Çatalhöyük

[Uomo Senza Nome]

What can be learned from Çatalhöyük, the world's first city?

In the Southern Anatolia region of Turkey roughly 9500 years ago Neolithic humans formed the first settlement large and organized enough to be called a city. This was 2500 years after the end of the last ice age and the planet was much cooler.

The population of the city fluctuated between 3000-8000 people. It was no longer occupied by 6400BCE.
Total area of the city was about 34 acres or population density of about 95K people per square mile with a population of 5000. Were it a city today it would be the third most dense in the world. There was plenty of mostly vacant land surrounding the city.

Genetic markers suggest that Europeans are at least in part descended from the people of Çatalhöyük.

System of Government: Unknown, possibly anarcho-communism. No "obvious" public buildings have been located. The city had no fortifications nor system of writing that left behind evidence of administration or rule. Public sanitation appears to have utilized middens outside the small city.

Cooperation would have been required living in such close proximity to neighbors but it is unknown how they mediated disputes or to what level that cooperation rose. Without a competing city or society, public common defense would be less necessary.

No Public Services appear to have been available but latter developments show evidence of communal ovens and storage sheds for farm implements and granaries suggesting that these were shared items and facilities. Conditions of homes excavated suggest that the citizens were very clean at home.

There were no "public streets" inside the city to speak of. The homes were linked together through abutting walls and linked roofs, suggesting that people walked from place to place on each other's rooftops. Without public roadways or structures there would be no need for a tax system.


Model of City


Religion: Uncertain. What their religious worship was is a contested topic. It seems likely it was Mother Goddess faith common to the Mediterranean Region in that era and later. There was likely no organized clergy or public services offered by or to the faithful.

Homes: Entry was normally through the roof, unless there was a door to the outside of the city. There was a main room and a separate (likely private sleeping room). The main room was often decorated with the skulls of dead animals and small works of carved art. The block walls were smooth finished with clay.

Regular chairs and tables wouldn't be along for 2000 years. The floor would have varying levels of grade to offer seating and working positions on low formed benches and tables. Woven mats for increased comfort on the floors.

A single oven provided heat and cooking. Fuel was animal dung, wood, trash etc. The Chimney wouldn't be invented until at least 1000AD and so smoke rose upwards and out the entry hole in the side of the cupola ceiling. The soot buildup would have been amazing but the houses were torn down periodically and new ones built in the same location.


Restored Home:


Diet and Agriculture: Domestic cattle, sheep and goats were all part of the diet. Animals were hunted as a large part of the diet. Wheat, barley, peas, almonds, pistachios, and fruit were all cultivated, processed and stored. The plow was still thousands of years off so everything was likely human labor.

[MacWa77ace]

How times have changed.

[tirls]

How times have changed.

Depending on whom you ask, that's considered a different continent.

[tirls]

Çatalhöyük was excavated at a time when the majority of historical evidence that now is deemed important was discarded as rubbish, and a lot of conclusions regarding the society that lived there are simple speculations without any evidence. It is extremely difficult to separate what is based on speculations and wishful thinking and what on archeological evidence half a century later and we need to review past conclusions in relation to the findings of the current excavations. Sadly the exact note keeping of Howard Carter was not the norm until only two or three decades ago and especially documentaries are prone to mixing up wishful thinking and evidence based conclusions.

There simply is no evidence regarding a mother goddess or communism. What we can say is that there was most likely some kind of funerary cult based on the treatment of bodies.
Surprisingly enough there also seems to have been some kind of gender equality.
Çatalhöyük might mark the point of change in this regard as it sits right at the edge of neolothic revolution, or it might be the strange exception. We simply do not have enough evidence at this point.

If you look at extant graves of a similar time period we often get a quite different picture. The beginning of sedentarism also marks the beginning of a division regarding gender and social class. We can see this both by burial objects and the nutritional deficiencies of the sceletal remains. This is in opposition to the hunter and gatherer society before this, where there is evidence that tasks and wealth was shared more equally.
Interesting enough, the beginning of settlements, while also marking the beginning of our modern society also coincides with a drop in life expectancy and a lot of the problems that are still prevalent nowadays. It's a really interesting aspect of socio-archeology.

Regarding tools, there are some brilliant research papers on Göbekli Tepe (a couple of years earlier and slightly different social structures).

[MacWa77ace]

Still doable though, obviously they moved somewhere in BCE6400, its just a dugout ride across the Aegean to Greece from Turkey. Early Americans walked from Asia to North America before that.
You make it sound so far when you say 'continent'. 

"Europeans are descendants.."

[tirls]

That continental divide is a bit rubbish anyway considering the tectonic plates.
I still wouldn't call Mykonos turkish while standing next to a Greek, there's a bit of a history there.

[Uomo Senza Nome]

Çatalhöyük was excavated at a time when the majority of historical evidence that now is deemed important was discarded as rubbish, and a lot of conclusions regarding the society that lived there are simple speculations without any evidence. It is extremely difficult to separate what is based on speculations and wishful thinking and what on archeological evidence half a century later and we need to review past conclusions in relation to the findings of the current excavations. Sadly the exact note keeping of Howard Carter was not the norm until only two or three decades ago and especially documentaries are prone to mixing up wishful thinking and evidence based conclusions.

There simply is no evidence regarding a mother goddess or communism. What we can say is that there was most likely some kind of funerary cult based on the treatment of bodies.
Surprisingly enough there also seems to have been some kind of gender equality.
Çatalhöyük might mark the point of change in this regard as it sits right at the edge of neolothic revolution, or it might be the strange exception. We simply do not have enough evidence at this point.

If you look at extant graves of a similar time period we often get a quite different picture. The beginning of sedentarism also marks the beginning of a division regarding gender and social class. We can see this both by burial objects and the nutritional deficiencies of the sceletal remains. This is in opposition to the hunter and gatherer society before this, where there is evidence that tasks and wealth was shared more equally.
Interesting enough, the beginning of settlements, while also marking the beginning of our modern society also coincides with a drop in life expectancy and a lot of the problems that are still prevalent nowadays. It's a really interesting aspect of socio-archeology.

Regarding tools, there are some brilliant research papers on Göbekli Tepe (a couple of years earlier and slightly different social structures).

Hence the unknowns and uncertains. I agree that we won't really ever have a clear picture of the type pf government or religion that these ancient people practiced.

By communism though it does seem that they did live in a community that most people were equal and that everyone shared in the labors. Not sure if this was by agreement or not. There were professions of course such as potters and flint knife makers but there doesn't seem like there were servants or superiors, although there may have been.

The reason for the drop in life expectancy has been speculatively linked to disease and homicide. Note again the high population density and likely poor sanitation in the city.

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2019-06-18/ty-article-magazine/early-farmers-in-9-000-year-old-turkish-town-couldnt-stand-each-other/0000017f-e353-d568-ad7f-f37bf5350000

"Out of 93 skulls from Çatalhöyük that were studied, 25 of them — in other words, over a quarter — showed evidence of healed fractures. Worse, in 12 cases the person had been beaten as many as five times, and not with mere soft fists."

"fecal matter from humans and beasts has been found in their residences, and they threw their garbage in pits by their homes — infectious disease was apparently rife. Up to one-third of remains from the town's early time show infection lesions on the bones."

Transition from Hunter Gatherer Society to Agricultural and Livestock swapped one problem set for another and it took some time to determine what those problems even were or how to approach them, such as sanitation and soil depletion.

Regarding wealth, Hunter/ Gather societies don't really allow for the collection of meaningful wealth. The largest tribe size was mostly around 50 people that an area could support without traveling excessively. Once people had property and real estate there were things to argue over other than who got with who.

[Uomo Senza Nome]

Still doable though, obviously they moved somewhere in BCE6400, its just a dugout ride across the Aegean to Greece from Turkey. Early Americans walked from Asia to North America before that.
You make it sound so far when you say 'continent'. 

"Europeans are descendants.."

If you subscribe to the Black Sea Deluge Theory it is possible that not only was the Black Sea not the size it is today but also a land bridge existed until around 6800BCE or about until 700 years after Çatalhöyük was founded.

[tirls]

I´ve found a playmate who likes prehistoric cultures.  
May we keep him?

I agree that Çatalhöyük seems to have been a mostly egalitarian society. What I meant was that it seams to be around the breaking point in time where we start seeing evidence for the establishment of social differences.
Whilst nutritional research in Catalhöyük, Ain Ghazal and Lepenski Vir for example point towards a largely equal social structure, there are studies for the period of around 6500 to 4500 BC (I think) in central Europe that show a variation of protein levels in individuals that point towards disparities in diets most likely gender and class based.
There are architectural differences, especially in Jericho, but also in Çatalhöyük and Ain Ghazal in terms of sizing of houses, decorations and prominence in burial spots. But I do think that Çatalhöyük, and most likely settlements in general of that time period, was generally more uniform in terms of community than later periods.

We can see in excavations across Europe, that contingent by the stabilisation of climate, early settlements occurred, co-occurring we see a drop in life expectancy, a rise in diseases and a start of separation in nutrition. We also see that with the introduction of wealth a rise in conflict occurs and the formation of gender and social hierarchies. Çatalhöyük is really interesting in that regard, as it is right at the breaking point of these and lacks a lot of the traits that we associate with the social changes of the neolithic revolution evident in Europe. It´s ironic that the evolution of a modern society also led to the biggest problems.

I haven´t had the time to keep up with publications in the last 4 years or so, so I´m not quite up to date. I´m also writing this during lunch break, so I can´t give you any quotes and sources right now.

If I remember correctly Neolithic Jericho has a rudimentary sewage systems with drains, but major advances in this area are more prevalent in Bronze Age and onward (or at least better documented).
Regarding sanitation I always found Tenochtitlan fascinating. Completely different time period, but it is a really interesting, documented approach to waste disposal in an environment that lends itself well to infectious diseases.

Thank you for the link about skull fractures, I hadn´t read about this.

[Uomo Senza Nome]

This brings us back around to some of the lessons from the earliest human attempts at civilized society.  Some of the things I drew from it:

We already know that wealth creates divisions in society and that some people, regardless of their current relative level of wealth will commit acts of violence, deception, theft, fraud and slander in order to obtain more. The amount and size of the wealth doesn't really matter, merely that wealth exists and that it can be transferred or conveyed without causing undue burden to the receiver. In a society without a codified ROL, you are on your own, and even one with a ROL you are still primarily your own keeper.

In early society the issue appears to become more pronounced as wealth emerges and becomes more visible and more easy to convey. When man was more migratory wealth was more difficult to obtain, maintain and convey. Wealth also had less purchasing power parity as it often didn't contain a means for wealth production, reducing labor or increasing status, therefore there was less incentive.

Disease becomes more prevalent in a large population living in close quarters. This is no surprise to science in the 21st Century.

This excellent article discusses that very thing:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025556413001235




Good sanitation practices help reduce the frequency of disease and slow it's spread.  Without proper sanitation, frequent movements to prevent the over contamination of the environment and keeping the group size small likely contributed to a lower incidence of disease in migratory hunter/gatherer humans. Avoiding contact with other groups likely assisted as well.

What is unclear is the time line from having a low incidence of disease in a densely populated society with decent sanitation to the same society without good sanitation.

Here is a limited data set from Iraq on Cholera, which is a historic problem there.



Note that during the two peak periods occurred during the Sunni Uprising and during the ISIS uprising.

Previous outbreaks tended to follow a stable repeating cycle. However the severity increased greatly, likely due to the infrastructure damage caused by US campaigns and the large amounts of forced relocations from those fleeing contested areas into camps in safer areas.