Chapter 2

Hunters and Gatherers

• They hunted animals• Gathered plants for food• Were Nomads (even migrated)• Lived in natural or transportable shelters• Lived in small groups (typically <30 people)• Men fished and hunted• Women gathered berries/nuts and took care

of children.

The development of human culture

• Fire about 500,000 years ago.• Technology (ways people apply

tools/inventions to meet their needs).• Language (communication to help hunt)• Religion • Art

Agriculture

• 9,000 B.C. Sheep and goats were domesticated.

• Wild grasses were domesticated by humans (planted and tended).

• Agricultural Revolution – – planting seeds to raise crops– need for different tools then hunting– Gave rise to farming settlements

Farming

• Villages held several hundred people.• Started with slash and burn.• Thrived in river valley areas.• Big villages gave more protection.• Homes could be more permanent.• Some places used irrigation (African farmers

along Nile were first to use).

farming Simple villages

Complex villages

Government

First communities

• Agriculture surpluses – (more than someone needs to survive).

• Also wool for cloth could be surpluses.• Agricultural surpluses led to specialization.• Specialization led to artisans (people trained in

their craft or skill).• Specialization led to social classes.

Surplus Food

Specialization

Arti-sans

Social Classes

Catal Huyuk

• Complex village• At least 8,000 years old• Population about 5,000 people.• Built of bricks• Had shrines (religious) and art (wall paintings)• Made mirrors, beads, cloth, wooden vessels

and simple pottery.• > than 1,000 houses!

Catal painting

Shrine room

• No Notes – for fun

• Catal Huyuk [9400-8200 years ago] was an early Neolithic town in Anatolia (Turkey). A large settlement, said to have 3000-8000 inhabitants at its peak, it lasted some 1200 years, in equality, peace, and surprising levels of prosperity and comfort.

• The Catal Huyukers were so inspired with house building that they settled in the middle of a marsh (and suffered from malaria as a consequence). Apart from marsh fowl and fish, they had to walk miles to gather food. Apparently, having close access to the types of clay suitable for building and plastering was of greater importance. Their settlement resembled a pueblo.

• There were no streets, and entryways were from the roof. Inside, amazing and elaborate frieze art was found, as well as figurines, beads, obsidian tools and mirrors, ovens, and floor graves. There is evidence of long distance trade based on obsidian.

• The place must have been a beehive of activity, and drew people from nearby settlements to join the project. The art was inspired in part by the wild world still at their doorstep and the adoration of the female principle, and in part by rituals connected with the dead.

No notes – for fun• The society was based on the extended family, there is so far no evidence of

elites or gender disparities, and everybody worked hard. (Too hard.) While both women and men were given grave goods at death, these were not frequent. Most of the grave gifts went to children.

• There is no evidence of large or monumental architecture. The nearby forests were pushed back due to beam cutting for house roofs, but Catal Huyuk continued to prosper even when neolithic communities in the Levant collapsed.

• Would I like living at Catal Huyuk. I would also like to see how the town was administered. They had considerable complexity, density, and simple wealth, yet lived as equals and in peace; how did they managed that? On the other hand, the place was smelly, smoky, crowded and unhealthy, like most cities later on.

• Much of the art was weird and menacing, and the life full of chores as people buried and reburied their dead, rebuilt and replastered their houses, and traveled far north to collect obsidian.

• Catal Huyuk was one of the world's first towns. It was built in what is now Turkey about 6,500 BC not long after farming began. Catal Huyuk probably had a population of about 6,000.

• In Catal Huyuk the houses were made of mud brick. Houses were built touching against each other. They did not have doors and houses were entered through hatches in roofs. Presumably having entrances in the roofs was safer then having them in the walls. (Catal Huyuk was unusual among early towns as it was not surrounded by walls). Since houses were built touching each other the roofs must have acted as streets! People must have walked across them.

• In Catal Huyuk there were no panes of glass in windows and houses did not have chimneys. Instead there were only holes in the roofs to let out smoke. Inside houses were plastered and often had painted murals of people and animals on the walls. People slept on platforms.

• In Catal Huyuk the dead were buried inside houses. (Although they may have been exposed outside to be eaten by vultures first).

• Although Catal Huyuk was a true town (defined as a community not self-sufficient in food) as least some of its people lived by farming. They grew wheat and barley and they raised flocks of sheep and herds of goats. They also kept dogs.

• As well as farming the inhabitants of Catal Huyuk also hunted animals like aurochs (wild cattle), wolves, foxes and leopards.

• People in Catal Huyuk wore clothes woven from wool. They also wore jewellery made of stone, bone and shell.

• The people of Catal Huyuk wove baskets of reeds. They also made pottery and they used obsidian, a hard volcanic rock to make tools and weapons. Craftsmen made dishes of wood. They also made carved wooden boxes for storage.

• We do not know what the people of Catal Huyuk believed but religion was obviously important to them. They made figurines of clay and stone, which may have been gods and goddesses. They also mounted bull's skulls on the walls of some buildings and covered them in plaster to resemble living heads. It is believed these buildings were shrines.

• Catal Huyuk was abandoned about 5,000 BC. Nobody knows why but it may have been due to climate change.

• Catal Huyuk was then forgotten for thousands of years till it was rediscovered by James Melaart in 1958. He began excavating Catal Huyuk in 1961.