Sooner or later those of us digging into buried female histories will seek meaning and identity within our own story. Tracing ancestry through the occluded lens of paternal record keeping, the way the system we live within arranges itself, brings into sharp focus how extinguishing the female narrative, denies us half of ourselves. For most of history, veiled, draped, shackled in silence was a woman.
Silence wounds.
“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” – Virginia Woolf.
These weighty words birthed the phrase, “for most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”
When women’s history is shaped by misogyny, absence of acknowledgement and being-hood unexplained, clarity means everything.
Women in the wilderness
Truncated, severed, cut from the roots of the mother line, we, the vessels birthing humanity, cast adrift from our ancestral moorings, diminished and devalued, sail into the headwind of the patriarchal story.
I sailed down my mother’s paternal line, until the 1700s (there’s a book about them). I sailed along my father’s paternal line, on a wave of church records and land registry documents, to 1641. Pondering written and oral histories, I walked the soil beside crystal clear chalk streams flowing through tranquil meadows where my ancestors farmed watercress. These streams are described as “she” in 16th C poetry and the Goddess associated with them is Ancasta.
Various family members have also traced this paternal line. I have reams of the stuff. BUT what about the women? Where are the women? Why are the women, including myself, missing from the family trees they created? My absence screams volumes. As in all symbolism it is the dark spaces that do the talking. So engrained is tracing descent through the father, even today, our own families cast women to the wilderness.
The world will split open
Recording heritage from the singular perspective of the paternal line is a symptom of monotheistic hierarchal thinking. Leading a family to its own “godhead,” as far back as records will allow, maintains the stability of this myth, illusion, hierarchy. It sanitizes male histories. Shame was carried by the woman, meanwhile the actions of men remain hidden. It is within the female line that the truth resides. As Muriel Rukeyser says,
“if one woman told the truth about her life, the world would split open.” [1]
In the mother line we find the orphanages; the casting out of women, victim to the Shame Honor Nexus; the leaving behind of female children when families emigrate. The female line butts up to many an impasse, including “coverture,” the legal status of a married woman under her husband’s authority (women of the past may not appear on historic, land registry documents for example) so, like Virginia, we must harness our intuition and imagination when seeking our ancestresses, including the single women, the Dianas “owned by no man.”
Uncoupling from the paterfamilias
As I come to terms with the invisibility of my existence, past, present and future, the results of DNA testing reveal my story is more exotic than the linear patriarchal version of my family history, so I’m uncoupling from the paterfamilias. The clan mothers are calling. I’m steering my ship into the unchartered headwinds of my female heritage and identity, with a renewed sense of self and freedom. Let the fresh air blow through. Breathe. Breathe in the elixir of new possibilities.
A word of warning
DNA testing reveals surprises pushed to the shadows of family histories. The title, DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest – The Atlantic [2], tells us immediately that incestuous relationships (consensual / coercion / rape) were commonplace.
Might of the clan mother
Interesting things happen when tracing family through the female line. Words such as progenitress, clan mother, matriarch, materfamilias and metronymic (names derived from a female ancestor) emerge from the darkness of patriarchal domination. Traces of the matriarch hide within names. In its patronymic form, the surname “Mawson, derives from “Maw.” In its metronymic form it means “son of Maude.”
The name Matilda stems from maht ‘might/power’ and hild ‘battle’. My surname derives from doré meaning “blonde haired” in French; or dore meaning “bee” in Middle English.
Hidden matrilineal dynasties
In Europe’s Hidden Matrilineal Dynasty, House of Garsenda. (do watch this, it upends history) Dr Matt Baker points out that matrilineal dynasties are hidden with patrilineal ones. Here the males, rather than females, are dead ends. Tracing the mother line, Dr Matt Baker shows how the matrilineal House of Garsenda descends from one progenitress, Countess Jhair-sond. Hers is the most enduring and influential royal house, with descendants sitting on the thrones of Europe for over 600 years. Her house was far more prolific than the patrilineal Habsburgs or Capets yet, as Virginia points out, “For most of history anonymous was a women,” even queens. When we gain access we may find our own matrilineal histories are just as revelatory.
Can we conclude this has been an enduring pattern, stretching back through time? Archaeology News reports that ancient DNA from El Mirón Cave reveals a 46,000-year lineage of the Red Lady! [3]
Land of Warrior Queens.
Just as I’m resigning myself to a romanticized form of invisibility, veiled like Isis, Hestia, Demeter and Hecate, hidden, yet brooding and powerful, eyes looking from the liminal, through a curtain of shells, there is a thunderbolt from the world of archaeology: DNA taken from 57 Iron Age graves in southwest England, the land of the Warrior Queen, shows most individuals descended from a single maternal line. [4]
“Hail the mighty nectar. O’ bare feet in flower meadows. O’ weaving garlands of dill.”
I knew in my bones England must have been matrilocal. I knew in my bones that Boudicca and Cartimandua could not be the only Warrior Queens. There’s more: Live Science reports that DNA sequencing reveals early Celtic elites inherited power through maternal lines. [5] There will be more powerful women waiting to be unearthed. In the future DNA sequencing may find them.
Farewell androcentric one-sidedness
Can I conclude that pre-Roman, matrilocal, tribal Britain maintained equilibrium because men traveling to marry into communities, where women held the power, stops the formation of androcratic power groups?
In his essay Migration, External Warfare, and Matrilocal Residence, William Tulio Divale says,
“Matrilocal residence accomplishes this [equilibrium], because the dispersal of males from their natal villages upon marriage results in the breakup of fraternal interest groups.” [6]
Reclaim the unexplained spaces
Why is reclaiming the silent, unexplained spaces within our genetic heritage important? Truth exists beyond the illusion. Piecing together these unnoticed narratives opens windows to our past, allowing female energy to blow through. Knowing the past empowers the future. It doesn’t have to be androcratic.
When female ancestors call, seeding our consciousness in the mycorrhizal matrix of Goddess consciousness, they awaken our intuition and ancient knowing, showing us “there is another way.”
“When you eventually see through the veils to how things really are, you will keep saying again and again, this is certainly not like we thought it was.” – Rumi [7]
[ends]
Citations and references
[1] Ostriker, Alicia. Learning to Breathe under Water, Considering Muriel Rukeyser’s oceanic work. June 12, 2013. The Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70011/learning-to-breathe-under-water
[2] Zhang, Sarah. DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest. March 18. 2024. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/03/dna-tests-incest/677791/
[3] Radkey, Dario. Ancient DNA from El Mirón Cave reveals a 46,000-year lineage of the Red Lady. February 9. 2025. Archaeology News Online Magazine. https://archaeologymag.com/2025/02/dna-reveals-lineage-of-the-red-lady/
[4] Lara M. Cassidy, Miles Russell, Martin Smith, Gabrielle Delbarre, Paul Cheetham, Harry Manley, Valeria Mattiangeli, Emily M. Breslin, Iseult Jackson, Maeve McCann, Harry Little, Ciarán G. O’Connor, Beth Heaslip, Daniel Lawson, Phillip Endicott & Daniel G. Bradley. Continental influx and pervasive matrilocality in Iron Age Britain. 15 January. 2025. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08409-6
[5] Kilgrove, Kristina. Early Celtic elites inherited power through maternal lines, ancient DNA reveals. June 3, 2024 Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/early-celtic-elites-inherited-power-through-maternal-lines-ancient-dna-reveals
[6] Divale, Tulio William. Migration, External Warfare, and Matrilocal Residence. First published May 1974. Sage Journals. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/106939717400900201
[7] Rumi. A-Z Quotes. https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/veils.html