SEDENTARISM, AGGREGATION, AND AGRICULTURE IN ANATOLIA, ÇATALHÖYÜK

Abstract

The first question is about the language or languages spoken in Anatolia before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans who will only come and mostly go through two or three millennia later when Çatalhöyük will no longer be an active center. Agriculture and herding are very important if not dominant in this period when the population stops roaming around and when it establishes sedentary dense agglomerate cities. All the more so with the spiritual center of Gobekli Tepe which is about one millennium older. What came first? Spirituality and spiritual centers, or sedentarism and agriculture? But this sedentarism and agriculture developed in Anatolia long before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. We need to see that the 8 or 10 millennia of the peak of the Ice Age were a long period when Homo Sapiens had to learn how to exploit nature intensively to survive the harsh conditions of that time. The second problem is the status of women in a society where the birth of 10 to 12 or even 13 children per woman is essential for the community, hence the species, to survive and survival was a central instinct in Paleolithic and Neolithic Hominin communities deeply impressed by the death rate of children from birth to six years of age. How was this possible and how these children were taken care of during the 18 months of breastfeeding and the subsequent 3-4 years of dependency? And that brought up an average of three children per woman able to live a full 29-year-long procreative life. What was the training and education the 6-13-year-old young pre-puberty children received and from whom? Can we seriously consider that a community then was a simple collection if not a juxtaposition of autonomous households? Who and what regulated the distribution of fields, the management of herds, the management of resources, the production of tools, weapons, cloth, and clothing, the construction of houses, and the providing of fuel, not to mention the management of hunting that can only be collective?