This is an interesting article, but one has to ignore it's Marxist POV - something in which I'm skilled since 3rd grade... http://www.urkommunismus.de/catalhueyuek_en.html - http://www.urkommunismus.de/catalhueyuek_en.html "...In Çayönü in Eastern Anatolia (fig. 1) the various phases of the neolithic revolution
can clearly be traced throughout the succession of building levels. Although none of the
basic innovations, such as housebuilding, agriculture and animal husbandry, originated in
Çayönü itself, the temporal order in which the new techniques arrived in Çayönü correspond
exactly to the order in which they originally had developed albeit at another site
(Özdoğan 1997:12, 1999b: 226-227). The lowest layers (8800 - 8500 B.C.) testify to a permanently
settled way of life on the basis of hunting and gathering (Özdoğan 1999a: 42-44); in the layer
above (around 8000 B.C.) the first (imported) seeds are found (Özdoğan 1994: 40/1); the next
higher layer documents the arrival of the first herd of sheep around 7300 B.C.
(Cambel and Braidwood 1983: 164). With the practice of animal husbandry, the three basic
innovations of the first phase of the neolithic revolution of the productive forces are complete
( http://www.urkommunismus.de/catalhueyuek_en.html#_ftn2 - Footnote 2).
This technical progress, however, takes place in a destructive, patriarchal, and hierarchical
society of enormous cruelty. Apart from the houses for living and storage, in each of the
above-mentioned building levels of Çayönü there was a "special building", rectangular in shape,
measuring 8x12 sqm, without windows, dug into a slope which bordered the settlement towards the
east (Schirmer 1990: 378). In front of this temple (Özdoğan 2002: 254), there was a rectangular
space of 1500 sqm, flanked by monoliths up to 2 m high (Cambel and Braidwood 1983: 162) - all
in all a complex of intimidating monumentality.
To the north, this space was terminated by three large, manorial houses that had identical
fronts, alignment and distance from each other. These houses stood on an elevated platform on
massive foundations made from big hewn blocks and had carefully constructed stone walls, a
verandah and stone stairs. In these three houses, the wealth of the society was concentrated:
large blocks of crystals, stone sculptures, shells from the Mediterranean Sea and from the Red
Sea (!) (Özdoğan 1994: 44) as well as imported weapons of high quality.
In the Western part of the settlement, the houses were only half as large, of distinctly
poorer quality, without any additional features and were not built according to a standardized
plan. Only the few tools needed for daily living were found there.
If the unequal distribution of wealth and power already becomes evident just by looking
at the architecture and treasures discovered, the existence of private ownership of means
of production can be proven directly by an extraordinary finding: All resources necessary
for producing tools that had to be transported from far-away locations via a long distance
trade system - flint and obsidian - were found exclusively in the houses situated near the
temple. There they were stored in blocks of up to 5 kilograms. (Bear in mind that the finished
tools weighed no more than 4 grams!) What was not found, however, was midden from chipping
stones - no trace of any productive activity. The situation in the slums of the west was
exactly the opposite. Here no resources were found but in the streets there was workshop
debris from the chipping of flint and obsidian. I.e., there was a small group of people
who possessed without working and a large group of people who worked without possessing -
in other words, there were classes. These facts are presented in a condensed manner by
Mehmet and Aslı Özdoğan (1989: 72-74) as well as by Davis (1998), the latter almost in a form
of class analysis...."
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