The Neolithic Settlement Of Catal Huyuk

The Cahokia civilization was located in current day Missouri. The city was inhabited by 50 communties and spanned over 2,200 acres. The city flourished from 700 CE to 1400 CE. The Cahokians started abandoning their city by the 1200s and by the 1400 it was almost completely deserted. They are famous for build Earth Mounds, the tallest one standing at 100 feet tall.

All throughout history, humans have come up with innovations that have brought both positive and negative changes to the way people live. This all started around 10,000 BCE, when people developed agriculture. The first nomads started off by moving from place to place, hunting and gathering food… but as people developed agriculture, they saved a lot more time. After agriculture developed, the humans learned many things such as farming and taming wild animals for their own use. This time in history was called the Neolithic Revolution… which lasted about 6,000 years, until 4,000 BCE. The big change in the way people got their food and how they lived, resulted to positive and negative changes of human innovations of the Neolithic Revolution. So,

Several critical developments distinguish civilizations from even the most advanced Paleolithic and Neolithic societies that preceded them. Some critical developments include inequality based on gender, status based on class, and lastly the beginning of written literature and more complex calendars. Specifically, one main critical development was inequality based on gender.

The Paleolithic Man is more of the ‘cave man’ that we know of today, most of them were lived as hunters/nomads and took shelter in caves and/or skin tents. On the other hand, during the Neolithic Era (or the New Stone Age), the Neolithic Man lived in permanent settlements made from stone and mud, they grew crops and domesticated animals. It was during the Neolithic Era that communities and societies were developed and ‘houses’ were created, an example of this is the Catal Hoyuk in modern day Turkey. Another difference between the life styles of the two is that the Paleolithic man were individual hunters while the Neolithic man formed organized hunting parties which were a lot more successful. The Paleolithic man created tiny figurines, paintings

The start of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution led directly to the beginning of civilization. The Neolithic Revolution, which happened 10,000 years ago, was the shift from hunter-gathers to a food-producing culture meaning humans started to farm and domesticate animals. This was the catalyst to help create civilizations. We know now how to distinguish groups of humans from actual civilization if those groups have certain characteristics. Those characteristics are complex institutions, record keeping, advanced cities, specialized workers, and advanced technology. A result of the Neolithic Revolution is that more people were able to thrive since there was a surplus of food. These early civilizations were able to take advantage of the rivers and create irrigation systems to water their crops.

New technology in the Neolithic Revolution had an immense impact. Life in the New Stone Age mainly depended on agriculture, which led to the invention of the plow and fertilizers, making jobs in plant cultivation more efficient. Furthermore, around 5000 B.C wheels were invented, making transportation much faster and easier than before. Weapons were also improved; in the Paleolithic Era their arms were made of wood and stone, but in the Neolithic Revolution man started making their weapons out of stone. This enhanced weaponry helped people protect their villages’ valuable resources. (Documents #4 & 6)

Göbekli Tepe is a very interesting archaeological site that is located at the top of the mountain limestone ridge in Southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border (Banning 620). It is known as the earliest monumental building, or temple, that mankind has ever created and it was built even before the stage of agriculture, which dates back to some 11,600 years ago (Mann 1st page). Göbekli Tepe belongs to the PPN (Pre-Pottery Neolithic) in terms of its chronological context in world prehistory (Banning 620). In fact, the site can be divided into three different stratigraphic levels that are level 3, level 2A, and level 2B (Banning 620). Level 3 is the oldest level which appears to date back to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) (Banning 621). Each of the buildings measured 15 m by 10 m and contained T-shaped monoliths surrounded by a wall made of stone and mortar (Banning 621). Two U-stone shaped entrances could by identified in two of the buildings (Banning 621). However, the most monumental aspect of the Göbekli Tepe can be attributed to the sophisticated carvings of wild animals, such as scorpions and boars, on the pillars which appears in the pillars of level 3 and level 2A (Banning 621). Moreover, Level 2A, which dates to Middle PPNB, has smaller and more rectangular buildings than Level 3 and it contains delicately implemented tiled floors and T pillars without any decorations (Banning 621). Level 2B dates to the time between level 3 and level 2A, however,

Starting in AD 800 and hitting its peak from 1050- 1200 AD, Cahokia covered six square miles with a population between 10,000 and 20,000 people (Jarus 1). During their 500 years, the Cahokians developed America’s first city and arguably the greatest civilization of its time, and then seemingly disappeared without a trace. But, despite Cahokia’s disappearance, a significant amount of history was left behind through earthen mounds, evolved social structures, advanced cultural practices, and Cahokia’s unexplained demise.

In 1950, V Gordon Childe drew up a list of traits of to what he considered to be the common characteristics of early civilizations. According to Fagan & Scarre, a recent archaeologist Charles Redman divided Childe’s list into primary and secondary characteristics. The primary characteristics included cities and states, together with full-time specialization of labor, concentration of surplus, and a class-structured society. For the secondary, the characteristics included symptoms or by-products of these major economic and organizational changes: monumental public works, long-distance trade, standardized monumental artworks, writing, and the sciences (arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy)(Scarre and Fagan 2003). One of the most common characteristics involve was a large, dense population living in a city. This essay well state and describe two early cities in Mesopotamia and explore the layouts and characteristics of these two cities. Also, whether each city is unique or share common characteristics with each other. The two cities are Maskan-shapir and Ur.

(Haviland et al 2011: 241) Trade increased and many settlements became wealthy. These wealthy communities could support some people as artists and priests. Catal Hyuk is an example of astounding neolithic art, much of which adorns religion shrines. (Levack et al 2009:5)

The city of Napata gained its fame from the religious significance of Gebel Barkal. The Egyptians promoted the belief the primary form of their god dwelt inside the pure mountain Gebel Barkal. Egypt’s sun-god Amun was represented as either a man with a ram head or as a crowned ram with a solar disk. It seems as though the Egyptians identified their pre-existing god from the land of Nubia as a local form of their own supreme god Amun who was considered to be the important source of the royal power of Egypt and Kush. The city of Meroe located on the east bank of the Nile, was the second urban center of the binary kingdoms of Kush. This city became the permanent royal residence of the Kushite Kings of Napata in the fifth century BC. Nubian pottery from the earliest periods represented the basic plastic material employed in Nubia and Egypt. Primitive drawings and engravings on Nubian pottery had a form identified of some geometric and symbolic patterns. These forms have been used on the surface of decorated pottery such as circles, squares, or triangles which represented the initial signs of most ancient civilizations. During the Neolithic period, people of this time covered their tools and pottery products with different forms, not particularly of art, but rather for recording their idea of life. Although these forms represent hidden symbols with no clear meaning, its purpose or goal was to help unleash the human mind while imagining its

The first scholars that existed named the whole period of human devolvement the “Stone Age.” The stone age is divided into three periods which are Paleolithic which means the old Greek age, Mesolithic and Neolithic which is the new Greek age. The Paleolithic and Neolithic stone ages have many great differences and has changed greatly between the two periods.

What is most riveting however, is its age. Using organic material embedded in the façade of its stone pylons, Gobekli Tepe’s lower levels have been carbon to as early as 12,000 years ago, making them the earliest architectural forms ever discovered (German Archaeological Institute). This predates nearby sister site Nevali Cori by about 500 years (Author unknown), and the world’s first city Catalhoyuk by 1,500 years (Symmes 2010:48). The vast, more complex scale, as well as the marked artistry and sophistication above that of its cruder sister sites, makes the very existence of Gobekli Tepe practically an impossibility. Ian Hodder, director of Stanford’s archaeological program states that Gobekli Tepe is “unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date; many people think it changes everything [that] all our theories are wrong.” (Symmes 2010:46 ).

Neolithic village life, as expected, was heavily involved agriculture. Yet, so was life in a city in the Early/First Civilizations. How different, and similar, were the two?

According to archaeologist in order to be defined as a civilization certain criteria must be met. Early archaeologists believed in order to be considered a civilization a society must have cultural superiority, which meant they must have the ability to read and write. If this was the sole criteria used to judge if a society was labeled a civilization, then you could say the Inca of South America, who constructed cities on top of mountains and had a complex system of irrigation canals, were not one because they did not have a system for reading or writing. Modern archaeologists now think of civilization as not better but different. The modern definition of civilization consists of the development of cities,