Gargi Vachaknavi— The first female philosopher in history

Roughly dated back to 800–500 BCE, Gargi was born as an intellectual prodigy to the sage Vachaknu. She was born into a lineage of sages and was named after her ancestor, Sage Garga. She was a young scholar of some of the most sacred Vedic texts, like the Vedas. The beauty of the Vedas is that one can say that a person was a scholar of the text and also say that they contributed to the text itself. Because that’s what Gargi did. She contributed some of her mantras to the Rig Veda, the very text she was a scholar of. She is well known to have been in intellectual debates with other philosophers (primarily males) and is believed to have been celibate her entire life. She was a woman in a male-dominated field back in 800 BCE. You can even call her the earliest known evidence of a “woman in STEM,” for the underlying nature of the Vedas is science and math. <a href="https://alieninwonderland.medium.com/gargi-vachaknavi-the-first-female-philosopher-in-history-829c6373a1aa">Click Here</a>