What Happened To Men In The Neolithic?

These faces are over 10,000 years old. Coming from the Tash Teplah sites of Gobekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe and Sebej, multiple statues have been uncovered, almost exclusively showing men. Many are shown as thin, their ribs exposed. But move forward in time, about a thousand years, to the nearby site of Çatalhöyük, and suddenly something changes. We're surrounded by female imagery. Voluptuous ladies dominate, and a DNA analysis of the skeletons found at this site might explain why. Hi, I'm Hugh. If you're new here, I have a PhD in archaeology, and for the last 20-something years or so, I've been taking part in archaeological fieldwork all around the world. So recently, I traveled to southeastern Turkey on a research trip, and the Neolithic period sites were a primary focus of mine, especially the Tash Teplah sites of Gobekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe and Sebej. All three sites consist of special buildings, often dominated by their big T pillars. So 10,000 years ago, you've got these extraordinary communities building monumental structures, domestic structures, but also beautiful imagery. And when you look at the imagery they're producing, you might notice one thing specifically. It's full of dudes. Just bros. More bros. Even more bros. And here's the thing. These guys were super confident in their own bodies. I mean, forget the Neolithic revolution. This is the Neolithic brovolution. Maybe we should change the name of the site to Brobekli Tepe. I'm sorry, there are some bad jokes coming your way. Now, just to be clear, archaeologists haven't uncovered communities that are exclusively populated by men called steve. You know, these were communities that were made up of children, women and men. So it raises the question, why were they so obsessed with male bodies? The sites are full of this imagery, from men holding their genitalia to animals with very obvious masculine characteristics. It's all just very male. Now, I should say there is one image of a woman from these sites. This is her. And as you can see, her private parts have also been greatly emphasized. Maybe she just gave birth. But she is the solitary Eve in a sea of steves. So here we have these Neolithic settlements in southeastern Anatolia making these extraordinary images of men. But go a few hundred years later and travel about 500 kilometers west and the imagery starts to look very different. Hey, sorry to interrupt. I'm here at the ancient site of Zugma on the banks of the Euphrates. Now, if you like real archaeology like this presented by a real archaeologist like me, why not click subscribe and make sure you turn on notifications so you don't miss a video. These statues come from the site of Çatalhöyük. Now Çatalhöyük dates to about 7100 BCE. Covered in domestic structures but no T-pillars or anything like that. But there, the imagery has a much larger female focus. Men aren't gone from the imagery. But this is a world dominated by women. But here is where the archaeology gets fun. Because whereas with the Tash Teplers, any theories about why there's so much male-dominated imagery can only really use the art as its evidence. But in Çatalhöyük, archaeologists have one powerful piece of data up their sleeves. Human remains. So in 2025, they published the results of the analysis of almost 400 skeletons found at the site. Looking at things like DNA and isotopes. Now Çatalhöyük is quite famous for how many burials they find under the floor. They found that skeletons of men and women were fairly evenly matched in number. About 58% of the adults being women. Interestingly, a lot of the DNA was of sub-adults, i.e. kids. And that the children were equally split. Half boys, half girls. But the DNA results show something really interesting. Because when you drill down into the results, gone is the Tash Tepler prolific. Who runs this world? Girls. Sorry, I just threw in a Beyoncé joke there to try and help with the algorithm. Beyoncé, Beyoncé, Beyoncé. So at Çatalhöyük, apart from this amazing collection of female figurines, the DNA results indicate this society may have been matrilineal. Matrilineal basically means that you trace your history through your mother's side. So instead of saying that's my dad's family, as a lot of cultures do, the important family connection is actually through your mom, your grandmother, or your great-grandmother. Now the X-Raiders are avoiding the term matrilineal. Instead using the term female focus. Now this isn't some woke gender politic archaeology thing happening here. It's more of a fast and furious kind of thing. Because defining family is difficult. Because just watch any fast and furious movie, and you'll know that family isn't always through biology. So what does the DNA say? Well first off, when they looked at the DNA at a basic household level, they found that maternal lineages were the dominant thing that connected household members. They estimated that about 70 to 100% of women stayed in the houses they were born in, whilst men were the ones that moved. And this is really different than what is found in other cultures. But they also identified that the sub-adult burials, you know, children of males and females, despite being equal in number, showed some really big differences. Girls regularly had more grave goods than boys. Sometimes up to five times more. Now remember how I said that people were often buried underneath the floors of these houses? Well the DNA evidence shows that who was being buried together actually changed quite dramatically over time. Early on, people buried in the same house were often biologically related. But as time went on, this number drops dramatically. By the middle period, it was around 30%. And in the late period, just 22%. But there are other really interesting stories that come out of this analysis. In building 50, they found a burial of an elderly woman who had no identified genetic relatives in the building. But she was given an exceptional burial in the main room, with things like boar tusks and beautiful beads. The researchers suggest that this may indicate that she had some prominent social role. So this is really important, because it shows that you didn't necessarily have to be biologically related to a household in order to be an important member of it. And the DNA and isotopes show a bunch of other really cool things. About 10% of the population were probably not born in Chattahooyook. They moved there. And this is the part that gets my brain ticking the most, because I keep thinking, if someone decided to move to Chattahooyook and they go in and they see all of this feminine imagery, was it unusual to them? Were they like, oh man, there's a lot of sculptures of big women around here. Like, nice, I like this. Or alternatively, was it just completely normal to them? Was the world that Chattahooyook was in much more feminine focus than the Tush tablets? And thus, the imagery that we see at Chattahooyook was just completely normal to anyone living at this time and in this region. It just is so cool. So why compare these two regions at all? Because they're giving us two very different snapshots of a period when human society was changing dramatically. At the Tush tablet sites, we see a world where male imagery is incredibly prominent. But at Chattahooyook, several centuries later and further west, we see a much stronger emphasis on women alongside major changes in how people lived, including things like the development of agriculture. It's a big shift in imagery. And the question is, why? Now, this doesn't mean that society went masculine to feminine at about this time, but it does raise bigger questions. As humans settled down, developed agriculture, formed increasingly complex communities, did the balance of men and women also change? Did they go from hunter-gatherers to hunter-gatherers? The exciting thing is that human remains have been found at the Tush tablet sites as well. Hopefully, as studies of DNA, isotopes, and other forms of scientific analysis are published, they might allow us to understand why the imagery is so masculine. This demonstrates why we need to study sites holistically, not just the pretty art, but also the human remains, the domestic structures, the food, and so much more. It's vitally important because the art can tell us what people chose to represent. But it's only when we put all the evidence together, like they did at Chattahooyook, that we can start to understand how these people actually lived. And if we can understand that, we might understand why they produced the imagery in the first place. Now, if you've liked this video, why not convince the YouTube algorithm to show this video to other people? And you can do that by liking, subscribing, commenting. If you're on a mobile phone, press the hype button. Do all of the things that you need to do in order for you and other people to see my content in the future. And also, write things like Beyoncé, Beyoncé, Beyoncé, so that maybe it tricks people who like Beyoncé into watching this video. I imagine there's a huge overlap between Beyoncé fans and people who like Neolithic archaeology.