Çatalhöyük

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Çatalhöyük with surroundings..jpg

Catal Huyuk was a city that existed from 7500 to 5700 BCE[1], with an estimated 6,000[2] to 10,000[3] people.

The city combined agriculture with hunting and gathering, and is notable for gender equality, economic equality, the absence of a State, and an apparent orientation to ecological sustainability. Ian Hodder, a Stanford archeologist who has led the excavation of the site since the 1990s, explains:

“People lived with the principle of equality in Çatalhöyük, especially considering the hierarchy that appeared in other settlements in the Middle East. This makes Çatalhöyük different. There was no leader, government or administrative building; men and women were equal.[4]

Citing the archeologist James Melaart's work in the 1950s and 1960s, the anarchist Murray Bookchin writes:

Its tool kit and highly naturalistic artistry suggest an ecologically oriented community of late Paleolithic hunters and gatherers rather than an early Neolithic community of food cultivators. The culture is marked by a very sophisticated stone and bone technics, by markedly collective dwellings adorned with images of animals and shamanlike figures amidst paintings of reindeer, leopards, and bow-carrying hunters [... ] Nor do hierarchy and warfare seem to be features of the city's social life. Judging from the size of Çatal's dwellings and the implements found in burial remains, the city was fairly egalitaratin despite minor differences that are observable. There are no 'obvious signs of violence or deliberate signs of destruction', Mellart observes for the original city and its nearby successor, both of which were simply abandoned for no apparent reason after centuries of occupancy. Cases of violent death among the hundreds of skeletons examined on the sites are notable for their absence.[5]

  1. Miller, Brandon, "Catal Huyuk: Origins of Civilizatoins," Alternative Archeology, http://alternativearchaeology.jigsy.com/catal-huyuk
  2. Bookchin, Murray, The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship (San Fransisco: Sierra Club Books, 1987), 18.
  3. Miller, ibid.
  4. " Çatalhöyük excavations reveal gender equality in ancient settled life", Daily News, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/Default.aspx?PageID=238&NID=72411&NewsCatID=375
  5. Bookchin, ibid, 18-19.