Official science convinces us that the Neolithic era looked like the picture above. Wild people in skins with stone tools of labor and hunting, lived in caves and led a semi-wild lifestyle. History textbooks say that the Neolithic is a special era in the history of mankind, it ends the period of the Stone Age, during which people used only stone, bone and wood to make tools.
The time when copper began to be used, and later its alloys for the production of tools, weapons and jewelry, marks the end of the Neolithic and the entire Stone Age and the beginning of the metal age.
The Neolithic era was the heyday of the technology of processing traditional materials - stone, bone and wood, with the widespread and improvement of such progressive processing techniques as grinding, drilling, sawing. Originally Neolithic and stood out as the "era of polished stone". In addition, at this time, ceramics became very widespread, used for various purposes - mainly for the manufacture of vessels, as well as various utensils - spindle wheels, sinkers, small plastics. It is often the presence of ceramics that is considered a defining feature of the Neolithic era.
These are the tools of labor in the opinion of scientists that these wild representatives of humanity used.
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Here is such an image of savages who barely learned how to sculpt primitive pots, used stone tools and the top of the technologies they achieved was the skill of drilling a stone, of course they also drilled it with a piece of stone. In general, and on the whole - poor people with wild morals.
The entire epoch as a whole is characterized by a much greater settledness of the population than in the previous Mesolithic time, which is reflected in the house-building. On the settlements of the Neolithic in different regions, many various dwellings were discovered, built from the materials that a person could get in his immediate environment. So, in the southern regions there were buildings made of raw bricks dried in the sun, in mountain settlements - of stone, in the forest zone - dugouts and semi-dugouts with wooden structures, in the steppes and in the south of the forest-steppe - dwellings with a wicker frame coated with clay, which in a constructive sense, they have practically not changed to this day (huts, huts, etc.). The shapes and sizes of residential buildings vary widely depending on the climatic conditions and cultural traditions of a particular region.
Since the Neolithic period, the first fortified settlements appear in the Middle East, which is associated with the emergence of productive forms of economy, the possibility of accumulating food reserves and the need to preserve and protect them. As a rule, these are settlements of farmers who, due to the specifics of their economic activities, have become settled. They were also engaged in cattle breeding at home, which is typical of a complex farming system that provides a balanced diet of plant and animal proteins and carbohydrates. If the settlement occupied an advantageous position in relation to others, it could become the center of a small agricultural region and occupy a rather important administrative and economic position: stable places of exchange could be located here, crafts could be concentrated, religious buildings could be located;such settlements could in the course of time turn into proto-cities. In any case, the emergence of fortified Neolithic settlements indicates the complexity of the social organization and the entire life of the Neolithic tribes. The most striking settlements of this type should be considered Jericho, located near the Dead Sea (Israel), and Chatal Guyuk in Anatolia (Turkey).
Jericho (VII millennium BC), surrounded by seven-meter-high walls and having defensive towers, withstood, judging by the finds of stone arrows stuck into these walls from the outside, many sieges and attacks. The first Jericho was destroyed much later, already in the era of metal, but almost immediately it was rebuilt and, having survived many vicissitudes of fate, it still exists.
Chatal-Guyuk (VI millennium BC) is one of the most interesting settlements of the Late Neolithic - Early Eneolithic. This is a village that consisted of large adobe buildings, plastered and decorated with multicolored paintings, represented by zoomorphic and ornamental motifs. Buildings stand out that were not residential, but clearly public or cult.
This is how this "village" of Chatal-Guyuk looks like following the results of archaeological excavations carried out to this day. This is more a metropolis than some seedy "village" about which they write to us in history textbooks.
Hill Chatal-Guyuk (its name is translated as “forked” or “two-headed” hill, mound). On the hill is a large Neolithic settlement, whose inhabitants nine thousand years ago knew how to hunt and grow cereals, build houses and decorate walls with intricate drawings and impressive reliefs.
Archaeological excavations at Chatal Huyuk in Turkey have been going on since the 1960s, and since then scientists have found many real treasures. One of the most remarkable artifacts found recently is a slightly weathered but largely intact statue of a woman carved out of marble. The statuette dates back to about 5500-8000 BC.
The statuette differs from other similar ones in how carefully it is made. The marble figurine weighs about a kilogram, it is about 15 centimeters long and about 7.5 centimeters thick. Such figurines could depict women elders with high social status in the local community. This is not related to matriarchy: the analysis of finds in Chatal Huyuk, including human remains, did not reveal a significant difference in the lifestyle of men and women - most likely, they were equal.
Chatal Guyuk - During its heyday, this place was home to 10,000 residents who lived in houses that were decorated with art, which clearly played a large role for the community. During the excavations, many paintings and reliefs, clay tablets, sculptures and other unique works were also found.
Chatal Guyuk Hill is located 50 kilometers southeast of the city of Konya in central Anatolia. The early Neolithic settlement occupied the eastern part of the hill, later the western one. The area of the eastern "proto-city" of interest to us was 13.5 hectares, and up to 10,000 people lived in it at the same time. The settlement existed roughly between 7400 and 6000 BC. In the chronology adopted for the Middle East, Chatal-Guyuk refers to the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic and the Early Pottery Neolithic.
Houses in Chatal-Guyuk were built of adobe bricks and wood, the buildings were close to each other, there were no streets in the settlement, obviously, they got inside the houses through the roofs. Residents decorated the walls of houses with paintings and stucco reliefs.
The dead were buried inside houses under specially built platforms. Repeated reburials are not uncommon, and the skulls were separated from the skeletons and transferred to other houses.
The ancient inhabitants of Chatal Guyuk regularly ate grains of several types of wheat, lentils, peas, vetch, tuber, acorns, pistachios, and plums. They ate goat and sheep meat, hunted aurochs, deer and wild boars, geese and ducks. Among terrestrial predators, leopards were especially distinguished: there is a large corpus of images of these felines, often in pairs, among air - vultures
James Mellaart excavated Chatal Guyuk very quickly: 160 buildings in four seasons. The current expedition led by Ian Hodder has been running for 23 seasons and has unearthed half as many houses. And this is only five percent of the total area of the settlement.
In this city, samples of household utensils, jewelry, tools and other things inherent in early Agrarian societies were found, and in a fairly high state of preservation. Moreover, the peculiarities of the “burial” of the settlement made it possible to obtain samples that no one has ever seen since the existence of the settlement. For example, wooden furniture or fabric samples …
In fact, this quite strongly "throws back" the time of the origin of many crafts, since the age of Chatal-Guyuk is determined as 8 millennium BC. More recently - by historical standards - humanity lived in caves (for example, the heyday of "cave painting" came in the 10th millennium BC) And here is a whole city: the settlement numbered up to 10 thousand inhabitants.
And this despite the fact that for a few thousand years, the "norm" will be about a few hundred people, and ten thousand is practically a "metropolis". Moreover, Chatal-Guyuk was built up with quite "modern" houses built of adobe bricks.
It is such a building material that will dominate the world for several millennia - for example, the famous Sumerian ziggurat temples were built from it. The roof, however, has wooden beams and was covered with polished alabaster. However, surprisingly, it was this part of the building that was of great importance here - most of the work was done on the roof, the roof served as a "pavement" of this city: it was on the roofs that its inhabitants moved, since there were no streets, and houses were built close to each other.
An analysis of the remains of people found here showed that their standard of living was quite high. The average life expectancy of the inhabitants of Chatal-Guyuk was 32 years. For example, the life expectancy of an inhabitant of Ancient Rome was 28-30 years, about the same number of people lived in the European Middle Ages.
At the same time, it is clear that a significant part of deaths here, as in all traditional societies, was infant mortality, therefore, with the indicated average duration in the city, there are remains of people who have lived up to 60-70 years, and also in larger quantities than in the cities of Bronze century or even later.
Moreover, studies show that in Chatal Guyuk, infant mortality is also lower than in later periods. Such a statement may seem strange - after all, it is obvious that the yield level has been increasing all this time (the main cause of infant mortality is lack of food or its insufficient calorie content). And here, several centuries before the formation of the ancient kingdoms, and long before the beginning of plow farming, we see a result that will be achieved only in the New Time.
In general, the excavation of the "Fork-shaped Hill" was a surprise for archaeologists, historians and anthropologists, refuting all the usual ideas.