Chatalhöyük

Main article: History of Turkey

Some scholars previously believed that Chatalhyuk was the oldest city in the world, an early agricultural settlement and the largest settlement of its time. However, Jericho is now considered the oldest city, and the oldest traces of nascent agriculture have been found in Tel Abu Hureira in northern Syria. In Central Anatolia, Chatalhyuk is also not the oldest center of agriculture, for example, traces of cultivated plants 8400 BC were found in Ashikly-Hyuk.

However, research has proved that the Fertile Crescent (Levant and Mesopotamia) is not the only center of the Neolithic revolution. Previously, archaeologists did not even assume that Anatolia could be fertile soil for the emergence of rural communities. Most researchers are now convinced that agriculture came to Europe from Anatolia.

Chatalhöyük Reconstruction

Geography

The settlement clearly stands out among the Iconium Plain surrounding it. The Konya plateau in Gamirka is the bottom of a dried lake of the Pleistocene era, located at an altitude of just over 1 thousand m above sea level. The rivers that flowed into the lake in ancient times formed fan-shaped deltas. On the largest of the deltas, on the banks of the Charshamba River, Chatalhyuk was located.

The Charshamba River initially flowed between the two hills and in an arid climate provided fresh water to the inhabitants of the settlement.

It is not yet clear why people chose this particular place. One theory suggests that a person settled this area in connection with agriculture, however, findings in the settlement of Ashikly-Khoyuk show that most plants and animals were not domesticated and that the village lived in a hunting and gathering culture.

Chatalhyuk Hill of artificial origin, created for a thousand years by building new buildings on top of old ones.

Researches

Chatalhyuk was used by local residents as a place for grazing cattle, with which certain superstitions were associated. On November 10, 1958, three researchers from the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, David French, Alan Hall and James Mellaart, noticed the hill during the search for early settlements on the Konya Plateau. On the same day, three finds of ceramics and obsidian were discovered, it became clear that the hill is a huge find of the Neolithic era. Mellaart was busy excavating Hajilar until 1961, returning with his wife, who worked as a photographer, and a Turkish group, they began major excavations that continued until 1965. Under the direction of James Mellaart, Danish paleobotanist Hans Helbaek from the National Museum of Denmark worked in Chatalhøjuk. Helbaek found large amounts of domestic wheat (single-grain and double-grain), barley and peas.

The place turned out to be unique and became one of the most famous in the world. Mellaart came to the digs amid the Dorac scandal. Turkish authorities suspected the archaeologist of stealing and taking out the finds. Mellaart claimed that a young woman asked him to evaluate some "antiques" that were apparently found in four graves of the village of Dorak in northern Turkey. Mellaart sketched some finds. The sketches were subsequently published in The Illustrated London News in 1959, which attracted the attention of Turkish authorities, who believed that the archaeologist had stolen the finds. However, the search for a young woman and stolen finds did not yield results, in 1965 the Department of Antiquities of Turkey revoked Mellaart permission to excavate.

In 1987, the British archaeologist Colin Renfrew put forward the so-called Anatolian hypothesis, which correlated the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans with the Chatalhyuk settlement.

In 1993, research resumed by a new team of archaeologists led by Ian Hodder and continues at present every summer. The new excavations use micromorphological analysis, where archaeologists use microscopes to get the most complete information. Hodder's group approaches the excavations quite carefully, and while Mellaart's group excavated more than 200 buildings in 4 years, the current group excavated only one or two buildings each year in the first few years.

During the 2006 season, 230 people took part in international and interdisciplinary excavations, which became one of the largest events of this kind in the world. To finance archaeological excavations, Ian Hodder uses the services of sponsoring companies (Boeing, Fiat, British Airways, Shell), and the local population also participates in archaeological expeditions.

The dimensions of Chatal-Hyuyuk in different sources are called different, ranging from 32 acres (12.96 ha) and 13.5 ha to 20 ha. This suggests that Chatalhyuk is a huge settlement, by 2006 only 5% of its entire territory had been excavated.

Connection to Hasandag Volcano

Obsidian is found in large numbers in Chatalhyuk, which appeared due to the eruption of the Hasandag volcano (3253 meters above sea level) on the eastern outskirts of the valley at a distance of more than 150 km from the settlement.

The volcano has a caldera 4-5 km wide, which arose 7,500 years BC. The last eruption occurred around 6200 BC. The two-headed stratovolcano survived four episodes of caldera collapse. Modern education arose in the last caldera. Lava domes formed two main peaks, the western peak is higher and has two craters. Hassan is surrounded by more than 25 lava sweats and cones of ash.

It is known that the Cappadocian obsidian was found in the Southern Levant and on the banks of the Euphrates in places with dating even before the appearance of Chatalhyuk, which makes it clear that settlements east of Hasandag could not be depending on the supply of obsidian from Chatalhyuk. With the help of energy dispersion X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, it was possible to find out that obsidian in Chatalhöyuk also came from two places in the south of Cappadocia, Göllu Dag and Nenzi Dag, which is 190 km northeast of the city.

Tools of the inhabitants of Chatalkhoyuk from obsidian. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. Photo by TAdviser, 2023

Inhabitants

Both Ashiklykhyyuk and Chatalkhyuk are very large compared to the usual Neolithic settlements of this time, and researchers believe that this is the result of gathering the population from small villages to live together. in Chatalhyuk - perhaps from fifty such villages. In Chatalhöyük they and represented by agglomerates^[1]

The number of inhabitants is estimated from 3.5 to 8 thousand ^[2]. At the same time, an average of 150 people lived in other settlements of that time.

Infant mortality was high, as quite a few children's graves were found. The bones of many children contain signs of anemia, which was likely due to malnutrition.

The average life expectancy was approximately 32 years, and the "gerons" survived to 60 years.

Two specimens (Ch51 and Ch54) from the burial chamber (number 6000) in space 327 (seventh millennium BC) have mitochondrial haplogroups K1b1c and K2a11. Mitochondrial haplogroups N, K, K1a17, W1c, H, H + 73, X2b4, U, U3b,^[3] were also identified in Chatalhyuk.

Two mounds

Chatalhöyük consists of two separate mounds:

• East Mound, dating from about 7100-5900 BC, and
• Western Kurgan (Kuchuk-Huyul - "little hill"), dating from about 6000-5600 BC and being a Copper Age settlement.

Architecture

Residents of Chatalhyuk used vertical development. Chatalhyuk Hill has been created over the centuries by building new houses on top of old ones, which is currently 17 m of the archaeological layer. The houses stood so close that there were no passages between them. Also, the houses did not have doorways, in most cases the entrance was arranged from the roof, where stairs were laid both inside and outside the houses, so the "city traffic" apparently passed along the roofs of buildings. The entrance was also the only vent for both the supply of fresh air and the removal of smoke from open foci that did not have pipes. Similar modern villages that look like Chatalhyuk are the pueblo of the North American Indians and Dogon settlements in Mali in West Africa.

The "cellular" architecture assumed unification: there were about 1,500 copies of one model of a dwelling with an equal layout and organization of space.

Computer reconstruction of a residential cell

There were some open space spaces between the houses. They acted as garbage dumps from kitchens. Animals and plant waste, pottery, figurines, beads are found in them. Some finds are interpreted as human feces, and places such as toilets. Faeces and organic waste in a densely populated settlement must have posed a risk to public health and created a stench.

The houses were predominantly made of clay (mud brick), with the exception of the roof, which had load-bearing wooden beams. Archaeologists believe that the life of the house was about 70 years. Every year it was necessary to add a new layer of clay. The roof and walls were covered with polished alabaster.

Model Chatal-Huyuk from the museum in Weimar

Along with a stove and a hole in the roof, which was a local kitchen and located on the south side, there was usually a small opening in the wall that led to a small room. Such a room was used as a warehouse. In total, the house in area averaged 23 m ² (varies from 11 to 48 m ²).

In addition to the stove and fireplace, the main room had benches, low platforms, food storage tanks. Each building served as a home for 5 to 10 people, but there is not a single house that has more than 8 "beds."

Inside, the rooms were covered with a layer of soot from the furnace and fireplace. When inhaled, soot gets into the lungs, so it can be found on the ribs of buried inhabitants. An analysis of the ribs of the two sexes was carried out, but it showed that the amount of soot in women does not differ from the amount of soot in men. Thus, women did not spend more time indoors than men. Isotope analysis of the bones did not yield a result about the difference in diet between the two sexes. In addition, the location of the graves has nothing to do with gender. Women and men appeared to have the same status in society.

Painting walls in houses

The walls of the large houses were richly decorated with paintings. Their purpose remains unclear. Some of the frescoes depict geometric patterns, while other pictorial scenes, including the hunting of bison or deer by men with erect phallus, depictions of now extinct large ungulates. There are some differences in art objects: the frescoes mainly depict men, while the figurines depict women.

About a third of the houses were more colourful than the rest, with sculptures of bull heads.

The complex ornamental painting of horizons X-III imitated patterns and even the border of woven Anatolian carpets. Hand prints known from ancient times, according to Melaart, formed "a continuous curb around the complex compositions of horizons VII-VI A."

Clearing the wall of one sanctuary, archaeologists noticed a strange drawing on it: some kind of spotted strip consisting of separate rectangles, and nearby - several lines and circles resembling an image of a mountain with a double peak spewing stones. The mural remained incomprehensible for a long time. Then they guessed to compare her with the plan of the already excavated quarters of Chatalkhoyuk. The similarities were striking. An unknown artist depicted in a fresco a plan for his native settlement. The oldest plan in the world.

But why did he do it? Maybe the reason for such a drawing was some extraordinary and unusual reason? The answer to this question was helped by the second part of the fresco - the one that resembles the eruption of a "two-humped" volcano. Not far from the settlement is Mount Hasan Dag, which, like the mural, has two peaks. On this mountain, the inhabitants of Chatalkhoyuk mined volcanic glass - obsidian, which was used to make various tools.

Now this volcano is considered extinct, but it is known that as early as the 2nd millennium BC it was active. Apparently, researchers suggest, this volcano was a sacred mountain for the inhabitants of Chatal-Guyuk, an inhabitant of the gods. And naturally, the volcanic eruption was seen as the wrath of the gods threatening the village. This event was captured on the wall of the sanctuary. If this assumption is true, we are dealing with a unique - and again the oldest - eyewitness account of the 7th millennium BC volcanic eruption. It was later reported that the eruption noted on the plan occurred around 6,200 BC.

Ceramics, jewelry, metal

The question of the time of the appearance of pottery is one of the most important issues of archeology. It was believed that earthenware was "invented" at the same time as agriculture, or maybe even somewhat earlier. Excavations at Chatalhöyük showed that the early farmers of the settlement did not yet know the pottery.

Chatal-Huyuk shows the transition between the pre-ceramic Neolithic and the ceramic Neolithic. Archaeologists do not find ceramics in the old layers, but jugs begin to appear in younger layers between 7050 BC and 6800 BC. e. everywhere. From the very beginning, they were probably used only for storage, and only then (about 6500-6400 BC) for cooking. The youngest layers had jugs with simple geometric patterns, and the jugs with Kuchuk-Huyük have more complex geometric patterns.

During the excavation, a wooden spoon was found - again the oldest in the world, which testified that already nine thousand years ago spoons were in use and in their form they were no different from all their subsequent sisters.

Mirrors were made of polished obsidian. Other obsidian pieces found were processed for use as knives, arrowheads and spears.

A unique ceremonial flint dagger treated with a push-up retouch found in the men's burial had a knob in the form of a weaving "eight" snake.

During excavations in the houses of Chatalkheyuk, a large number of beads were found - they, apparently, were a favorite decoration of the inhabitants of the settlement. A variety of materials went to make beads: slate, white paste, red ocher, boar fangs, bone, animal teeth, chalk, burnt clay, fossil coal, calcite, alabaster, jasper, obsidian, apatite, serpentine, red, green, blue, gray and black limestones, shells from the Mediterranean Sea, etc.

And some beads were... metal. From copper and lead. Metal in the Stone Age? But it was believed that even the most primitive use of metal begins much later, after several millennia, and this is confirmed by absolutely all the data, and a lot of them have already accumulated. What's the matter? Probably, the process of developing metals was much longer than it seemed to us so far. It took several millennia for a person to get acquainted with metals and learn to use their properties. Residents of Chatal-Guyuk took, of course, only the very first steps. For them, the fossil ore they sometimes found was probably just an unusual kind of stone^[4].

Whether this is so is not yet clear. But undoubtedly - metal products in a human dwelling appeared almost simultaneously with the first clay pot.

Economy

Residents grew double-grain wheat, as well as single-grain wheat, peas, common bob, clear peas, lentils. In addition, fruits of wild plants such as almonds, acorns, pistachios were found. Some archaeobotanics believe that people from Chatal-Hyuyuk used fields located 10 km from the settlement.

Sheep and goats were domesticated, while cattle appeared to be wild. Horses were also not domesticated, they were also hunted like pigs and deer. In addition to hunting, residents fished and collected bird eggs.

On shards from the Western Kurgan, dated 5900-5800 BC. e. (calibrated date), found the remains of dishes from barley, wheat, peas and peas (Vicia ervilia), blood and milk of cows, sheep and goats. Barley endosperm was identified (used for brewing). Only milk whey was found in one vessel, which means that the residents of Chatal-Hyuyuk made cheese or yogurt (prostokvash).

The findings of scale and slag suggested that the inhabitants of Chatalkhoyuk were among the first in the world to learn how to smelt copper from ore. A repeated study of artifacts showed that one of these artifacts - a bunch of partially burned, copper-containing green mineral - fell into the fire by accident, possibly during the cremation of the remains of people painted with green pigment.

Trade

The pine and juniper beams used by residents in their homes went a long way - they may have been brought from the Taurus Mountains.

Flint was supplied from Syria.

Mollusk shells from the Mediterranean and Red Sea were discovered.

Whether residents of Chatal-Hyuyuk sold obsidian or not, the fact of finding the items brought suggests an exchange of goods and long-distance trade.

Social relations

Excavations do not give an answer about stratification in Chatalkhoyuk's society, all houses were not very different in size. In addition, not a single workshop house was found. Also, no public squares and administrative buildings were found. Thus, it is very likely that the settlement did not have centralized governance. The lack of workshops suggests that Chatalhyuk was not a city, but rather a sprawling village.

Isotope analysis of the bones did not yield a result about the difference in diet between the two sexes. In addition, the location of the graves has nothing to do with gender. Women and men appeared to have the same status in society.

Clay seals were found in the young layers. It is not entirely clear what they were intended for, perhaps this is a mark of ownership of objects.

Clay seal discovered by archaeologist Jan Hodder in Chatalhöyük. Photo: Jason Quinlan

If this is the case, then assumptions about the presence of private property have ground. Although the houses were close to each other, they did not have common walls. Each family was thus relatively independent of the neighbours and renovated their home at will.

No traces of war or violence were found in Chatalhyuk. Perhaps it was a peaceful society or the city was a fortress. It was impossible to get into the city after the stairs on the outer row of houses were removed, since there was no direct entrance to the city.

Frescoes, reliefs, figurines and religious representations

When archaeologists excavated the layers of the settlement dating back to the beginning of the 7th millennium BC, their attention was attracted by the layout of the so-called. "Shrines": all of them, and more than twenty of them were opened, were near each other, surrounded by residential buildings.

Some of the oldest frescoes in the world were discovered in these rooms (another place where the first frescoes were discovered - Jal al-Mughar in Syria, 9 thousand years BC. e.). Some of the frescoes depict geometric patterns, while other pictorial scenes: the hunting of bison or deer by men with erect phallus, depictions of now extinct large ungulates.

Wall painting, 7500-5000 thousand years BC. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara

One of the murals in the "sanctuary" consists of several rows of figures, which can be interpreted as an image of houses. In the middle of the picture is a drawing that is interpreted as the double-headed peak of the extinct Hasandag volcano during the eruption, observed from Chatalhyuk. This fresco is regarded as the first ever example of landscape painting or cartography, although other researchers see it as only a geometric ornament.

Another mural shows a person working (or dancing) while holding a curved object - possibly a bow. A leopard skin loincloth is worn on a person. There are murals that depict birds of prey - vultures. There are drawings when predators are shown along with decapitated people.

In Chatalhyuk, on the walls, in addition to frescoes, there were reliefs, the oldest known so far. The reliefs were sculpted from raw clay and painted with mineral paints. Made of fragile material, of course, they could not be especially durable, and they were often corrected, restored.

In one of the tombs, the relief of two leopards was discovered - a male and a female. By the way, the similarity of the images with the original was very great - ancient sculptures successfully conveyed even the spotted skin of animals. From the point of view of modern art, they should perhaps even throw a rebuke in excessive naturalism. Under the relief, archaeologists discovered another, followed by a third, fourth... Forty leopard reliefs - one under the other! And they were all exactly the same.

Such constancy could only indicate that the reliefs, like the frescoes, for the inhabitants of Chatal-Guyuk had not only artistic significance - otherwise they would not strive so stubbornly to duplicate the destroyed images^[5].

Soon another discovery was made. Small figurines. Most often, these were rather crudely made figures of women, less often men, even less often animals.

Many female figurines of marble, brown and blue limestone, calcite, slate, basalt, alabaster and clay have been found. Among the most famous finds, a 16.5 cm high burnt clay figurine stands out, depicting a sitting obese woman with a weapon who rests on two large cats.

Some scientists consider two cats to be lions, while others believe that they are leopards. Some scholars offer a version that the figurine depicts a woman who is about to give birth. The figurine with a sitting woman is the most complex of the figures found. Among the simpler ones, there is a female figure with a hole in the back, perhaps grain was poured into this hole.

The find of 2016 is a figurine of a woman made of marble in excellent preservation. Dating - at least 6 thousand years BC.

So, three groups of images: frescoes, reliefs, figurines. And when they were compared, a very large similarity of plots was revealed - most of them were associated with religious ideas.

The inhabitants of Chatalkhoyuk depended primarily on agriculture. Therefore, it is clear that their religion was part of the circle of typical agricultural religions. The only thing that can be surprising here is its unexpectedly developed character. The greatest honor was enjoyed by the female deity. This goddess was depicted as sitting in a place of honor surrounded by animals dedicated to her, then pregnant, then giving life. Her husband was probably the patron saint of cattle breeding - his symbol was a bull.

Bullhead sculptures were with a feature, they were mounted either on walls or on low platforms, some of these bulls leading entire rows of heads.

The many sculptures of bull heads and figurines of obese women led archaeologists to think that the religious life of the inhabitants was focused on the worship of the cult of the bull and the cult of the "Great Mother." Because the bodies of high-status individuals were buried separately from skulls, the researchers compared the number of similar male and female burials and found that it was approximately the same. In this regard, researchers of the 2000s suggested that the community was neither patriarchal nor matriarchal, and the meaning of the image of female figures was different from the worship of the Mother Goddess.

Burials and cult of the skull

Burials have been discovered in many homes. 68 people were buried in one of the houses. The bodies of the deceased were buried under the floor of houses, most often under hearths and other internal elevations, along with gifts: precious and semi-precious stones, weapons, fabrics, wooden vessels. A similar practice was observed until the 20th century on the Polynesian island of Tikopia.

An analysis of the teeth of buried people showed that people who were not related by biological relationship were buried in the graves of one house.

The remains of the deceased were carefully swaddled and often put in woven baskets or wrapped in reed mats. Since skeletons are often dismembered, it is assumed that before burial, the bodies were exposed outdoors for a long time, after which only bones were buried.

A special method of burial - the so-called excarnation - took place as follows. According to the iconography of horizon VII, on specially equipped towers like the Dahm of the Zoroastrian cult, the dead were placed with their heads separated from the body. Vultures or other scavenging birds, also known from the iconography of horizon VIII, ate flesh, removing soft tissues. After that, the cleaned remains were collected and moved to the dwellings, buried under the benches before the annual repair and renewal. In addition to red ochre as an archetypal dye of inobradation, blue or green paint was applied to the neck and forehead.

Sometimes the skulls were separated, probably for use in a ritual, as they are found elsewhere in the settlement. The skulls found were covered in alabaster, modeling the face, and painted with ochre. Similar customs are known among the population from the Neolithic settlements of the Mediterranean, including from Jericho and Chaenyu (Turkey). All this can talk about the skull cult in Chatal-Hyuk. Because the bodies of high-status individuals were buried separately from skulls, the researchers compared the number of similar male and female burials and found that it was approximately the same.

Movement to the Balkans

It is not clear why people left Chatalhyuk. Some archaeologists have suggested that there was a rapid decline in settlements of 6 thousand years BC due to the destruction of the local environment as a result of excessive use of wood for the construction of houses with lime. However, this theory is refuted by finds in the young layers of Chatalkhoyuk - this construction method was no longer used there.

The spread of the Neolithic beyond Asia Minor - to the Balkan Peninsula - according to researcher Bled S. Duhring, began no earlier than 6500-6200 BC. e. He calls it the second Neolithic revolution and sees the reasons for it not only and not so much in droughts, then spread across a wide region, how much in the socio-economic changes in Anatolia^[6]It was at this time that the population of Chatalkhoyuk moved from the eastern hill to the western, the male figurines disappeared, replacing the female ones, and a number of dramatic changes were taking place. Old communities disintegrate, houses gravitate towards free spaces, streets appear. Cattle have become smaller - apparently completely domestic. This increased security. Houses have become more autonomous, the settlement is slightly smaller, apparently, people have a desire to separate from the community. The free lands were filled with new settlements, among which the hierarchy is noticeable. The deterioration of the climate in such conditions pushed on the development of new territories.

Books

One of the four chapters is dedicated to Chatalhyuk. February 2021

See also

• Neolithic in Russia

Notes