The Extremely Ancient City of Catalhuyuk, 7,500 - 5,700 BC.
One of the greatest questions to to plague historians is the question of when civilization began. This is a very complex question, after all, how does one define civilization? Typically scholars and regular people define civilization as having cities, writing, art, science, religion, industry, agriculture, and a structured society with a division of labor. So when did we as mankind adopt all these things? When did we cease to be hunter gatherers or nomadic herding cultures and become civilized.
Typically, mainstream historians set the date for civilization around 3,000 BC. This is roughly when complex societies began to sprout up in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China. All that came before is typically titled “pre-history”. However, archaeological anomalies have been discovered which shake the notion that civilization began on that date. For example, the most recent discovery of a large monolithic religious structure at Gobleki Tepe in Turkey challenges the mainstream theory, especially considering that it is dated to around the 8th-10th millennium BC, thousands of years before the supposed date of civilization. One site that most intrigues peashooter is Catalhuyuk, also in Turkey. While not as old as Gobleki Tepe (Catalhuyuk was occupied between 7,500 BC - 5,700 BC), I find it a much grander discovery than Gobleki. Whereas Gobleki was a religious site for nomadic peoples (at least the current theory goes), Catalhuyuk is a large city that once was host to a very complex and civilized society.
Catalhuyuk was originally discovered in 1958 by the archaeologist James Mellaart. Unfortunately Mellaart was accused of illegal antiquities smuggling and thus banned from Turkey, so earnest excavations of the site didn’t begin until 1993. What was found amazed archaeologists and historians, as they discovered a large, ancient city far older than any other site of its type in the world. Founded around 7,500 BC, at its height Catalhuyuk boasted a population of 10,000, and averaged a population around 5,000 - 7,000. The city was abandoned around 5,700 BC for reasons that are unknown. Consisting of a several buildings constructed from mud brick with plaster interiors, there were no city streets or foot paths, rather the buildings are constructed together into one large honeycomb-like mega building. Life was very communal, as people would have needed to walk through various rooms, domiciles, and buildings to travel through the city. Some of the buildings have been identified as religious centers, workshops, storage spaces, and graneries. Life in Catalhuyuk was not bad, in fact recreations and restorations of Catalhuyuk show that its people were not cave men but very civilized people who lived in a complex society. I myself wouldn’t mind living in a cozy apartment that looked like this…
Furthermore, Catalhuyuk had most of the things that we would define as being civilized. Evidence shows that Catalhuyuk was a mixed agrarian, pastoral (herding), and hunter gatherer society as granaries have been identified as well as hunting tools and art depicting hunting. Thus, the common diet was a well balanced diet that would have consisted of grain based foods, as well as meat and dairy. Evidence also shows that fruit, peas, and nuts were common. Numerous paintings, murals, sculptures, pottery and pieces of jewelry demonstrate that the city’s people had a complex artistic culture. Tools found on the site show that they had more advanced technology than most nomadic societies. Amazingly, flint originating from Syria and shells from the Mediterranean demonstrate that they had merchants with outside trade contacts. Most importantly the people of Catalhuyuk were not merely farmers, herders, and hunters, but to sustain such a culture there were also a number of craftsmen, artisans, builders, artists, merchants, religious professionals, and perhaps clerical and government officials.
One thing Catalhuyuk did not have that most other so called civilizations have is a system of writing. Thus, knowledge of Catalhuyuk is very limited as they kept no records and obviously nothing of their oral tradition survives. However, peashooter would definitely qualify Catalhuyuk as a shining example of early civilization. What is most intriguing is the thought that surely Catalhuyuk, and a couple of other sites, could not have been the only sites to have existed during that period. Surely there were other similar cultures and civilizations around the world at the time. It would seem ridiculous, if not outright preposterous to assume that Catalhuyuk was a lone city in a world populated by Neolithic cave dudes
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