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(birds chirping)
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(cowbell ringing)
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(owl hooting)
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(footsteps)
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(ominous music)
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- If you had sort of
rolled up to Çatalhöyük
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over 9,000 years ago, as you
came across the landscape
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you see this great mound
in, in the distance where
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around 7,000 BC, about 8,000
people started to live together
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in a very densely packed community.
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They lived so closely together
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that they had no streets
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so they moved around on the,
the roofs of houses and went
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down ladders through the houses.
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So much had to be invented.
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All these processes that
make up a city life.
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We're just digging up for
the moment, the first mirrors
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you know, so people had to invent mirrors.
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They
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had to invent belt hooks.
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They had to find ways of
holding their hair together.
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It's a very, very innovative time.
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You know, you can see
people trying things out
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tinkering with what we take for granted.
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I think the sort
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of way that we see the
environment was not possible
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before Çatalhöyük
because the main changes
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the main interventions are
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are to do with domestication
of plants and animals.
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Agriculture is the, the
building block of civilization
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as we understand it.
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But it also was a trap into
which humans got drawn.
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(laughing)
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You ready?
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(soft music)
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The story starts small scale,
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but you'll have to talk
to Dr. Ceren about why.
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- You know how some people
think little bunnies are cute.
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That's the way I, I see my little plants.
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We built up a dependency on them and
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they built up a dependency
on us and here we are.
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How? Yeah okay. I'll try.
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(laughing)
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So you really understand
it when you actually
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see what happens to grass.
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I've got domesticated and I've got wild.
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Yeah. And this guy you don't
really even have to pull at it.
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It'll just fall and sort of break away.
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Yeah.
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And that's what shattering means
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this is their wild seed
dispersal mechanism.
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They'll break away from the ear.
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They'll fall in the ground
and they'll dig themselves in.
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But some small portion of
the wild shattering ones
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will actually have non shattering ears.
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(soft music)
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- The archaeobotanist's talk
about that as a random event.
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But then the question is, why
did it become selected for
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and that that's to do with humans.
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If you're gathering plants from a field
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the seed is what you want.
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So you keep selecting ones that are
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that are easy to collect.
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You are less likely to collect
the ones that are shattered.
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They're all scattered over the place.
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- [Dr. Ceren] Through time
the non shattering ears
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became more prevalent and
that's what became domesticated.
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- But as a sort of
unintended offshoot of that
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the plants couldn't
reproduce themselves anymore.
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The seeds got stuck onto
the stalk of the plant.
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- We actually have to physically
go and pull the ears apart.
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If you had a fully ripe
ear and you didn't pick it
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or you didn't harvest it, it
might actually rot on the ear.
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- So the plant is entirely
now dependent on humans.
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And so if humans want to
continue, depending on that plant
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they get drawn into planting
it and looking after it.
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The first entanglement,
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sewing and plowing
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and harvesting and, and
winnowing and, you know
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grinding it, it is, it's
all just small work.
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And one way of dealing with the problem
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of needing more work is,
is that you just increase
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your population size.
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All around the world,
whether it's maze or yams.
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Maybe you get agriculture
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you get increases of people.
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One way of looking at it is
that what really is going
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on here is that the domestic
plants are doing really well
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out of this.
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And what they've done is
they've domesticated us.
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You know, they they've forced
us to, to look after them.
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Entanglement.
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That dual process that
started in the Neolithic.
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We got dragged into doing things
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and we had to work harder
to do those things.
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And in order to work harder,
we invented new technologies.
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And those technologies
involved us working yet harder.
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Or doing more complex things.
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And therefore we had to
create more technologies.
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(somber music)
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So there's a spiral between
the humans and technologies.
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Agriculture, it definitely
comes with its negatives.
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Urbanism.
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Pollution
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- Environmental degradation.
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You know, as soon as
we got agriculture you see
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that a decline in health on the skeletons.
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Partly to do with the,
the less diverse diet,
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but it's also to do with
diseases jumping across
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from animals.
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These incredible negatives,
but they just carry
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on doing the same thing.
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On and on, in an endless spiral.
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(shovel scraping)
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- It's between 7,000, 6,000 BC.
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This specific person
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I would not know what to
pinpoint an exact date, but
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long long time.
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Humans started to modify
their environment.
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The domestication of
both plants and animals.
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Yeah. Big changes that
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of course affects culturally
biologically, all of us.
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(soft music)
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You think about your position
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with respect of all the
millennia that preceded us
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and you wonder about possible
changes on the future.
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You cannot stop this ability
of our species to change.
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It's pretty much like
trying to stop a river.
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(soft music)
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- You know, I think, I
think we have to accept that
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that's one of the
distinctive things about us
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is that we are sort of manically concerned
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with temporality and change.
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And so, you know
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we do things and then the
consequences emerge later.
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(somber music)
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So from a young person, is it?
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- Well, it's looks like
a male, maybe about
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maybe 30.
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- The question is whether we can go
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on finding a technological solution.
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That's the great worry is
that sustainable long term.
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(tractor rattling)
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The lesson from Çatalhöyük
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is that humans are are very good inventing
things, but they're very
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very bad at working out
what the implications are.
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You know we don't have a long term vision,
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particularly nowadays.
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We don't have a sense
of the long term impacts
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of what we do.
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And I think that's
something that archeologists
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can really point to.
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Really long term.
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(laughing)
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(indistinct talking)
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(hammering)
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Do we sort of pull back from this
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and say, you know,
technological change is not
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gonna be the answer we
have to change ourselves.
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We've got to change our way of being
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to reorient ourselves and and
what our wants and demands are
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and trying to reevaluate what it is to be,
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to lead a fulfilled and happy life.
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And, and maybe one that
has instant change and
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and activity is, is not ... isn't as good
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as one that has more stability
and, and, and continuity.
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(somber music)
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(birds chirping)
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(cow bell ringing)
