Another mysterious civilization

Catalhöyük is an archaeological site in central Turkey, excavated by James Mellaart during the 1960's and again by Ian Hodder during the 1990's. Hodder is the author of the book "Catalhöyük. The Leopard's Tale", published in 2006.

For practical reasons, the name Catalhöyük has also been given to the ancient town that existed on the site from 7400 BC to 6000 BC, i.e. during the Neolithic. The town had between 3000 and 8000 inhabitants, and was continuously inhabited for 1400 years. It's sometimes called "the oldest town in history".

Ancient Catalhöyük is a mysterious civilization, difficult for us to fathom. For starters, the town was never destroyed for 1400 years, and there are no indications that the inhabitants waged wars. For some reason, Hodder never emphasizes this point, yet the idea of a peaceful culture that lasted for 1400 years is surely mysterious in itself. At least for those who believe that war is an "adaptive trait" or "human universal".

The Neolithic town had no streets, and access to the various houses was from the roof level. Between the houses were animal pens or places for waste disposal. The houses themselves turned out to be quite sensational when Mellaart first started his excavations. The houses are filled with painted artwork, animal remains and human graves! Naturally, Mellaart assumed they were shrines. Today, we know that they actually were real houses: people lived in one end of the house, while the other end served religious and ritual purposes. Dead family members were literally buried below the floor. The religious symbolism is centered on wild animals, with leopards and wild bulls being most prominent. This is curious for a culture based on agriculture and sheep farming. There also seems to be an obsession with death, sex and violence. Paintings of vultures decapitating dead humans are prominently featured on the house walls, and so are hunting scenes. This also raises all kinds of questions, since the people of Catalhöyük never waged any wars. Another strange ritual involved exhuming and plastering human skulls of dead relatives.

Another striking feature of ancient Catalhöyük was the egalitarianism. Somehow, Hodder cannot accept this, and he spends a large part of his book attempting to find some kind of hierarchies and social dominance patterns within the Neolithic town. He is not very successful. Some of the houses were more important than others, since they had more elaborate artworks and attracted more burials, but these houses might simply have been the main buildings of kinship groups. Why else would more people choose to be buried in them? The standard of living was roughly equal across the board, and for most of Catalhöyük's existence, there are no differences between male and female burials. Hodder believes that hunting of wild bulls followed by communal feasting was an important part of social life in the town, and that the groups who gave the largest feasts got more prestige. Perhaps, but the feasts were collective, and there doesn't seem to be any accumulation of wealth involved. It seems the inhabitants got prestige by feeding their neighbours!

Hodder further speculates that the revealing of hidden artwork and animal skulls inside the houses were important ritual events, by which some families or kinship groups could outshine the others, thereby gaining dominance. Finally, he proposes that shamans had more power due to their contact with the supernatural realm. I don't rule this out, but it's important to realize that such a situation is itself highly anomalous: why wasn't the spiritual power and ritual prestige of the shamans translated into tangible material benefits? Surely, it wasn't impossible for a local elite group to accumulate wealth of its own? Incidentally, the same problem confronts us when discussing another mysterious ancient culture, the Indus Valley Civilization, which looks egalitarian despite being a high culture with an advanced division of labour. Some have proposed that the Indus people were ruled by a caste of ascetic priests. Perhaps, but how can a ruling caste stay ascetic for centuries? Clearly, we are missing some piece of the puzzle somewhere. Perhaps we simply have a too cynical, materialist mindset. Or perhaps we simply can't believe that ancient cultures might have been peaceful and egalitarian to begin with.

One chapter of Hodder's book deals with the various groups of outsiders who have taken up an interest in the excavations. These include local Turkish politicians who are often nationalist or Muslim conservatives, European Union officials who use Catalhöyük as an argument for Turkish-European cooperation, Turkish and American artists, and the Goddess community for whom the ancient site proves the existence of matriarchy. It seems Hodder and his team have a difficult time balancing all these special interests! The Goddess community might get disappointed by Hodder's book, since Hodder doesn't believe Catalhöyük was matriarchal. Rather, he speculates that it was both matrilinear and patrilinear, and that a large part of their religion was centered on male prowess in hunting, and even male sexuality. However, males and females do seem roughly equal, judging by burial remains. Hodder downplays the famous image of a woman seated between two leopards, despite the fact that similar images from later periods depict goddesses. For instance, the goddess Cybele was associated with lions.

Be that as it may, I nevertheless recommend this book for those wishing to learn more about this mysterious culture of a distant past. And yes, this review is another veiled attack on androcentric sociobiology!