Ancient genomes reveal an Iron Age society centred on women - News & Events | Trinity College Dublin
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“This was the cemetery of a large kin group. We reconstructed a family tree with many different branches and found most members traced their maternal lineage back to a single woman, who would have lived centuries before. In contrast, relationships through the father’s line were almost absent.
“This tells us that husbands moved to join their wives’ communities upon marriage, with land potentially passed down through the female line. This is the first time this type of system has been documented in European prehistory and it predicts female social and political empowerment.
“It’s relatively rare in modern societies, but this might not always have been the case.”
Incredibly, the team found that this type of social organisation, termed “matrilocality”,
