The Indo-Europeans were just getting down from the Iranian Plateau, and they had still a long way to go to expand to the world, which was essentially for them Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and mainly Europe. The first Indo-Europeans to settle in Anatolia were the Hittites and that happened a couple of millennia later. Hence the only population in Anatolia were Turkic and had been there in Anatolia for a good 30-40,000 years. But after the Peak of the Ice Age, the climate was changing fast, water was rising fast, and during the 8-10 millennia of the Peak of the Ice Age Homo Sapiens had become very resilient and they learned a lot of ways to improve their lot, to resist and survive. They did better than taking care of the natural garden. They started cultivating it. They did more than just hunt animals. They started domesticating them, though apparently, the Gravettians had already started before the Peak of the Ice Age. The people in Anatolia then were only, speaking Turkic languages, like all the people in the whole of Europe. The question then is what kind of changes did the end of the Ice Age bring to Homo Sapiens? Agriculture for one, the selection of plants and their “domestication.” Herding for two, the selection of some animal species, and their domestication. They learned, for three, how to live together in clustered communities with built houses or shelters. They also developed, for four, their rites, rituals, and spiritual minds, and that was to produce religions. They also went on and probably amplified the decoration of their living quarters with paintings, artifacts, and strange geometric patterns that I consider to be signs. These paintings and geometric Gestalten were of course accompanied by language, stories, rituals, prayers, and even orations directed at or to the supernatural beings they started to codify. They also started building some spiritual centers like Gobekli Tepe, and apparently, they started doing this before building shelters and cities for themselves. This spiritual dimension was not new, but the buildings it inspired were a new development. This implied some kind of collective organization and management, hence the cultivation of some recording system, essentially committed to the memory of some people who kept all sorts of discussions, decisions, and documents in their memory for them to be available anytime they were needed. The main stake was to guarantee the rejuvenation and the expansion of the community and that was achieved as it had always been achieved since Homo Sapiens evolved into what they were, continuing more spiritually and abstractly what hominins had done before them: the control and management of pregnancies, deliveries, the raising of newborns, then infants, then children so that each woman in the community could at least bring three individuals to a full procreative life within their 29-year life-expectancy.

2. SEDENTARISM, AGGREGATION, AND
AGRICULTURE
IN ANATOLIA, ÇATALHÖYÜK
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU (retired)
University Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, dondaine@orange.fr
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I./ THE LANGUAGE OF ANATOLIA AROUND 8-7,000 BCE
II./ “LEAD[ING] TO POPULATION INCREASE.”
III- “THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION” (PAGE 34)
IV- “THE INVENTION OF HISTORY” (Chapter 6)
V- “THE TRANSMISSION OF RIGHTS WITHIN HOUSES” (page
250)
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Preliminary Note
Bill Gates, India’s progress in 5
remarkable charts
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/indias-progress-5-remarkable-
charts-bill-gates/
For the readers who may find the number of infantile deaths in this Çatalhöyük community excessive,
here are the figures given by Bill Gates in the above-mentioned blog of his for India in the 21st century.
Disease or health challenge 2000 2021
Diphtheria
Vaccination
Death
58%
123,000
85%
31,900
Measles
MCV1 vaccination
MCV2 vaccination
Death
56%
27%
114,700
89%
82%
4,800
Diarrheal Disease
Death 267,500 55,300
Medically Attended Births
Maternal death rate per 100,000
live births
43%
316 (0.316%)
89%
130 (0.130%)
Of course, India today is not comparable with Neolithic communities in Anatolia. But you can imagine
what it could be and probably was in the 8th millennium BCE in Anatolia where and when there was no
vaccination at all and no modern medicine. They only had herbal medicine and spiritual support.
To further the comparison here are the figures in the USA. India still has some improvement to do.

3. ABSTRACT
The first question is about the language or languages spoken in Anatolia before the arrival of the
Indo-Europeans who will only come and mostly go through two or three millennia later when Çatalhöyük
will no longer be an active center. Agriculture and herding are very important if not dominant in this period
when the population stops roaming around and when it establishes sedentary dense agglomerate cities.
All the more so with the spiritual center of Gobekli Tepe which is about one millennium older. What came
first? Spirituality and spiritual centers, or sedentarism and agriculture? But this sedentarism and
agriculture developed in Anatolia long before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. We need to see that the
8 or 10 millennia of the peak of the Ice Age were a long period when Homo Sapiens had to learn how to
exploit nature intensively to survive the harsh conditions of that time. The second problem is the status
of women in a society where the birth of 10 to 12 or even 13 children per woman is essential for the
community, hence the species, to survive and survival was a central instinct in Paleolithic and Neolithic
Hominin communities deeply impressed by the death rate of children from birth to six years of age. How
was this possible and how these children were taken care of during the 18 months of breastfeeding and
the subsequent 3-4 years of dependency? And that brought up an average of three children per woman
able to live a full 29-year-long procreative life. What was the training and education the 6-13-year-old
young pre-puberty children received and from whom? Can we seriously consider that a community then
was a simple collection if not a juxtaposition of autonomous households? Who and what regulated the
distribution of fields, the management of herds, the management of resources, the production of tools,
weapons, cloth, and clothing, the construction of houses, and the providing of fuel, not to mention the
management of hunting that can only be collective?
Keywords: linguistic phylogeny; demographic development; agriculture; herding; history; social
rights; spirituality.
RÉSUMÉ
La première question concerne la ou les langues parlées en Anatolie avant l'arrivée des Indo-
Européens qui ne viendront et ne traverseront pour la plupart que deux ou trois millénaires plus tard,
lorsque Çatalhöyük ne sera plus un centre actif. L'agriculture et l'élevage sont très importants sinon
dominants dans cette période où la population cesse de vagabonder et où elle établit des villes
sédentaires densément agglomérées. D'autant plus que le centre spirituel de Gobekli Tepe est plus
ancien d'environ un millénaire. Qu'est-ce qui est venu en premier ? La spiritualité et les centres spirituels,
ou le sédentarisme et l'agriculture ? Mais ce sédentarisme et cette agriculture se sont développés en

4. Anatolie bien avant l'arrivée des Indo-Européens. Il faut voir que les 8 ou 10 millénaires du pic de la
période glaciaire ont été une longue période où Homo Sapiens a dû apprendre à exploiter intensivement
la nature pour survivre aux conditions difficiles de l'époque. Le deuxième problème est le statut des
femmes dans une société où la naissance de 10 à 12, voire 13 enfants par femme est essentielle à la
survie de la communauté, donc de l'espèce, et la survie était un instinct central dans les communautés
d'homininés du paléolithique et du néolithique fortement marquées par la mortalité ides enfants de la
naissance à six ans.. Comment cela était-il possible et comment ces enfants étaient-ils pris en charge
pendant les 18 mois d'allaitement et les 3-4 ans de dépendance qui suivaient ? Et cela ne donnait qu’une
moyenne de trois enfants par femme capables de vivre une vie procréative complète de 29 ans. Quelle
était la formation et l'éducation que les jeunes prépubères de 6 à 13 ans recevaient et de qui ? Peut-on
sérieusement considérer qu'une communauté était alors une simple collection, sinon une juxtaposition
de foyers autonomes ? Qui et quoi réglementaient la répartition des champs, la gestion des troupeaux,
la gestion des ressources, la production d'outils, d'armes, de tissus et de vêtements, la construction des
maisons et la fourniture de combustible, sans parler de la gestion de la chasse qui ne peut être que
collective ?
Mots Clés: phylogénie langagière; croissance démographique; agriculture; élevage; histoire;
droits sociaux; spiritualité.
INTRODUCTION
Ian Hodder and his book The Leopard’s Tale represent an important step or stage in the
field of archaeology and anthropology. It studies the city of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia which
flourished from 7,400 to 6,000 BCE in what he calls the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic Chronology
PPNA (ca 8,500 to 7,500 BCE) Jericho, Netiv Hagdud, Nahul Oren, Gesher, Dhar', Jerf al
Ahmar, Abu Hureyra, Göbekli Tepe, Chogha Golan, Beidha.
PPNB (ca 7,500 to 6,200 BCE) Abu Hureyra, Ain Ghazal, Çatalhöyük, Cayönü Tepesi,
Jericho, Shillourokambos, Chogha Golan, Göbekli Tepe.
PPNC (ca 6,200 to 5,500 BCE) Hagoshrim, Ain Ghazal.1
This book is essential since it studies a city that flourished some 2000 years after
Gobekli Tepe was built, or at least had reached a certain level of achievement, exactly when
in this region of the world the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and herding
was taking place. In fact, at this time the two developments were arriving from the Fertile
Crescent, according to the standard approach. This development goes along with
sedentarism and agglomeration for the populations concerned. The question is to know
whether the first constructions were ritualistic, religious, or spiritual centers like Gobekli Tepe,
and the residential cities developed later, as Ian Hodder states, or if agriculture came first
and caused sedentarism and then agglomeration which would state the spiritual
development is simultaneous or even posterior. The third solution would be a simultaneous
and reciprocal transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture-herding, the former going
down and the latter going up over a long period. Ian Hodder does not solve the problem, but
he leans towards spiritual development and buildings first, sedentarism and agglomeration
second. This debate is fundamental, and we must keep in mind this case of the Fertile
Crescent is only one case in the world in the same period, after the peak of the Ice Age
(19,000 BCE for the peak itself and the whole top period of this Ice Age covers about 8,000
or 10,000 years from at most 24,000 BCE to at most 14,000 BCE. I agree with Ian Hodder
1 “Pre-Pottery Neolithic: Farming and Feasting Before Pottery,” K. Kris Hirst, Updated on January 22, 2020,
https://www.thoughtco.com/pre-pottery-neolithic-farming-before-ceramics-172259

5. on one essential element. Dates have to be given from one fictitious year ZERO, and it is
the beginning of our present era, most often known as the Christian Era. Hence older dates
have to be given in BCE terms and in the proper orientation of the timeline, so moving
towards the present time. In BCE date the year 3 BCE comes after the year 4 BCE, or vice
versa the year 4 BCE comes before the year 3 BCE. Some authors very systematically
follow the numbers from smaller to bigger, which is absurd in prehistory and archaeology.
Ian Hodder acknowledges that on page 44, he should have used BCE years rather than
years ago or YA in illustrations 18 and 19.
But this transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture-herding is essential. I will defend
the idea that during the ten thousand years or so of extreme cold, human beings, Homo
Sapiens since all other Hominins had become extinct then, had had to regroup south or
north according to the hemisphere to resist the cold, and had had to intensify their
exploitation of natural resources to simply survive. This intensification of taking care of the
natural garden led them to observations and reflections that made the emergence of
agriculture possible. We must also understand that before that peak of the ice age, the
Gravettians for instance in Europe had developed seasonal permanent residential
constructions with wooden skeletons carrying earth packed on top. This back base was for
the winter, whereas during the summer they followed the wild herds that went north or south
according to the hemispheres. That is to say, the observations and the data collected by Ian
Hodder is here essential for a wider approach and I am thinking of the Middle East of course,
but also of Asia and the three rivers in Yunnan and Southeast Asia, the Yangtze (Jinsha),
Mekong and Salween, or the Indian subcontinent and the Indus and Ganges. But we must
also think of the Nile in Egypt, the Congo in central Africa, and some others north or south
of the Congo River, plus the lakes and rivers in Eastern Africa. We have to think of the
Amazon river in South America (it is not the only one) and the Mississippi and Missouri rivers
in North America, and these are not the only ones. Specific forms of agriculture developed
autonomously in those various zones at about the same time, between, 14,000 BCE and
3,000 BCE. I choose 14,000 BCE because that’s the real beginning of climate change with
the thawing of the ice, and then 3,000 BCE because it corresponds to the period when
writing is being developed all over the world. Between 14,000 BCE and the year 1 CE, the
water went up 120 meters. We do not cope with this phenomenon properly, and the water
had to come down the rivers and probably caused a lot of flooding, and repetitive floods
before finally getting more or less regular at the beginning of the Christian Era.
So, this book is crucial. I am going to get into it and my reading will be critical not so
much on the data collected, but on what I think is missing, and this limits what could and can
be said about this transition.
The full study in its 42 pages can be accessed and downloaded in open
access at https://www.ijrhss.org/v10-i3