Talk:Çatalhöyük

message: This paragraph makes no sense:
… because no nearby towns were found from which marriage partners could be drawn, this spatial separation must have marked two intermarrying kinship groups.  
Firstly Boncuklu Höyük was only 9km away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boncuklu_H%C3%B6y%C3%BCk
Secondly it is known from later times that marriage partners traveled as far as over a thousand kilometers through some special marriage networks.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.233.166.107 (talk) 13:50, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  no nearby towns were found from which marriage partners could be drawn … 

message: I added more detail/information to the article from sources by archaeologist Hodder.  Comments welcome.  WBardwin 04:26, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit - Hodder as Source 

message: Just wanted to let you know that I added the section on religion.  Athana 18:22, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Religion 

message: BCE is fine for esoteric, academic journals (though I intend to do whatever I can to reverse this PC idiocy even there).  BCE is entirely unnecessary here, will only confuse the uniformed who are the bulk of the users here. (Revert if you want,  I choose to make my point on this article because the topic has been a twenty year fascination for me).
:This isn't the place to make a point. If you're gearing up for a fight, can I recommend that you take it to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), which has had this discussion perennially, with the conclusion that it's in the best interests of the encyclopedia not to change them arbitrarily. Specifically, I'll point to the following excerpts:
:* "Both the BCE/CE era names and the BC/AD era names are acceptable"
:* "When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change."
:* "Revert warring over optional styles is unacceptable; if the article is colour rather than color, it would be wrong to switch simply to change styles"
:There are a lot of people with very strong opinions both ways on this subject, and the compromise above seems to be the best solution, as it heads off what is often a pointless and divisive discussion. You're of course welcome to try and change people's minds via the MoS, but I personally think that there are better things for editors to be working on, like adding informative content. Ziggurat 21:15, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Amen.  WBardwin 01:12, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  BCE 

message: As Catahoyuk had a population comparable to medieval London, I have to ask, what is our definition of "village", "town", "city" -- and "civilization"?
Is architectural, social, and productive egalitarianism incompatible with civilization? Do we have the mindset of the 19th Century reactionary, that without the Monarchy and the Church, civilization itself will cease to exist?
It's ironic that the most leftist of archaeologists are the most fervent 
about maintaining Sumeria and Egypt, with their slave systems, as the first "civilizations" with "cities", and maintaining early post-glacial egalitarian cultures, some of which are turning out to be startlingly sophisticated, as more "primitive".
::Well, if you're not satisfied with a definition (or definitions) you can find in dictionaries, try, as an introduction, The Goddess and the Bull by Michael Balter, he mentiones some scientific debates on the subject.--Barbatus 22:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is the Definition of Civilization? 

message: If I'm not mistaken, the new take on Catalhoyuk society/religion (Michael Balter, The Goddess and the Bull) is that it was not matriarchal, and that the seated goddess figure isn't as important as has been previously assumed.
I personally find the logic in this revisionism utterly lacking (male elements but nothing to show male supremacy) -- but the Wikipedia article is currently not reporting the situation accurately at all.
(Again, if I'm not tragically confused, as all too often).
The first paragraph of the Religion section gives us the traditional interpretation.
The following paragraphs quote: “…may force us to change our views of the nature of Catalhoyuk society…” -- but don't mention what might be changing! 
The section leaves the matriarchal figure as the sole mentioned religious focus of the society -- and in fact describes even a greater abundance of them being dug up.
Where's the discussion of the revisionist patriarchalism?
I think I agree with the above unsigned comments. Hodder's argument--that signs of egalitarianism rule out a matriarchal society--assumes that a matriarchal society would show signs of stratification that are opposite to patriarchal systems. However, in my mind, a matriarchal system could very much be egalitarian. Just because patriarchies favour men (in terms of social stratification) doesn't mean matriarchies would favour women. They would just be run by women. Considering that women were gatherers and therefore likely the first agriculturalists, it seems reasonable that they might begin a sedentary farm life as the leaders and managers of farm food as well as the creators of deities that relate to the harvest --Flurryofcrispycoffee (talk) 08:49, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  “…may force us to change our views of the nature of Catalhoyuk society…” 

message: I recently read both the book by Balter (not very helpful as far as CH goes) and Ian Hodder's Leopard's Tale. Also a chapter on CH in (I believe) After the Ice, fairly recently published. 
It completely changed my ideas about CH, and I have since been wondering if the CH inhabitants were, er, insane. Get this:
* they lived in crowded conditions on top of a mud heap in the middle of marshes (which do not tend to be healthy environments for humans to start with)
* their houses were so full of smoke that all the older folks had soot deposits on lungs
* the area around them flooded every year, and the archeologists say they must have walked 7 kilometers to any fields they may have had (how does that make sense?)
* they tossed their excrement and garbage from the roofs into spaces between houses; the stench, supplemented by the corpses under the floor, must have been intense
* they led a toilsome existence, constantly plastering, building and rebuilding, moving ovens, stairs, etc etc, digging up the dead, beheading some, putting weasel excrement on others...!
* they had to access houses from the top, unlike in pueblos, and had to crawl on all fours thru tiny doorways (wasn't that a tad tough on the older folk?)
* the "art" on their house walls included vultures pecking at headless corpses, and human breasts rendered in clay that had vulture skulls built in, poking their beaks thru the nipples; Sigmund Freud would have a field day with these folks!
These people, to all apparent evidence, were egalitarian and therefore completely free to walk away from this depressing, miserable, laborious existence. Yet they stayed. What the heck??!! 
How about some discussion here of all this weird weird stuff?! V.B.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.200.2.1 (talk) 22:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect this may have been some kind of ancient gulag or near-gulag being presented as an egalitarian "worker's paradise" by believers in Marxist (and/or Marxist-feminist) fairy-tales, with the people being kept enslaved by their own inherited ideology/religion and/or perhaps by a ruling elite that lived a long way away in a less unhealthy environment, along with a high risk of starvation and sex-starvation for anybody who fled (as a few probably did). But these Talk Pages are for improving our article, not for discussing the topic. So unless somebody (probably somebody else, as I'm probably not sufficiently interested) can come up with Reliable Sources that support any of our above speculations, this discussion would have to be abandoned (or continued somewhere else, which I won't be doing).Tlhslobus (talk) 04:13, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

text: That said, my above comment may just reflect my own bias, and many of their 'problems' may only seem like problems to us - they were probably 'nose-blind' to the stench, the marshes may have been useful for defence, the miserable conditions were presumably less miserable than the likely alternatives (and/or were thought to be so by the inhabitants), some of these 'problems' are also found in other ancient cities and also in parts of the Third World today, and so on (though as usual this can only be included in the article if backed by reliable sources).Tlhslobus (talk) 04:33, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

text: There also seems to be a bit of a contradiction between the claim in our text that it was a classless egalitarian society and Hodder's quoted statement "... If one's social status was of high importance in Çatalhöyük, the body and head were separated after death. ...", which suggests it had hierarchies, but that we just don't understand the details. One may also add that failure (so far) to find palaces or temples doesn't prove there weren't any, especially if there are ideological, funding, or careerist ('I don' want to have to publicly eat my words') reasons for not wanting to look for buildings that would make the place far less interesting, as it would no longer be a unique egalitarian society. And of course the alleged 'goddess' figurine appears seated on some kind of throne - both goddesses and thrones are hardly egalitarian concepts, even if there may well be no RS to say so. Tlhslobus (talk) 05:08, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

text: The term 'elderly' wasn't used before your post. Some 'older people' will always survive since everybody can't die at exactly the same age, even if they need not be 'elderly', especially by our standards.Tlhslobus (talk) 03:57, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  I am still reeling in disgust and disbelief 

message: the amount and formatting of the images relative to the text size ruined the layout of the article so I shifted them to a gallery until the text increases, or someone can do a better job on the layout.  I fixed most of the dates, distances, titles, and other formatting to match the MoS.
This article needs 
1 svg maps of the site
2 a chronology of the layers as a bulleted list
3 content on the relationship of the site to other neolithic cultures
4 an svg illustration of a typical house with labels
--Gurdjieff (talk) 16:37, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  wikification 

message: How come Hasandağı volcano 140 km at the east has been mentioned, but the Karadağ volcane some 25 km at the south east has been omitted ? Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 11:02, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Karadağ 

message: Has anyone but me compared this site to a slum that simply preceded conurbations? —Pawyilee (talk) 14:18, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: See my suggestion that it may have been a gulag or near-gulag in my reply in the above section ("I am still reeling in disgust and disbelief") - but unfortunately you and I don't count as reliable sources so our speculations can't go into the article unless backed by reliable sources.Tlhslobus (talk) 04:20, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slum? 

message: Has anyone read of any horses at that time, as bones or pictures, or figurines?? Or further, anywhere in Anatolia in the 7th millennium BC?? HJJHolm (talk) 07:21, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Horses?? 

message: The 5th paragraph of the Culture section begins with the sentence, "Apart of ritual life, the people of Çatalhöyük buried their dead within the village."
I'm not sure how to read "apart" here. Should this be "A part" (also meaning "a component") or is it actually intended to be "Apart" (also meaning "separate from" in which case the inclusion of the following "of" is an error). I'm thinking it is supposed to be "A part" but I thought I would double check here on the Talk page in case I was missing a different intention by the composer of the sentence. — al-Shimoni (talk) 20:50, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Added with , change to "As a part"? Doug Weller (talk) 08:13, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apart 

message: I had read that Catal Huyuk was a metal-working centre, and was arguably where metal-working began, involved in working copper, and that this was what made it notable. The text mentions it is Chalcolithic, meaning Copper Age, and has metallurgy in the infobox, but otherwise says nothing about metal-working. Why not? (Even if somehow it is no longer seen as a metal-working centre, we should probably say that it used to be seen as such by at least some sources, but no longer is for reasons X, Y, and Z, and we might then also want to remove metallurgy and Chalcolithic from the text and infobox). Tlhslobus (talk) 03:44, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Metal work 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Seems like a we need to add a Controversies section, and remove discussion of the murals, at least, from the Culture section. Famous Archaeologist Faked Ancient Discoveries at 9,000-Year-Old Site in Europe and Elsewhere. Dinoguy2 (talk) 11:33, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Yikes.  Well that is certainly a kick in the teeth, and it's already spread throughout a number of reliable sources, so I think it bears mentioning.  I am not sure we need to remove all discussion of murals, however.  The current discussion is fairly broad and cursory, and I am not seeing any allegation that Mellaart faked ALL the murals.  (As an original research side note, the murals I have seen that are allegedly his compositions look...improbable, shall we say?)  So I think we're best off with mentioning the issue and perhaps a word of warning.  Thanks.  Dumuzid (talk) 12:29, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: And removing any images from articles that aren't photographs but his compositions. Doug Weller talk 12:34, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we should be cautious. Zangger notes that it is very hard to untangle the actual finds from the fabrications because they are intertwined. We don't want to do this as OR. I think we should keep the coverage as is untill we see how the archeological establishment reacts. Ian Hodder has yet to even comment apparently.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 13:17, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: True, we can wait before removing images or even saying anything. I'd also like to see what Hodder says, he is after all the man! I still think that at some time, unless the drawings can be verified as not hoaxes we should take what I would think would then be the cautious move of removing them. Doug Weller talk 13:22, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I basically agree with all of the foregoing, however, I think the issue is near a critical mass of reliable sources, such that it merits a mention even if we don't alter the article otherwise.  I certainly think major changes should wait for more informed comment.  Just my thoughts.  Cheers all. Dumuzid (talk) 15:14, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fraud 

message: It's out of date in any case, but seems like a lot of wiki real estate for this. 
http://www.catalhoyuk.com/book/export/html/70
Seems to me that it should be more like just a couple sentences and a link at the end of  the Archaeology section.Ploversegg (talk) 03:22, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. It's not encyclopedic and as you say out of date. Doug Weller talk 18:20, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Long sponsors section 

message: Looking up references, footnote 26 about the textile fragments lists "Jenkins p. 39-47", but there is no mention anywhere else that I can see of what that refers to, no earlier citation and no listing in the Further Reading. 
Am I missing something or did a reference get lost?
Artemis-Arethusa (talk) 22:41, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Who is "Jenkins"? 

message: "Çatalhöyük was composed entirely of domestic buildings, with no obvious public buildings. While some of the larger ones have rather ornate murals, the purpose of some rooms remains unclear.[8]"
Sorry, the phrasing on the second sentence is really unclear. Sentence 1 is talking about buildings, then sentence 2 says "While some of the larger ones" (implying referring to buildings from the previous sentence) but follows up with "the purpose of some rooms". The structure of the second sentence on its own implies that it's saying "while some of the larger rooms X, the purpose of some (other) rooms Y".
So I guess my question is... is "some of the larger ones" referring to larger rooms within the buildings of Çatalhöyük, or larger BUILDINGS within Çatalhöyük? And when we know the answer, can we edit that sentence? I'd suggest either "While some of the larger rooms..." or "while some of the larger buildings...", or restructuring the sentence entirely.  -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8803:5800:FB0:8985:9801:3A6B:78AD (talk) 06:47, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a little bit arbitrary, since the dwellings were jammed together, somewhat as in more recent Pueblo settlements: "The inhabitants lived in mudbrick houses that were crammed together in an aggregate structure." -- AnonMoos (talk) 04:36, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Murals in buildings or rooms? 

message: as time has progressed, its become worse instead of better!  go look at march 2021 lots of pics, more info.  its become retarded as time has gone on!  even to the point where the date of founding is listed as 7500, 7200, and 7100 depending on the place in the article. Gurdjieff (talk) 23:07, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: To be honest this article has always been a hot mess. Lots of speculation interspersed with psychobabble and "this is what Hodder thinks". If I was to redo the article it would probably end up closer to half its size, starting with clearing out all the fluff in the Economy, Religion, and Culture sections. So I agree with you, the article needs work.Ploversegg (talk) 23:43, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  What happened to this article!? 

message: Surely this is nonsense or am I missing something? List of rivers of Turkey shows two major rivers in between CH and the Euphrates, and that's if you ignore everything in other directions. 2A00:1598:B01A:2069:11CA:C2A7:EBE5:4416 (talk) 17:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Currently the closest river to it is the Euphrates."