Human Iterations

(Three Thousand Years)

'On a certain day 9200 years ago the manorial houses at the north side of the large square in Çayönü were burnt down, and this happened so fast that the owners were not able to save any of their treasures. The temple was torn down and burnt, and even the floor was ripped open, the stone pillars around the free space were taken down and the taller of them were broken up. The place itself - previously maintained and kept meticulously clean for more than 1000 years - was converted into a municipal waste dump. After a short chaotic transition all houses had been torn down. The slums in the west disappeared for good, but only a few steps away from the spot where the ruins of the manorial houses had burnt the new Çayönü was erected. The new houses were comparable in size to the old manors but there were no more houses or shacks built to an inferior standard. In all houses, work was done and all hints to social differences were erased.'

I've oft quoted some of the archeological explorations of non-hierarchical town and city cultures in Turkey, mostly because they directly refute primitivism at its core. As Ken comments in the above post, there was "no evidence so far of any social division between the sexes, and no evidence of any deaths by violence, over a very long time. That's staggeringly unusual." Something that simply cannot be emphasized enough. But as I was not aware and Ken documents further, not only is there great evidence to suggest that this state of affairs came about through a revolution, this completely game-changing society "spread for thousands of miles and remained free, equal, happy and peaceful for three thousand years." Three thousand years.