çatalhöyük
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk]:
Çatalhöyük (English: Chatalhoyuk /ˌtʃɑːtɑːlˈhuːjʊk/ cha-tal-HOO-yuhk; Turkish pronunciation: [tʃaˈtaɫhœjyc]; also Çatal Höyük and Çatal Hüyük; from Turkish çatal “fork” + höyük “tumulus”) is a tell (a mounded accretion resulting from long-term human settlement) of a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5600 BC and flourished around 7000 BC. In July 2012, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Çatalhöyük overlooks the Konya Plain, southeast of the present-day city of Konya (ancient Iconium) in Turkey, approximately 140 km (87 mi) from the twin-coned volcano of Mount Hasan.
intro’d via reading david graeber and david wengrow [ie: p 212 dawn of everything (book)].. adding page while reading pure freedom:
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Once it was accepted that Çatalhöyük represented a completely different kind of society, one free from power and dominance, everything suddenly fell into place—a coherent mosaic..t
A Society Without a State, with Prosperity for All
Çatalhöyük was a wealthy community without a government, where equality was the core social principle. The city had basically one type of house, but repeated over 1,500 times: functional, spacious, and socially inclusive, like the homes of the rich elsewhere. Each person had 10–12 square meters of living space, and each house included workshops, storage, and a..t spiritual area—where the dead were buried. Spirituality wasn’t reserved for a priestly elite but was an individual act.
bachelard oikos law et al..
oikos (the economy our souls crave).. ‘i should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.’ – gaston bachelard, the poetics of space
These “living houses” hosted much of the social life on their rooftops, and the equality principle was so thorough that unused rooms were sealed off and reopened only when needed—for instance, when a child grew old enough to need a private space. Each house was also a production site, every person worked according to their ability, and no one owned means of production beyond their personal use. All homes contained stored seeds, and skeletal wear suggests everyone worked hard—and celebrated wildly..t
ie: ubi vs sabbatical.. need a sabbatical ish transition
What was completely absent were signs of diseases of affluence, which are common in ruling classes of exploitative societies.
the peckham experiment et al
But don’t imagine this egalitarian city as drab or uniform, like socialist block housing. Life in Çatalhöyük was colorful, diverse, and joyful. According to serious social science estimates, people had about half of their waking hours available for leisure—more than we do in our so-called leisure society.
can do better today.. ie: 3 30 2 convers.. so 24 hrs minus 33 min.. ie: a nother way book
because.. meadows undisturbed law
People gathered frequently, helped each other, created expressive art, and loved to dance: Nearly half the population showed anatomical changes in the femur that could only come from excessive dancing. Remains of such a Stone Age party were even excavated. According to chemist Bernhard Brosius, they show that “the rooftop celebrations of the city left nothing to be desired.”
Equality Without Erasing Difference
Equality here did not mean suppressing differences or diminishing exceptional individuals. It meant no privileges at the expense of the community. People weren’t made equal—they were treated equally. As archaeologist Naomi Hamilton puts it:
“Differences do not mean structural inequality.
discrimination as equity et al
Respected age, earned recognition, and social influence based on knowledge or experience do not contradict egalitarian values.”
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In fact, many touching individual stories uncovered by archaeologists reveal deep individual appreciation, regardless of social status:
- A 17-year-old girl who became disabled from a broken femur received an extraordinarily elaborate burial.
- A hunter gored by an aurochs was lovingly cared for until he died of infection—his family was then cared for by the community.
- A mother and child who died together were sprinkled with red ochre to ensure their rebirth.
Some structures have even been interpreted by medical experts as early hospitals, reflecting a level of institutionalized care that Europe didn’t see until Bismarck’s welfare laws—and certainly not what we’d expect from “Stone Age people”.
What Wasn’t Found Tells the Most
The most revealing clues to their social ethics come from what wasn’t found in Çatalhöyük:
- No depictions of aggression, conflict, combat, abuse, or torture—motifs that are otherwise classic in ancient art.
- No imagery of justice systems, punishment, human or animal sacrifice, skull deformations, or ritual mutilations, all common elsewhere.
- No signs of violent death caused by other humans in any of the skeletons.
- No evidence of theft or possessions with trade value.
- No weapons of war found in any of the twelve layers.
This strongly suggests a repression-free, fear-free society.
again.. today can go even deeper.. so that there’s no more khan filling the gaps law ness
And Yes—In Over 1,200 Years, They Never Went to War
Indeed, there’s no trace that this human community was ever involved in war—in over twelve centuries of existence.
Çatalhöyük as an Example
Çatalhöyük is just one example and serves here as a representative of early matriarchal culture, primarily because it is so thoroughly documented. But matriarchy was neither limited to Anatolia nor to the Stone Age. Much evidence suggests that the social systems found here were generally characteristic of matriarchy—since female-centered societies have been documented on all five continents.
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Nor did they all end with the Bronze Age, and they were by no means always replaced by patriarchy. In fact, matriarchal societies still exist today—almost everywhere in the world except Europe, and some have populations in the millions.
Learning from the Stone Age?
So, up to this chapter, we’ve spent over 150 pages grappling with utopias and social models, forming complex analogies, making use of sophisticated arguments, calling on behavioral science, psychology, neurobiology, and sociology to make the case, and appealing to common sense—all just to make the idea of a non-hierarchical, egalitarian society seem plausible and maybe a little less absurd.
An idea that to most people still seems as “unnatural” as it is unrealistic: a nice thought, perhaps—but clearly just another piece of utopian fantasy…
But what if we had to recognize that this vision isn’t so unnatural after all—and not utopian either? What if it was, in fact, a kind of “normal state”—in which humanity lived far longer and far better than in the relatively short era of patriarchal, hierarchical, and exploitative statism?
again.. today have means not only for instant (aka: global detox leap).. but deeper/truer/purer freedom (aka: legit free sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do)
That would certainly be something worth thinking about.
As Heide Göttner-Abendroth puts it:
“It’s important to realize that many things we take for granted today—simply because we’re used to them—were not at all primary or natural in the history of human development.
human history et al.. hari rat park law.. black science of people/whales law.. et al
And whether they are the best just because they’re the latest is a completely different question.”
In truth, we still know far too little about early social structures to be smugly triumphant about any modern “-ism”—including feminism and anarchism.
The people of Çatalhöyük and elsewhere didn’t live as they did to confirm our ideologies, and why they lived this way—we still don’t really know. The academic debate over this topic has only just begun
..And that is a fact— A fact that can still give us courage today:
Courage to believe in utopia.
graeber make it diff law et al
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be you. 
