Crane symbolism at Çatalhöyük

The other day I came across this beautiful mural from a Neolithic (7th millennium BC) site Tell Bouqras from Syria...

It is believed that this mural depicts a group of Common Cranes 

While looking for more info about this image I came across this very interesting paper entitled "Dance of the Cranes: Crane symbolism at Çatalhöyük and beyond". And in it I found this beautiful image of a wall painting from Çatalhöyük depicting a pair of dancing Common Cranes... 

Here is the real thing for comparison. A pair of beautiful Anatolian mountain cranes, a darker local subspecies of the Common Cranes found only in Anatolia.

The article talks about a possibility that a crane cult of some sort existed in Çatalhöyük and that it involved making crane wing costumes used for performing ceremonial crane dances...

The reason why the authors suspected this to be the case is because one of the things found in Çatalhöyük were bones of a complete crane wing, with cut marks corresponding to the cuts that have to be made to remove muscles during fixing of a wing in a spread position...

Which you would have to do if you wanted to make crane costume, to perform a crane dance...Which article authors imagined like this:

The authors then ask: "When would people from Çatalhöyük perform crane dance"? And they propose that the crane dance was most likely performed at weddings, "because cranes, dance during their mating season"...

And "because, cranes, which are monogamous and are dedicated parents, can be associated with successful marriage"...

The article authors say that although "...cranes are associated with changing seasons...it is unclear that the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük would have made that association..."

"...because Common Crane winter as well as live and breed in the area of Çatalhöyük, and so their seasonal association wouldn't be as strong as in Europe, where they depart just before the onset of winter..."

Also, based on the vulture depictions with human legs from the temple VII.21, which were interpreted as "priests in vulture costumes dancing over dead bodies", the authors suggest that "it is tempting to imagine a vulture dance of death and a crane dance of life"...

Well...Vultures areal "dance" was actually used in wedding ceremonies in the Balkans...And, in Western Asia, vulture was not only a symbol of death, but also a symbol of rebirth of nature, through its link with the rain season and the rain god...

Left: Montenegro 1963AD

Right: Syria, 1800BC

Eagle (vulture) couples dance above the mountains at the beginning of their mating season, which coincides with the beginning of the rain season in Fertile Crescent...I talked about this in my post "Eagle dance"...

Sooo...What do I think about this? I think that the authors of this article were on the right track when they were discussing the mural with two facing cranes and said: "The male and female Common Cranes look alike, so we cannot tell whether this is meant to be a mating pair..."

"...However, the facing pair of animals is a repeated theme in Çatalhöyük art, and for example is seen in a pair on onagers immediately below the cranes, as well as the facing leopards reliefs..." 

I will talk about the leopards in Çatalhöyük art soon. Very interesting subject.

"...The cranes may thus be linked into a larger symbolic system of pairs or twins..." Hmmm "symbolic system of animal pairs" sounds very much like "animal calendar markers derived from annual mating (or birthing) seasons of animals"

And so being "obsessed with animal calendar markers", I was intrigued by the fact that the crane wing was found on top of a horn of a female wild cow...Next to two wild goat horns...

I think that this is very important...Cause this links crane with two most important animal calendar markers related to agricultural cycle in Eastern Mediterranean, Western and Central Asia: wild goats and wild cattle...

The animal calendar markers which also mark sowing and harvesting seasons of the most important crops grown by the people of Çatalhöyük (and other Neolithic farmers in Western Asia): grains like wheat and barley and pulses like lentils, peas...I am basing this on what I read in "Food, Meals, and Daily Activities: Food Habitus at Neolithic Çatalhöyük" in the chapter "Food items and their seasonal cycle" where it says that the winter grains were ready for harvest in May/Jun...

Now the problem here is that today, in Konya area, where Çatalhöyük is located, the grain harvest starts in Jul/Aug...

I talked about grain harvest in Anatolia in my posts "Uluçinar stelae", "Bull god from Arslantepe", "Eagle dude from Alepo"...

So maybe, the the bull animal calendar marker has nothing to do with the start of the auroch calving season, but with the start of the auroch mating season, which begins in Jul/Aug...

Mating which was marked by vicious bull fights...

I talked about this in my posts "Alidjun" and "Bull leaping in Syria"...

In that case the yearly grain agricultural calendar with animal calendar markers would look like this

Either way, the link between wild cattle and grain agricultural calendar exists...

While I was digging around to find info about the agriculture practiced by the people of Çatalhöyük, I came across this amazing article "Diversity and Complexity in Early Farming Communities of Southwest Asia: New Insights into the Economic and Environmental Basis of Neolithic Çatalhöyük" which talks about the influence of the local climate and hydrology on the way people of Çatalhöyük grew their crops...

Here is the gist:

There were two types of Neolithic agriculture: 

Rain fed agriculture, where crops were planted after the first autumn rains, on the hills...

Flood fed agriculture, where crops were planted after the first spring floods, on the alluvial plains...

It was previously assumed, that because Çatalhöyük is located on a two mounds in the middle of the alluvial Konya plain, that the agriculture practiced by the people of Çatalhöyük was flood fed one...

Just like in early Neolithic sites in the Balkans. I talked about the alluvial plain agriculture in my post about 7th mill BC early grain farming Starčevo culture Blagotin settlement in Serbia. I talked about this archaeological site in my post "Blagotin"...

But it turns out, that the climate and the way it influenced water regime in the area made that impossible...On the Küçükköy climate chart you can see that after a hot dry summer, rains and snow arrive in Oct/Nov, and that the precipitation peaks during Nov-Feb period...

The combination of rain and snowmelt in the spring results in annual spring flood which basically turned the whole area around Çatalhöyük into a giant swampy lake, with Çatalhöyük settlement mound becoming an island...Which had huge influence on the life in the settlement...

The flood during the most important growing period for the agricultural crops would make it impossible to plant crops in the alluvial plain near the settlement, making the flood fed agriculture impossible...

This means that the only type of agriculture that the people of Çatalhöyük could have practiced is rain fed agriculture in the hills. With crops planted in the late autumn and harvested in the early summer...

BTW, the nearest suitable land for agriculture was located 13 km away...This means that the people of Çatalhöyük had to have been spending half of the year outside of the settlement, near their fields in temporary seasonal villages...

The same thing was found in Serbia with regards to the Bronze Age alluvial tin mining, also a seasonal activity during spring floods...I talked about this in my post "Bronze Age tin sources in Serbia"...

Sooo...As I said, people of Çatalhöyük planted grains and pulses at the end of autumn (Oct/Nov) and harvested them at the beginning of summer (Apr/May)...You can read more about it in "Food, Meals, and Daily Activities: Food Habitus at Neolithic Çatalhöyük" in the chapter "Food items and their seasonal cycle"... 

Oct/Nov is when wild Ibex goats start mating...Which is why wild goats are animal calendar marker marking grain planting season...

Apr/May is when wild Auroch cattle start calving...Which is why wild cattle are animal calendar marker marking grain harvest season...

OK....But what does all this have to do with cranes? Have a look at this...This is one of my favourite maps...It shows migratory routes of all migratory birds that cross over Turkey...Do you see how congested the skies are over Çatalhöyük?

Basically during Sep/Oct/Nov and Mar/Apr/May the skies over Çatalhöyük must have been filled with millions of migrating birds of all kinds...A spectacle eagerly awaited by the people of Çatalhöyük, because it signalled that the time to plant/harvest crops was nearing...

One of those migratory bird species were Common Cranes, which breed in Northern Eurasia and winters in Iberia, Northern and Eastern Africa, Levant, Mesopotamia, Northern India and Eastern China...You can read more about this in "Cranes of the W anes of the World: E orld: Eurasian Cr asian Crane (Grus grus)"...

You can see that Central Anatolia (where Çatalhöyük is located), is both breeding and wintering ground for Common Crane...The area contains a small permanent breeding populations which swells during the winter when the wintering birds arrive from the north...

I am talking about thousands and thousands of birds all arriving and landing together in Oct...And all getting up and leave together in Feb/Mar/Apr...

You can read about Common Crane migrations over Anatolia in "Soaring bird migration in 2015 spring at Belen Pass, Hatay, Turkey"...

Now this is not something that can be missed, if you live in Çatalhöyük, in a middle of a marshy plain, ideal crane habitat...

This is a recent image from one of the crane wintering grounds in Israel showing birds getting ready to leave...Totally amazing...Imagine how many more cranes must have been arriving together to and leaving together from Çatalhöyük in the 7th mill BC, before we killed them all...

Interestingly, just before leaving, the cranes would gather in huge groups...to dance...Until I read the above paper about the common cranes, I thought that cranes dance only as part of their mating ritual which takes place in Apr/May...

It turns out that "crane dancing can be seen frequently in winter quarters before the northward migration"...So basically, Feb/Mar/Apr/May was the period when cranes danced all around Çatalhöyük...First the migratory common cranes danced before they migrated back north. Then the local mountain cranes danced during their mating season...So if you were a Çatalhöyük crane worshiper, when would you have danced your crane dance?

So I would argue that if the people of Çatalhöyük were indeed into dressing up as cranes, they would have performed their crane dances at the same time when cranes danced all around them, in Feb/Mar/Apr/May?...

In Serbia people believed that if cranes land on a field during their arrival in the spring, that field will have an especially good harvest...Lots of guano...Wanna bet that the Çatalhöyük people also linked their field fertility with cranes?

Did people of Çatalhöyük dance as cranes to celebrate the affect dancing cranes had on their fields?

By the way, you know how the two facing (mating) cranes were depicted on the Çatalhöyük mural above the two facing onagers (wild asses)...Were they depicted there by accident? Well, cranes start mating in Apr...And onagers start mating in...April...I talked about this in my post "Onager"...

So that's it...

PS: An article about cranes and bulls calendar markers Indus Valley: "Mehrgarh crane bowl" 

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...