Why did the Catalhoyuk people make doors in the roof?



Catalhoyuk home witha door in the roof
Catalhoyuk was a  large Neolithic proto city settlement in southern Anatolia. It is a remarkable example  which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC. The city was abandoned for unknown reasons before the Bronze age commenced. It is one of the few of the earliest known cities in the world.

The inhabitants lived in mud-brick houses that were crammed together in an agglutinative manner. No footpaths or streets were used between the dwellings, which were clustered in a honeycomb-like maze. Most were accessed by holes in the ceiling, with doors reached by ladders and stairs. The rooftops were effectively streets. The ceiling openings also served as the only source of ventilation, allowing smoke from the houses' open hearths and ovens to escape. Houses had plaster interiors characterized by squared-off timber ladders or steep stairs. Each main room served for cooking and daily activities. The main rooms contained raised platforms that may have been used for a range of domestic activities. Side rooms were used as storage, and were accessed through low openings from main rooms. Although no identifiable temples have been found, the graves, murals, and figurines suggest that the people of Catalhoyuk had a religion rich in symbols. Rooms with concentrations of these items may have been temples. The inhabitants were worshipers of the mother goddess. In upper levels of the site, it becomes apparent that the people gaining skills in agriculture and the domestication of animals and fruit were harvested from trees in the surrounding hills. However, hunting continued to be a major source of food for the community. Pottery and tools appear to have been major industries Tools were probably both used and also traded. This is where the oldest pottery known from Anatolia has been found. The oldest pottery was fired, unpainted and unglazed and had a very simple bag shaped form.

A question that shall trouble a modern observer about this civilization is the use of a home with a very difficult door opening in the roof rather than on the side that is far more convenient, safer from the elements and intruders and easier to construct. What could be the reason for such an opening?

One possibility is that these dwelling were made by a people who lived in pits dug inside the earth prior to making such homes. In pit homes, precisely this type of roof openings are required. The question then arises – are there any examples of pit dwelling from around the time? The answer is yes and this takes us to the Pre Harappan civilization in North-west India. Bhirrana is a small village located in in the Indian state of Haryana. It belongs to the Indus Valley Civilisation dating from around 7500 BC too.  The site is situated about 220 km to the northwest of New Delhi.

The Bhirrana excavations have revealed the remains of the Harappan culture right from its nascent stage, i.e. Hakra Wares Culture to a full-fledged Mature Harappan city. Prior to the excavation of Bhirrana, no Hakra Wares culture, predating the Early Harappan had been exposed in any Indian site. For the first time, the remains of this culture have been exposed at Bhirrana. This culture is characterised by structures in the form of subterranean dwelling pits, cut into the natural soil. The walls and floor of these pits were plastered with the yellowish alluvium of the Saraswati valley. The artefacts of this period comprised a copper bangle, a copper arrowhead, bangles of terracotta, beads of carnelian, lapis lazuli, bone point, stone saddle etc.. The pottery is very rich and like their Anatolian contemporaries these early pre Harappans too were worshipers of Mother Goddess. A connection between and a common root of both these ancient people is very possible.

Image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Catal_H%C3%BCy%C3%BCk_Restoration_B.jpg



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Indus Valley and Atlantis

Image
Ancient civilization in the land of two rivers Saraswati and Indus known in modern times as Indus Valley often because the Saraswati River has mostly been lost since ancient times, from tectonic shifts or climate change or both B etween three and four thousand BC three great river valley civilisations with planned urban areas sprang up in three different parts of the world  - Indus Valley, Sumeria and Nile valley in Egypt. recent archeological findings at Bhirrana near Delhi push back the origins of  the Indus valley civilisation to 7500 BC  i.e the oldest of the three. Even Mehrgarh dates to 7000 BC showing the extent of the early Indus valley civilisation extended from Mehrgarh in the East to at least Bhirana in the west. Recent excavations in the gulf of Kambhat suggest that in the south the civilization extended up to the ocean coast. By 5500 BC all these sites had a fairly developed urban culture that predates Sumerian civilization by around two thousand years. Rakhig
Read more

Origin of Egyptian Civilization

Image
A lthough Egyptian civilisation is at least seven thousand years old, a unified Egyptian civilisation with urban centers and a central authority emerged in Egypt with the coming of the Pharaohs beginning with the scorpion king Narmer/ Nirmer/ Naram- Ara of Sumerian origin. The Scorpion gods were warrior gods in Sumeria and it is a mark of respect to regard a great warrior king as one. This movement into the Nile Valley may have coincided with the end of the Uruk period that in turn coincided with the Piora oscillation , a dry period   that began in c. 3200 BCE and ended in 2900 BCE that marked the end of a long wetter, warmer climate period from about 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, called the Holocene climatic optimum . A prehistoric flint knife, with a handle carved from the tooth of a hippopotamus, in the possession of Louvre and found at Gebel el Arak near Nag Hamâdi depicts a scene from the conquest. On one side of the handle is a battle-scene including some remarkable represen
Read more

From Bacteria to Amoeba

Image
E ukaryotic cells that include humans, animals, and amoebae, contain small structures called organelles. Bacteria do not in general contain these structures. Religious persons have argued that there is no way a bacterium can evolve into even a single amoeba or human like cell. However, Research biologist Lynn Margulis has finally won acceptance for the theory that eukaryotic cells formed by symbiosis among bacterial cells. Thus early evolution takes place by symbiosis as well as viral action. It is only when more complex multi-celled life forms emerge that viral action becomes the primary mechanism for further evolution. The cells of all other living things rely on organelles. Bacteria were thought to manage with a single open space devoid of partitions Now a team led by microbiologist Roberto Docampo at the University of Illinois in Urbana say they have found the first organelles in that have a direct counterpart in higher organisms. (M. Seufferheld et al. J. Biol. Chem.; 2003). S
Read more

Reviving the Lost Sarasvati

Image
"Ma Saraswati is eternal and can never really be lost, she merely hid herself from human eyes until such times as their hearts become pure enough to behold her." T he Sarasvati (also spelt Saraswati) River is one of the main Rigvedic rivers mentioned in ancient Sanskrit texts.  Most of its route, except for its Himalayan connection as well as those in the south to the ocean, has been well known to both Indian and International scholars as at least some of the present day seasonal river the Ghaggar- Hakra, especially the part that passes through Haryana and Rajasthan. This is well confirmed by an overwhelming body of both ancient as well as modern scientific evidence. However, its northern connections and tributaries are not fully located yet.  Similarly, the southern connections are also not fully known. In case the river is revived these may have to be reoriented in any case because of division of India. The identification of the Vedic Sarasva
Read more

Tracing the origin of Ancient Sumerians

Image
It is of considerable interest to trace where the ancient Sumerians emerged from because of their primary contribution to human civilization. It was suggested that Sumerians appeared in Southern Mesopotamia around five and half thousand years ago carrying with them the seeds of civilization. It was also suggested that they migrated from the west coast of India. The fact that they were not a local people is suggested by the fact that their language belongs to a completely different and isolated group. There are two further lines of investigation one may adopt to confirm this hypothesis. The first is to explore for other groups in India with a similar language and the second is to carry out a physical examination of the Sumerian skeletons as available at the present time to detect racial similarities. In western India there are a number of tribal groups that have existed from ancient times. Today many live on the fringes of mainstream communities as exist in India today. The mainstr
Read more

The Myth that Elamite and Sumerian are isolated languages

Image
The Elamo-Dravidian language family is a language family that links Dravidian languages of India to the extinct Elamite language of ancient Elam (present-day southwestern Iran). Linguist David McAlpin has been a chief proponent of the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis. Recent collaborative work with American Indologist Franklin C Southworth further establishes this. It is possible that the extinct languages of the Indus Valley Civilization may also be part of this family, or more likely one of the two languages of Indus Valley. The Indus Valley may have been a bilingual culture just like that of Sumer noting the ancient Vedic culture in Indo-Aryan from the same region. Recent studies have revealed that even Sumerian is not an isolated language but is also a Dravidian language and therefore belongs to the same group of languages, that is a branch of the larger Austric group of languages some still prevalent in parts of South and South East Asia.  The Tamil language from amongst
Read more

The Builders of Stonehenge were probably of Armenian origin

Image
Stonehenge Many have wondered who the builders of Stonehenge in England were. Were they local persons or were they migrants from afar? Recent discoveries have shed more light on these people with the recent discovery of Sun worship at Stonehenge. Three pieces of evidence support the conclusion that these ancient persons were of Armenian origin: Although Menhirs exist all over Europe, three major  prehistoric stone erecting civilizations have been discovered - in Carahunge, Armenia; Carnac, France and Wiltshire, England. Of these the oldest is the one in Armenia, followed by the civilization in Carnac France and the most recent of the three, around 3100 BC, the one in England. Therefore it does seem that the origins of this civilization lie in Armenia. However, the civilization appears to have evolved in its movements as indicated by an evolution of designs of their stone monuments All three civilizations worshiped the Sun tha
Read more

On the Tamil origin of Ancient human civilisations

Image
Plato by Raphael Thinking and motivations, both good and destructive, in society develops over centuries from its experiences. Since these experiences are different in different parts of the world, it is not surprising that some of this thinking is different. Usually in fictional imagination when visits by aliens from other worlds are visualized, many in western societies imagine them as attacking humans. This has surprised people from India, why would they attack? It is so much easier, nice and advantageous to love instead and if there are aliens intelligent enough to learn travel through space surely they are not as stupid as to pounce on humans jumping around and shouting hoola hoola hoo!  This was the philosophy of ancient humans too that gave birth to human civilization in Southern India and later Indus-Saraswati valley, Sumeria etc. The dark foreign Sumerians with their own strange language, local Akkadians and others like the fair northern Armenians came together in b
Read more