In this article, we argue that the transition to the sedentary life is a life practice developed by women. We will also try to reval how the woman establashed this new life carried out a socilization practice with her neighbors in...
moreIn this article, we argue that the transition to the sedentary life is a life practice developed by women. We will also try to reval how the woman establashed this new life carried out a socilization practice with her neighbors in shelters to make sedentary sustinable and deepen it, how she organized the economic resources in the environment, and how she took a step into a new mythological imagination by creating a series of symbols that would sustain this organization in order to make it successfull.
We will try to base these hypotheses by analyzing the archaeological data of the period from a broad perspective. In this context, we address the issue under two main headings:
1) "Women makes, man conquers", and
2) "God sleeps in stone, wakes in animal, and manifests/appears in humans":
Using different methods, under the first heading we tried to understand and explain where and how sedentary life began, what economic reasources it relied on; and under the seconde heading we tryied to Show when and how men intervened and sized this material labor and mythological imagination of women by subjecting both archaeological remains and mytological data to a very comperhancive and rigorous anlaysis.
1-Under the heading Woman Makes, Man Conquers we discussed by whom, why, where, how, and when the sedentary life began, and based on the light of archaeological data; also we tried to reveal where and how it spread, based on chronological data. Accordingly, the Younger Dryas ecological crisis, wich was active 13,000 years before present, devastated the nomadic hunter gatherer life form. In the Levant, during the Geometric Kebaran period, caves that were plaistocene living spaces began to empty and, after a while, to be used as cemeteries. Replaces, expert gatherers developed the feminine round shelters that were discovered in the Natufian culture in the South Levant; they also created a subsistence economy by including wild cereals, plant roots and slow-moving animals (such as torttoises, rabbits, partridges and foxes) which around them, in their diet. Round shelters were used mostly for sleeping at night and resting during the day. Socialization devloped in common outsite areas where cooking and stroge were located. Thus, a daily life routine centered on women emerged. With in Daily life routine, in addition to worldly socialization, a mythological vision develop that made this feminine eco-political lifesityle sustinable, branched out and deepened it, as we see at Hilazon Tachtit in the tomb of a female shaman(12.000-9,000 BP). Thus, this creative new life developed and took root in the southern Levant. This paper suggests that this life style which developed in Levant in the Late Epi-Paleolithic age, spread along the Fertile Crescent arc and reached to the Upper Tigris region. By incorporating almonds and peanuts obtained from wild fruits and seeds abundant in the Upper Tigris into the sedentary hunter-gatherer diet of wild boars, wild goats, wild sheep, and red deer (possibly with the contribution/influence of hunters/men), the population increased. Moreover the walls of the round structures became thicker and larger, and which we can see at the stone utensils were found in the graves at Boncuklu Tarla, and amulets, belt buckles, etc. that in the mythological imagination's the animistic elements had diversified and the symbolic expressions deepened at Çemka Höyük female shaman grave (9300 BP). When it comes to the PPNA stage, some public buildings emerge where collective rituals are performed among these strong feminine circular structures that are daily living spaces. This public building tradition, which developed in the Upper Tigris region, soon spread to the lower Euphrates Basin, called the Stone Hills region, and the feminine animism created by female shamans gradually took on a totemistic masculine form in the hands of male shamans, and evolved into huge monumental structures. During the PPNB/C process, while this male-dominated ideology domesticated the animals, it also domesticated women by moving the storage and firing areas, which were mostly women's areas of interest/labor, to these masculine rectangular buildings they newly built and divided with internal walls (privacy). Thus, the anti-female, male-dominated life style, which was strengthened/deepened by the religious discourses and legal texts of the urban revolution in Mesopotamia, and continued to exist until modern times, was completed with all its elements.
2) Under the title of God sleeps in the stone, wakes up in the animal, manifests/becomes visible in the human, the stages of animistic religiosity, which emerged and systematized in the Natufian culture by female shamans, it has moved to the upper Tigris, and than the masculine form it took in the stone hills region, and the architectural elements that transformed into monumental structures were discussed. In this context, we argue that in the process that started with female shamans, each of animistic elements related to the god was determined separately and carved into stones by reference their permanence (eternity) and visions. Its describe through animals such as the hard-shalled long-lived turtle that accompanies both the depicted works of art and the tombs of female shamans. We also discussed such a metaphors were corved into stones and bones that turning into protective amulets, this divine relationships and stories/myths were carved on monumental Pillars and Totem Poles in the Stone Hills, this is literally that mean the god sleept at the stone. In this context the shamanistic elements (animal depictions) in Göbeklitepe and their metaphorical contexts were examined in depth; the use of birds as mounts (awakening God through animals), the shaman establishing a relationship with God or it is argued that the shaman makes astral journeys to rech the God by disguising himself as a bird (birds with human feet where the shaman changes his body). In addition, the man's palming of his genitals by making "şebbir", which we see in the rock depiction in both Urfa Man and Sayburç, has been interpreted as a challenge to wild animals such as lions/tigers, which symbolize the forces of nature, and so we noted this action as a harbinger of his superiority in future of the nature. The Bull, which would later become the sacred animal of the male gods (such the storm god Teshub's) and in the depiction, a masculine symbol threatening the woman giving birth, was interpreted as the image of masculine dominance and fertility on the other. Another artifact taht have found in the Karahantepe Initiation Pool its ountbuldings was evaluated as the last stage of the shamanic belief system and was subjected to a new reading. According to this reading, in the Karahantepe scene, male shamans temporarily hosted the god in their bodies (the God manifests/becomes visible in the human) with the opportunities provided by the rhythm/dance (and perhaps taking some psychotropic stimulants), that is, in a way, “semah” has gradually become representatives of the divine field on earth, such as the healer of the evil and carrier goodness, and has became a sacred subject that receives and distributes holiness, without resorting to the intermediary animal bodys. Thus, it has been suggested that the blessing may have been transferred to the group that became the leaders of the society, through the phallic representations in the initiation pool we saw in Karahantepe and the Shaman (the head on the wall) who carried out. This blessing occurs trough a kind of "badeleme ritual" that we see (the shaman wearing a boar mask and blessing a young boy) in the pool. Thus, we can understand the Boar, unlike the Bull as a animal transformer of the sacred not of the reproduction and fertility. In the following process, the reasons for the emergence of the Skull Cult and its mythological contexts were discussed. As a result, the patriarchal "new life" shaped by the shaman cult and its ideology, which took a masculine form in the Şanlı Urfa Stone Hills region, was spreading towards the south Levant via Abr 3 and Jerf el Ahmer and its surroundings during the PPNA/B periods. And on the other hand, it has spread to the Cappadocia region via Navali Çori-Çayönü and maybe Cafer Höyük to Aşıklı Höyük, Boncuklu Höyük, and Pınarbaşı.
Key Words: God, Human, Animal, Hunter-Gatherer, Sedentary, Shaman Woman, Shaman Man, Stone Hills
