Çatalhöyük

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Çatalhöyük with surroundings..jpg

Catal Huyuk was a city in Anatolia that existed from 7500 to 5700 BCE[1], with an estimated 6,000[2] to 10,000[3] people. One of the earliest known cities, Catal Huyuk is notable for gender equality, economic equality, the absence of a State, an absence of war, and an apparent ecological orientation. 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 Mellaart's work in the 1950s and 1960s, the anarchist and social ecologist 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 egalitarian 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]

Culture

With no elite class or gender hierarchy, the whole population experienced lives full of feasts, music, dance, and mural painting. Houses stood wall to wall with no space between them, forming what Mellaart called a "honeycomb structure." People moved between houses by walking across the rooftops. While people lived in nearly identical houses and were buried with roughly the same quality and quantity of goods, the wide diversity of these goods suggests to Bernhard Brosius that Catal Huyuk's society respected people's individuality.[6]

The religion appears to have been non-hierarchical and based on a goddesses-centered cosmology. Of 41 excavated sculptures of deities, 33 were of goddesses and only 8 depicted masculine gods. Although there were priestesses, there was "no evidence of a hierarchical organization."[7]

Women were equal to men in Catal Huyuk. Hodder explains, "Thanks to modern scientific techniques, we have seen that women and men were eating very similar foods, lived similar lives and worked in similar works. The same social stature was given to both men and women. We have learned that men and women were equally approached".[8]

The society seems to have been very peaceful, with no signs of violent death among the many hundreds of skeletons excavated by James Mellaart.[9] Paintings do not show evidence of war or crime.[10]


Economy

Economic equality can be deduced from the facts that dwellings were all roughly the same size, and burial goods were of roughly the same quantity and quality.[11] Bookchin writes that there is no evidence that Catal Huyuk had an internal market economy.[12]

Researchers estimate that half of people's labor time focused on meeting people's basic needs, and the other half focused on cultural production such as organizing feasts, dances, rituals, education, and the painting of murals.[13]

Average average life expectancy, of 32 years, surpassed that of exploited populations for subsequent millennia, until around 1750.

Environment

Paintings of animals may have suggested a reverence for non-human life. The combination of small farming, hunting, and gathering fed the society that lasted about two millennia.[14]

Crime

While people were buried with goods, there is no evidence of grave robbery, and the paintings do not depict fighting or crime. Brosius speculates:

Taken as a whole, these facts today seem as the archaeology of an utopia. However, we must understand that 10,000 people without central power could never have lived together in such density for such a long time if they had not possessed nonviolent methods for solving conflicts in the first place. If use of force had been part of the repertoire of strategies for conflict resolution, settlements such as Çatalhöyük would not have been able to survive for such a long time - no one could have prevented the settlement from dissolving. Another argument in favour of the absence of violence a priori is the above mentioned complete absence of destruction in the cultic area: people had developed images of the beyond which were just as peaceful as they themselves were.[15]


Neighboring Societies

Bernhard Brosius argues that Catal Huyuk existed in a context of widespread non-patriarchal "neolithic communism" lasting for three thousand years and spreading to all of Anatolia. There is evidence of a social revolution in the city of Cayonu in the year 7200 BCE that overthrew a violent class society and installed an apparently egalitarian society more similar to Catal Huyuk.

However, Catal Huyuk's buildings and artifacts remained exceptionally well-preserved compared to the neighboring cities and towns.[16]


  1. Brandon Miller, "Catal Huyuk: Origins of Civilizations," Alternative Archeology, http://alternativearchaeology.jigsy.com/catal-huyuk
  2. Murray Bookchin, The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship (San Fransisco: Sierra Club Books, 1987), 18.
  3. Miller, "Catal Huyuk".
  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, Rise, 18-19.
  6. Bernhard Brosius, "From Çayönü to Çatalhöyük: Emergence and development of an egalitarian society", urkommunismus.de, 2005, http://www.urkommunismus.de/catalhueyuek_en.html.
  7. Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (New York: Henry Holy and Company, 1973), 180, 182.
  8. Çatalhöyük excavations reveal gender equality in ancient settled life", Daily News, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/Default.aspx?PageID=238&NID=72411&NewsCatID=375
  9. Fromm, Anatomy, 180.
  10. Brosius, "From Çayönü to Çatalhöyük.
  11. Fromm, Anatomy, 179. Brosius, "From Çayönü to Çatalhöyük.
  12. Bookchin, 22.
  13. Brosius, "From Çayönü to Çatalhöyük.
  14. Bookchin, The Rise of Urbanization, 18-19.
  15. Brosius, "From Çayönü to Çatalhöyük.
  16. Brosius, "From Çayönü to Çatalhöyük.