I’ve spent a decade studying gender and I can tell you: as a woman, ageing sets you free | Angela Saini

A figurine from one of the world's oldest known human settlements reveals much about the history and potential of female power

As a writer, my focus has been on one of the biggest mysteries in all of history: what are the origins of patriarchy in human society? I should have known that the journey to answer that question would for ever change the way I thought about myself.

What I did know was that researching it would mean going back in time. The historical timescales involved here aren't centuries but millennia. That was how I landed in southern Anatolia, Turkey, at the site of one of the oldest known human settlements in the world. Catalhoyuk is beautifully preserved, its box-like homes a window into how people lived in this region thousands of years before Stonehenge was built or the first pyramids went up in Egypt.

Angela Saini is a science journalist and the author of Superior: The Return of Race Science

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