The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule

By Angela Saini

For fans of Sapiens and The Dawn of Everything, a ground-breaking investigation into the oldest and most pervasive human hierarchical system

For centuries, societies have treated male domination as natural to the human species. But how would our understanding of gender inequality – our imagined past and contested present – look if we didn’t assume that men have always ruled over women? If we saw inequality as something more fragile that has had to be constantly remade and reasserted?

In this bold and radical book, award-winning science journalist Angela Saini explores the roots of what we call patriarchy, uncovering a complex history of how it became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory to the present.

Travelling to the world’s earliest known human settlements, analysing the latest research findings in science and archaeology and tracing cultural and political histories from the Americas to Asia, she explores how male domination became so widespread, why even revolutionary efforts to overturn it have failed and what part we all play – women included – in keeping patriarchal structures alive.

The Patriarchs is nevertheless a profoundly hopeful book – one that reveals a multiplicity to human arrangements that undercuts the old grand narratives and exposes male supremacy as no more (and no less) than an ever-shifting element in systems of control.