Catal Huyuk

Catal Huyuk or Çatalhöyük was an early city that expressed statelessness, communism, gender equality and environmental sustainability between 7500BCE to 5700BCE.

Crime

Paintings do not depict fighting or crime, and there is no evidence in skeletons of violence.

Economy

There were no signs of a market economy or central planning, whilst equal sized houses and burial goods being the same size and quality all signs of an anarcho-communist society. There was also a wide diversity of material goods, suggesting and individualistic culture.

Researchers estimate that half of people's labor time focused on meeting people's basic needs, and the other half focused on cultural production such as organizing feasts, dances, rituals, education, and the painting of murals.Average average life expectancy, of 32 years, surpassed that of other populations for nearly 10,000 years, until around 1750 with the rise of modern medicine.

Catal Huyuk was responsible for numerous key innovations of modern civilization, notably the ability to mine, smelt and use metal and the organisational concept of the city.

Culture

There is a great degree of evidence that this society had gender equality. Men and women ate similar food, lived similar lives and worked in similar ways. Of 41 excavated sculptures of deities, 33 were of goddesses and only 8 depicted masculine gods.

Collapse

There is no clear evidence explaining why people left, as there is no signs of violence, war or disease. The only evidence is that a river stopped flowing through the region.

See Also

• Cayonu Tepesi