr Eline Schotsmans excavating skeletons at Catalhoyuk.Credit: Dr Eline Schotsmans

Cutting-edge new DNA analysis of the skeletons Schotsmans helped excavate has revealed the people in this prehistoric outpost of civilisation may have venerated women as the centre of society, upending the assumption early agricultural settlements were ruled by men.

Catalhoyuk marks one of the critical turning points in the history of civilisation when, 9000 years ago, Neolithic nomads built a village of mud-brick homes studded with the skulls of wild bulls, weasels and foxes, and began to cultivate crops and tend livestock. Upon the discovery of its remains in the 1960s Catalhoyuk was dubbed “the world’s first city”.

The new evidence shows the households of the ancient settlement were dominated by matriarchal lines, and that girls who died were adorned with more elaborate burial offerings than boys.

“Societies that stay at the same spot and do agriculture are usually patrilineal,” said Schotsmans, who was a co-author of the major new findings led by Eren Yuncu and Professor Mehmet from Middle East Technical University.

The dead were buried underneath their homes, often with a diverse array of offerings.Credit: Anadolu via Getty Images

“Here we’re actually looking at matrilineal society, and I think that is quite unique.

“I think nowadays, with the world’s problems, it’s very relevant. The world is still very male dominated, isn’t it? I was looking at the NATO Summit in The Hague, and it’s just males.”

Experts believe Catalhoyuk was an egalitarian place with little social hierarchy. Everyone’s homes were of similar size. The spoils of early agriculture including barley, pistachios and goat milk were shared; bone analysis showed everyone ate well regardless of their sex or family.

The people of Catalhoyuk buried the dead underneath their homes. The new analysis of ancient DNA from the burials published in Science revealed family members in a household were usually connected through the female line.

Two homes had burials spanning three generations, all connected through mothers. In one building, the children of three sisters were buried together but the child of their brother – a paternal cousin – was laid to rest elsewhere.

Females usually remained connected to their household while males moved away, suggesting husbands relocated to their wife’s household when they were married.

One elderly woman was afforded an “exceptional” burial underneath the main room of a home she didn’t share with genetic kin, with an anklet of deer canines and a grave adorned with boar tusks and beads, suggesting she may have held a prominent social role.

A female figurine recovered from Catalhoyuk.Credit: Jason Quinlan

For the first time, scientists were also able to identify the sex of children buried at Catalhoyuk through DNA, which showed girls may have been particularly venerated in death.

People were often buried with an array of grave goods, including obsidian blades, eagle talons, bracelets of human teeth, hooks fashioned from the jawbones of aurochs and beads made from turquoise, shells and the vertebrae of fish spines.

The new paper reveals girls had five times the number of such offerings compared to boys.

“I think it stresses the diversity in social systems. Maybe we should stop with having our Western assumption that everyone is like us,” Schotsmans said.

Dr Eline Schotsmans holding a replica of a Neolithic female human cranium.Credit: Louise Kennerley

Schotsmans had already studied differences in how men and women were buried by the people of Catalhoyuk, who daubed the bodies of their dead with dyes of malachite, azurite and ochre.

Orange stripes of cinnabar often marked the craniums of men, while women were anointed in shades of green and blue, colours associated with the growth, fertility and ripeness which could be related to the society’s transition to agriculture.

The role of women at Catalhoyuk has been discussed at length since the site was discovered in the 1960s and voluptuous female statues were recovered, sparking imaginations of a “mother goddess” cult.

The new evidence raises the prospect these figurines didn’t represent gods or fertility – perhaps they were designed to celebrate the real women of Catalhoyuk, said Professor Andrew Fairbairn, an archaeology expert from the University of Queensland who wasn’t involved in the study.

“The science seems pretty sane to me,” he said of the new paper. “The fact that this DNA survives in those skeletons that are 8000 to 9000 years old is amazing – it gives us definitive evidence for stuff we’ve discussed for years.”

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