The Storied Past of Çatalhöyük

The site I selected is Çatalhöyük, from central Turkey in southwest Asia. Its tell is six hundred meters long, three hundred and fifty meters wide, and twenty meters high.

 

It was another bright, sunny day in Çatalhöyük and Jonathan Shawn Shaun was excited to be awake. When he rose to his feet, he turned, and patted the slab of stone that kept him elevated throughout the night, providing it with a reassuring, “Ya done good, sleeping platform.” He pondered to himself if one day some linguist would invent a shorter word for “sleeping platform.” It sure was a mouthful! But nearly as much a mouthful as he’d be giving to his customers today at the local diner he owned and operated known as Jonathan’s Tavern. Sometimes, he felt a little guilty about his restaurant because most of the people in his community divided their labor scarcely as they were all farmers, but he prided himself as a chef. Oh, well. Someone has to put the crops to use, Jonathan Shawn Shaun thought to himself and smiled before leaving the left side of the living area to travel to the right side (he ignored the storage area) where his wife was using Obsidian tools from the cupboard to cook a hearty breakfast of sheep meat and lentils for breakfast for Jonathan and their children who were sitting eagerly on the bench.

You couldn’t get a better microcosm of the families in Çatalhöyük than the Shaun family. Five members (with grandma’s corpse right under the floorboards, along with all of the beads she made throughout her life!) was the average in Çatalhöyük as there were about two thousand other families, too. Ten thousand people might seem like a lot, but they lived close together. So close that the kids next door could smell the sheep cooking and started getting jealous. Jonathan could hear their father scold them. “You’ll get your sheep soon enough. And if you’re lucky, maybe some beef.”

The kids cheered in delight. “Yay! We’re not of any higher or lower social class than anyone else so we can smell sheep cooking next door and look forward to some sheep of our own!”

“And maybe some beef!” Jonathan called back with a laugh. He was a friendly face in the Çatalhöyük community.

Eventually, it was time to go to work so Jonathan rose from his bench and clambered out of the roof, wondering to himself if there wasn’t any easier way to leave his home. But such was life in Çatalhöyük. Roofs were the primary modes of exits and entrances. It made serving customers at Jonathan’s Tavern a bit of a challenge, but it was nothing the most talented chef in the town couldn’t handle. His patrons made sure he was aware of this every time he entered the building.

“Jonathan!” they would shout in unison before asking about the day’s menu.

“Got any tubers or grasses today?” one farmer asked, knowing the answer because no harvest of these crops had taken place for some time.

“Not today, Norm, sorry. We’re gonna have some wheat and barley dishes, as per usual. But today we’ve got a little bit of sheep and an acorn, pistachio, and crab apple salad. Sound good?”

“Sounds great, buddy!”

Quickly, Jonathan got to work on cooking meals for his customers, but not before praying to the diner’s shrine. Every building had an ornate shrine, but when it came to food, it was important that he recognize the shrine’s presence so he wouldn’t disturb the rituals and potentially prompt whatever higher being there is to take away the wheat and barley he had been so blessed to make a living off of in Çatalhöyük. He gave a special glance to the crown jewel of the diner, too. It was a large, showy painting of a volcano erupting with his mother (Wheat God rest her soul) on top of the lava, giving birth to a bull. He shook his head and laughed. When his children died in a couple months ago, the painting will be buried with them and the house will be destroyed. It felt like just yesterday that he hung the painting up. Time flies when you’re cooking sheep, he guessed to himself.

Just as Jonathan was finishing up the first step for making his salad, a commotion began to rise in the dining area. Taking two steps to his left, Jonathan quickly saw what was going on. Out-of-towners were arguing about their trades again.

“No! You’re taking these Obsidian tools off my hands! I can’t lug them all over Asia anymore.” one trader yelled at the other.

“Sorry, bub, but nobody wants Obsidian tools anymore. They’re old news!” the second trader yelled back.

Jonathan thought back to his cupboard at home and thought it would make his wife, Zonp, happy if he were to bring back some more Obsidian tools with which she could cook.

“Hey fellas,” Jonathan said, interrupting their conversation. “How about I take these things off your hands, in exchange for a free salad?”

“You mean it?” one trader asked.

Jonathan nodded. “I love having enough Obsidian tools to make Zonp happy.” The traders didn’t know who Zonp was. Jonathan just laughed again. “But not too many tools that it makes us look wealthier than everyone else, you know?”

But the traders didn’t care. They murdered Jonathan with their Obsidian tools and took their salads to go. The customers were okay with this because people died a lot. Zonp was okay with this, too, because the traders forgot to take their tools with them. It was looking like she was going to get a new kitchen and with one less mouth to feed! That night, she laid Jonathan to rest underneath his sleeping platform. Zonp wondered to herself whether or not there was a shorter word that could be invented to describe the sleeping platform before promptly forgetting about it and going to bed, excited for the possibilities that Çatalhöyük would bring tomorrow.

Image Source: PlanetWare