Women are often the hidden half of history, while men dominated the public arena. Since antiquity, women had silently left their mark on the world, and at times changed it. Not many people know that it was a Chinese empress named Xilingshi who invented sericulture around 3000BC that made China a world power; the first named author was a lady named En Hedu’anna, a high priestess of Moon God in Ur who lived around 2300BC; there was a entire kingdom in Northern India, called ‘Strirajya’, that was ruled by women for over thousand years; the world’s first computer programmer, Ada, was a girl. Before the beginning of agriculture, in the stone-age, women were not just food gatherers, but also huntresses. These women were not only giving company to their Adam’s, but doing much more. There are stone-age paintings preserved in Kashmir which revealed that women went together with men for hunting. They danced together in the beats of the ancient drums. These huntresses of the lithic era shared equal status with men, and may be even regarded as superior. The first god human beings worshiped was the Great Mother. Among the first human images discovered are the "Venus figures," that date back to Upper Paleolithic period between 35,000 and 10,000 BC. We can still hear the echoes of the beats in which these free women danced, when we see the cave paintings in Bhimbetka (Madhya Pradesh, India). But the status of modern women is only a shadow of their past.
