Thursday, September 1, 2022

Çatalhöyük in Anatolia is rewriting the earliest signs of civilization



  This is the oldest "infographic" known. It represents the relatively big village  of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia in modern Turkey. (7000+ people)

 What is extraordinary about this drawing is that it dates from approximately 6,200 BC (The drawing can be dated in part thanks to the erupting volcano in the background.) or close to the very beginning of civilization although the origin of the village seems to be around 7,200 BC which is very close to the filling up of the Black Sea around 7,400 BC.  (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.05.011)

 It shows a relatively egalitarian society where all the houses are more or less the same size and tools are used in common. No fortifications or military equipment were found but the sheer number of people must have been the best defense at that time since no other such large settlements are known in the area.

 All this would be about 2,500 years after the end of the younger Dryas 11,600 years ago, the last glaciation which fits almost perfectly with the time it took for early agriculture and domestication of animals to develop.

 This happened a few thousand years before the earliest signs of civilization in Mesopotamia, China and Egypt. (At that time the Sahara is still green and populations have not yet been concentrated in the Nile Valley.)

 As such, the complete human civilization process fits within 9,000 short years since these early signs of organization and well within the latest "warm" period beginning uncannily with the very earliest signs of "warmth" as can be seen in the chart below.

 Which itself is almost insignificant on a slightly larger scale map based on measurements taken at Lake Vostok in Antarctica where the full "recent" warm period above is little but the last red blip!


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