To the well-known Çatahőyük archaeological site today on the plains south of Konya.
I’ve been following in a small way the research on this site for few reasons. It is thought to be the oldest ‘city’ settlement of its size unearthed anywhere (inhabited some 9,000 years ago); it was never fortified for almost 2,000 years (suggesting a long period with a high degree of safety and absence of a fighting class); there is some evidence to suggest interesting combinations of gender role differentiation alongside possibly high levels of gender equality; and some special significance given to a mother/female figure/goddess.
When you approach this site across a vast plain, you see two mounds rising slightly above the horizon, now with large shelters setting over the two main excavation sites, as well as other buildings. Here lived some 3,500 to 8,000 people alongside the Carşamba River (which still runs nearby) and surrounded by an abundant flood plain – a source of reeds for mats and baskets, fish, water birds and birds eggs, and good clay for bricks. Hills rise on the near horizon which would have been forested with juniper and oak, the timbers found in the house roofs. The people here seemed to both raise crops and hunt and gather.
Houses, more than 150, were built windowless and almost wall to wall, without lanes or paths. Each one had a roof-opening through which a ladder reached to the rooftop – in fact a kind of plaza of rooftops where, in addition to spaces beyond the dwellings, community life would have taken place. It appears that after about 80 years of use, a house was filled in and built over, thus one reason for the gradually raising of the town mound over the centuries.
Among the many found artifacts is a fine obsidian mirror, a flint dagger with a finely carved bone handle in the shape of a curled snake, and various pots and implements (including a clay spice shaker, which by this model haven’t changed in 9,000 years). Small figurines have also been found: some of a heavy-bodied and breasted female, some phallic figurines, and many animal figurines. A number of house walls include paintings, many of human figures hunting and gathering. One unusual painting – of a series of blocks over which another figure sits – has been variously interpreted, including one theory that it is a diagram or kind of map of the community with a volcano (one was nearby) sitting over top.
Walking up the slope of the second mound, the river lined green not far off, the plain now irrigated and acres of sugar beets and industrialized beef farms, I remembered my experience of walking up a similarly situated hill at Wanuskewin First Nations north of Saskatoon. At the summit of that walk I sat quietly with a friend in a circular space, the prairie sloping down all around us in a wide full circle like the fall of a great flaring skirt. I had a strong sensation at that moment of the full roundedness of the earth, of being perched ever so small on its edge and of somehow being in some centre of earth life, then thinking of the First Nations people who hunted, gathered, told stories, felt passion, held ceremonies here for 6,000, even 20 or so thousand years … and the near-genocide against them that took place in a mere 30 or so years ... and this ever-so-tranquil centre, away from all the modern day centres, that wise people have unearthed, preserved and brought back to life, as others are doing in Çatahőyük.
Çatahőyük makes me wonder about the paths and tracks people move, and where why they settle – both the forms of ‘home’ where abundance is close by because it is and because the creatures who call these places home know how to help make where they are abundant. Wise people. And no fortresses, towers or fortifications in what became a region (and world) of these things. I like to imagine that that image on the house wall is a celebration of this place experienced as a lived place, home, our world, here.
Today, in the midst of the industrialized farms near Çatahőyük are the villages of farm labourers and small farmers (and perhaps many who are both). The houses and animal dwellings are mud brick, many of the roof timbers covered in mud, human and animal spaces hardly distinguishable, pieces of the latest farm machinery here and there. In fact one worker at the dig site comments on the similarity of the construction of the 9,000 year old buildings she is unearthering and those she and her neighbours live in today.
A number of the workers, to their own surprise it seems, make similar comments that connect the ancient past and present. Astonishing, especially in our time with its illusion of such rapid change, to stand in the midst of crafts and techniques that seem to still work well 9,000 years on.
I’ve been following in a small way the research on this site for few reasons. It is thought to be the oldest ‘city’ settlement of its size unearthed anywhere (inhabited some 9,000 years ago); it was never fortified for almost 2,000 years (suggesting a long period with a high degree of safety and absence of a fighting class); there is some evidence to suggest interesting combinations of gender role differentiation alongside possibly high levels of gender equality; and some special significance given to a mother/female figure/goddess.
When you approach this site across a vast plain, you see two mounds rising slightly above the horizon, now with large shelters setting over the two main excavation sites, as well as other buildings. Here lived some 3,500 to 8,000 people alongside the Carşamba River (which still runs nearby) and surrounded by an abundant flood plain – a source of reeds for mats and baskets, fish, water birds and birds eggs, and good clay for bricks. Hills rise on the near horizon which would have been forested with juniper and oak, the timbers found in the house roofs. The people here seemed to both raise crops and hunt and gather.
Houses, more than 150, were built windowless and almost wall to wall, without lanes or paths. Each one had a roof-opening through which a ladder reached to the rooftop – in fact a kind of plaza of rooftops where, in addition to spaces beyond the dwellings, community life would have taken place. It appears that after about 80 years of use, a house was filled in and built over, thus one reason for the gradually raising of the town mound over the centuries.
Among the many found artifacts is a fine obsidian mirror, a flint dagger with a finely carved bone handle in the shape of a curled snake, and various pots and implements (including a clay spice shaker, which by this model haven’t changed in 9,000 years). Small figurines have also been found: some of a heavy-bodied and breasted female, some phallic figurines, and many animal figurines. A number of house walls include paintings, many of human figures hunting and gathering. One unusual painting – of a series of blocks over which another figure sits – has been variously interpreted, including one theory that it is a diagram or kind of map of the community with a volcano (one was nearby) sitting over top.
Walking up the slope of the second mound, the river lined green not far off, the plain now irrigated and acres of sugar beets and industrialized beef farms, I remembered my experience of walking up a similarly situated hill at Wanuskewin First Nations north of Saskatoon. At the summit of that walk I sat quietly with a friend in a circular space, the prairie sloping down all around us in a wide full circle like the fall of a great flaring skirt. I had a strong sensation at that moment of the full roundedness of the earth, of being perched ever so small on its edge and of somehow being in some centre of earth life, then thinking of the First Nations people who hunted, gathered, told stories, felt passion, held ceremonies here for 6,000, even 20 or so thousand years … and the near-genocide against them that took place in a mere 30 or so years ... and this ever-so-tranquil centre, away from all the modern day centres, that wise people have unearthed, preserved and brought back to life, as others are doing in Çatahőyük.
Çatahőyük makes me wonder about the paths and tracks people move, and where why they settle – both the forms of ‘home’ where abundance is close by because it is and because the creatures who call these places home know how to help make where they are abundant. Wise people. And no fortresses, towers or fortifications in what became a region (and world) of these things. I like to imagine that that image on the house wall is a celebration of this place experienced as a lived place, home, our world, here.
Today, in the midst of the industrialized farms near Çatahőyük are the villages of farm labourers and small farmers (and perhaps many who are both). The houses and animal dwellings are mud brick, many of the roof timbers covered in mud, human and animal spaces hardly distinguishable, pieces of the latest farm machinery here and there. In fact one worker at the dig site comments on the similarity of the construction of the 9,000 year old buildings she is unearthering and those she and her neighbours live in today.
A number of the workers, to their own surprise it seems, make similar comments that connect the ancient past and present. Astonishing, especially in our time with its illusion of such rapid change, to stand in the midst of crafts and techniques that seem to still work well 9,000 years on.
City of Hope
ReplyDeleteThe first city we know of
turns out to be unfortified
nine thousand years of peace
showing us that we, ordinary people
with peace in hearts have reason
to hope, reason to know
fear and violence is not the human way
not the only way, not inevitable
we might claim, we might know
these as the true ancestors
of who we really are