These are modern Obsidian points. This black volcanic glass was the economic fuel that powered Catal Huyuk.
The Religion of Obsidian
A remarkable wallpainting uncovered at Catal Huyuk throws an interesting light on
the city's economic and religious foundations. "Painted on the north and east
wall of a shrine... soon after 6,200 B.C .... it represents that rarest of all genres of
early painting, a landscape, and needless to say it is unique," writes Mellaart.
The painting consists of a stylized portrayal of the terraced houses of the city itself,
with a geologically perceptive rendition of an erupting, twin-peaked volcano, The painting
clearly represents an actual eruption of Hasan Dag, a twin-peaked, then-active volcano
eight miles to the east of the city, which dominated the skyline on a clear day.
Looking at the erupting volcano with the eyes of an art historian, several features
suggest that the painting is not simply a landscape, but is an icon of the Volcano
Goddess.
The contours of the volcano are breast-like and the overall
shape of the volcano closely matches schematized "bison-woman" paleolithic
designs and other goddess representations; it looks distinctly like a body, much more so
than like a mountain. The spots on the volcano's flanks, described as "glowing
firebombs of lava," are very similar to the "leopard-skin spots" that are a
characteristic sign of the Goddess of Catal Huyuk throughout the city's artwork. The
painting is a vivid, nearly naturalistic rendering, and the spouts of lava pouring from
the cone shapes at its base accurately portray the tendency of volcanoes to erupt from
vents at their base. But the painting is also a shrine mural, an expression of religion,
and clearly a representation of the Mother Goddess of Obsidian, and the city which was
built and consecrated by Her graces.
This mural is from a fairly early period in Catal Huyuk's history, painted as the city was
approaching its prime, and in it we can perhaps see the heart of Catal Huyuk's economy and
the very reason for its existence. The finest Anatolian obsidian was mined at the base of
Hasan Dag. Catal Huyuk, located near rivers in a flat, game-filled plain, was an ideal
trading site for the obsidian. In "The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light", W.I.
Thompson likens the obsidian to "a dark, cthonic milk which flowed out of the breast
of the volcano, Hasan Dag," and suggests that "Even as far back as the
neolithic, religion was good for business.... The relationship between neolithic religion
and economics may have been as intimate as the more familiar 'Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism," Thus, Catal Huyuk was perhaps built on religion and obsidian,
and very probably on the "Religion of Obsidian." (note; the suggestion 'built on
religion' is based on the archeological discoveries that as many as 1 in 2 of the rooms
excavated were shrines.)
Obsidian may have been considered a sacred material charged with "mana," the
power of the Goddess. The trade in obsidian may have been surrounded with rules, taboos,
and risks of all types. A sacred material may require special treatment -- a blessing,
perhaps even a desecration -- before it can be safely handled by ordinary people. The
evidence suggests that Catal Huyuk's dozens of shrines (along with their attendant
priestesses and priests), as well as the city's artwork, artisanry, and architecture, may
have all been inspired and supported by a religious control of the sacred obsidian trade.
 An obsidian arrowhead from Catal Huyuk. |
Anatolian obsidian, "purchased" in Catal Huyuk with an
exchange of valuable lumber or Mediterranean seashell, would wind its way a thousand miles
southward to Jericho, another important trading center near the Dead Sea. Jericho
craftsmen, paying for the black volcanic glass with equally black chunks of bitumen from
the shores of the Dead Sea, would work the obsidian into a variety of stone tools that
were sharper and harder than steel.
Jericho, which began as a village in about 9,000 B.C.. is also sometimes called the first
city. A thousand years before people set foot in Catal HUyak, Jericho was surrounded by
walls ten feet thick and fifteen feet tall. But neolithic Jericho at its biggest was
substantially less than half the size of Catal Huyuk, and it was clearly only an armed
trading post and village, a secular place very different from the unwalled Temple City of
Catal Huyuk. Jericho and Catal Huyuk seem to have formed the two ends of a trading network
that made possible the spread of agriculture, pottery, durable buildings, and metallurgy
(and possibly philosophy, religion. and the crude beginnings of writing, mathematics, and
astronomy) throughout the Mediterranean basin, and eventually into Mesopotamia to the
east. Egypt to the southwest, and Greece and Europe to the northwest. This trade network,
and the ideas and technologies which it spread. may have been the single most important
precondition for the emergence of the monument building empires of the Tigris-Euphrates
and Nile valleys.
What brought the end of Catal Huyuk's culture and the abandonment of the city? We have no
idea. Probably. after a time, the surrounding region was deforested in the quest for
firewood, overhunted, and damaged by agriculture -- a familiar pattern. Possibly the
rivers which supplied Catal Huyuk with timber, transportation, and trade changed their
course, isolating the city. In the later centuries of the city's existence disastrous
fires apparently occurred more frequently. and the destruction of the community's wealth
by these fires must have hastened the city's end. Clearly the demise of Catal Huyuk cannot
be attributed to war; the fires look accidental. there are no signs of murder or massacre
at burial sites, and there is little emphasis on weaponry. Catal Huyuk West, the daughter
city, also shows no signs of massacre or warfare. The walls of Jericho did not prevent the
frequent destruction of that settlement, while Catal Huyuk, which had no walls to speak
of, was never touched. James Mellaart attributes this in part to the unusual architecture
of Catal Huyuk, which he described as "inherently defensible," but
psychohistorian W.I. Thompson suggests that it was the city's religious status that kept
it immune from attack:
Catal Huyuk, like so many other great powers and organized religions, may simply have grown corrupt and self-centered, losing the people's faith. At its peak Catal Huyuk seems to have boasted one temple for every two houses, but, as centuries passed, the ratio dropped to one shrine for five houses, and the houses themselves showed finer burials and more extravagant grave goods. Religious architecture became less important, and the clergy increased in number and grew richer. Perhaps, after a time, just as with contemporary religions, people lost respect for the sacred institution, disillusioned by too much corruption and too little faith. In its final years, the city may have simply lost its reputation, its most priceless possession. Perhaps people simply stopped coming to Catal Huyuk to trade for obsidian; maybe some unknown neighbor down the road was now offering a better deal. The city-dwellers tried to save their livelihood by moving to a new site, but Catal Huyuk West never approached the size or grandeur of her mother. An epoch of civilized achievement came to a quiet end, the shrines and temples were ritually defaced one last time, and the mound was given over to the ruin-weed (rue) and the empty sky.
 In this wall painting at Catal Huyuk, rows of hands frame a
honeycomb pattern on which are depicted insects and grubs on a field of stylized flowers. |
The Religious Philosophy
of Catal Huyuk
Like Catal Huyuk the temple cave of Lascaux in France stands head and shoulders
above its contemporaries as an example of the aesthetic heights and spiritual genius of a
civilization long past. Painted in about 17,000 B.C., preserved by the unchanging
conditions of its cavern, and sealed off from entry sometime after 10,000 B.C., Lascaux is
perfect, the Sistine Chapel of Cro-Magnon man. Paleological expert Andre Leroi-Gourhan,
using Lascaux's perfect preservation as the starting point for a complete analysis, has
made discoveries which have caused the re-examination of many of the old ideas about cave
art.
Using statistical models, Leroi-Gourhan concluded that the animal figures were symbols
representing conceptual-religious themes, and that the figures were related to each other
in unvarying pattems, with the shapes of the cave body itself being used to define the
beginning and ends of "phrases" or "sentences" made up by combinations
of animal symbols.
Horse and Bison are always paired, the center of the Holy Story. Deer, ibex, cow, goat,
signs, and partial animals surround the central thesis of Bull-Horse, which Leroi-Gourhan
likens to the sacred couple, with Bison and Horse as a non- anthropomorphic perfected
representation of male and female forces. Camivores and dangerous animals mark the ends of
the Holy Story, the no-man's land through which none dare pass. Leroi-Gourhan's models and
ideas can not yet explain or define the content of the ancient paleolithic philosophy
recorded in these symbolic cave paintings. The evidence, however, is very compelling for a
higher conceptual philosophy, a teaching story with a definite intent, being concealed in
the animal art of Lascaux.
One of the bull designs on a shrine wall at Catal Huyuk.
I provided the coloring.
Mellaart, W.I. Thompson, Marija Gimbutas, and others have connected the animal art
in Lascaux with the animal art of Catal Huyuk (hundreds of representations of bulls, rams,
leopards, vultures, and other animals). The horse as a sign for the female Goddess in
Lascaux has been replaced by Her anthropomorphic plaster sculpture, the central icon found
in most of Catal Huyuk's temples. But the bison is still completely present as a
non-anthropomorphic symbol of perfect male virility and energy, although, in keeping with
non-ice-age Anatolia, the extinct bison has been replaced in Catal Huyuk by the aurochs
bull (a massive scythe-horned beast and an ancestor of modem cattle, which was hunted in
huge herds on the Konya plain). The bull is always paired with the Goddess; when bull
heads are found in shrines not apparently dedicated to the Goddess, they are surrounded by
breast-like knobs -- the very walls of the shrine have become the body of the Goddess,
from which the bulls emerge. Other survivals of the paleolithic sacred animal alphabet can
be found in Catal Huyuk's camivore imagery. Leopards are the ultimate sign of Goddess
power, and perhaps represent the untouchable, unknowable edges of Goddess mystery; on only
one occasion is the traditional Goddess icon replaced with another sign in a Goddess
shrine, and there She is represented by two leopards, facing each other. Perhaps the
paleolithic symbol for "Endings, the dangerous edges of the Sacred World
(carnivores)" was assigned to the unknowable Great Goddess. Breasts are found,
modeled in plaster with the skulls and teeth of boars (a deadly, unpredictable animal,
much feared by hunters), foxes, and weasels (both have bloodthirsty folk- lores); and the
beaks of griffin vultures are molded into the breasts, the teeth forming its nipple -- all
this amounting to a shocking (to us) combination of Goddess and camivore imagery.
Also, just as at Lascaux, the stag is found in several paintings, properly painted in at
the edges of the main compositions.
Other potential survivals of the paleolithic temple-cave grammar can be mentioned, but at
this time the statistical modeling needed to confirm this hypothesis has not been done.