People have always fought and argued

Crowding, destruction of nature, disease. Even in prehistoric times, common life in cities was full of conflicts
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Illustration, Photo: Shutterstock
Illustration, Photo: Shutterstock
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

After the last ice age - when temperatures rose again and the ice sheet began to retreat - modern life began. Between 12.000 and 10.000 years ago, in the Late Stone Age, hunters and gatherers stopped living a nomadic life and began to form settlements. They planted useful plants such as wheat, barley and rye, kept animals such as sheep, goats and eventually cattle. That's when the first large settlements were created.

Prehistoric metropolis

One such settlement was the 13-hectare Čatalhoyuk or Čatal Hoyuk in the south of today's Turkey. Between 9.100 and 7.950 years ago, between 3.500 and 8.000 people lived in mud houses in the so-called proto-cities. Some of these houses were decorated with elaborate drawings on the walls or other works of art, including stone figures of animals and corpulent women.

The living quarters were entered from above via a ladder. The houses were connected to each other through the roofs. The dead were buried in pits under the houses. Right there, scientists have now found the remains of 742 human skeletons that could bring interesting knowledge about the not always peaceful coexistence in prehistoric settlements.

Traces of disease and conflict

These discoveries impressively show that the former inhabitants of Čatalhojuk had to deal with similar problems thousands of years ago as people do today. On the basis of bones and teeth, scientists were able to prove that in the early form of a large city there was a large number of infections. Hygiene was not maintained, and diseases could spread quickly in the city.

In addition, scientists have found numerous evidences that point to interpersonal violence. Many skulls show healed fractures on the top and back. They found traces of multiple injuries on some skulls. Many things indicate that these wounds were caused by hard clay balls, such as were found in large numbers in Čatalhojuk. Those clay projectiles were thrown with slingshots.

"One of the key messages of these findings is that our behavior today is deeply rooted in human history," said Clark Spencer Larser, an anthropologist at Ohio State University, who is leading the research in Turkey.

Common life as a challenge

"Through living together in these settlements, people were confronted with challenges related to the most basic questions: what to eat? Who should produce the food, and how to divide it? According to what social norms will the work be distributed? How to prevent infectious diseases despite the lack of sanitation means? How does interpersonal life work - and in the case of individual animosities?", wrote Larsen in the professional journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences".

The largely homogeneous community in Čatalhojuk apparently led such a complex coexistence continuously for about 1150 years, after which the prehistoric metropolis ceased to exist.

In the museum of prehistory in Weimar, Germany, you can see models of the interior of a typical house in Čatalhöyuk, as well as a model of the entire town.

Bonus video: