Yo what’s with all the skeletons
The people of Çatalhöyük buried the dead under their houses.
As a part of ritual life, the people of Çatalhöyük buried their dead within the village. Human remains have been found in pits beneath the floors and especially beneath hearths, the platforms within the main rooms, and beds. Bodies were tightly flexed before burial and were often placed in baskets or wound and wrapped in reed mats. Disarticulated bones in some graves suggest that bodies may have been exposed in the open air for a time before the bones were gathered and buried. In some cases, graves were disturbed, and the individual’s head removed from the skeleton. These heads may have been used in rituals, as some were found in other areas of the community. In a woman’s grave, spinning whorls were recovered and in a man’s grave, stone axes. Some skulls were plastered and painted with ochre to recreate faces, a custom more characteristic of Neolithic sites in Syria and Neolithic Jericho than at sites closer by.
There are also modern people who do similar.
I wonder if they’ll let me keep my wife’s skull after she passes
There was one grave found at the site where an older woman was buried with a plastered skull:
Fascinating!
Having to enter/exit through the chimney seems a choice. Is this their primary exit?
That’s the only entrance, yes. I read that it was to keep the interior cool by letting the heat escape out the top while the cooler air sinks down to the bottom.
This is a big uneducated guess on my part, but could the smoke also help keep pests out?
I’m not sure, but that’s an interesting idea.
It actually seems like a good design, in terms of being part of the landscape and able to survive natural disaster events. I could see myself designing a more modernized equivalent of this for fire and tornado resistance, though I think I would go with a smaller living room cemetery.
