I'm pretty sure I read this somewhere. Could have been that Dan Brown novel, or some "Today I learned" style website.

It sounds plausible enough, but could also just be one of those bad ad-hoc hypotheses.

The idea in more detail is: First societies were matriarchal because people only knew that babies came from mothers, and babies are important. Once it was learned that a man's semen is required, societies became patriarchal, because men wanted to control their lineage.

Has this been studied by serious historians?