Neolithic wanderings

Early June. Elazig.

Kristen's grandmother was born in Harput, just up the road from Elazig. At age 5, perhaps 4, her parents were killed as part of the Armenian Genocide. As an orphan she, with many other orphans, walked across the Syrian Desert and eventually onto a ship to the United States. But I'll let her tell that story. It's very emotional.

The town of Elazig lies in the southeastern part of Turkey. There is irrigated land all around, growing fruit: grapes, apricot, white mulberries, plums, peaches, and more. The province of Elazig is also home to many mines, including copper, cobalt, manganese, marble, feldspar, lead, tin, and a bit of silver, and even less of gold.

In an earlier post I commented how similar were all the cities that we stayed in were. We've broken that pattern, if only slightly. In the cities in western Turkey, every block had several shops selling Doner (like a Greek gyro sandwich), Kebap (shish kebab), and Lamacun (lamajun, sometimes called Armenian pizza), and occasionally a very western style burger. Here in Elazig, doner, kebap and lamacun are available but not as dominant. Instead we've got Corba (soup), Kofte (a paste made of very finely ground beef with lemon and salt and lots of paprika and eaten raw), and a very different Kebap, this one made with spiced ground beef, packed onto the skewer like molding clay onto a stick and cooked over charcoal. It's all very tasty, although it's hard to get excited about raw beef. The bread is different too. There, there were loaves of fluffy white elongated football bread, and occasionally bad lavash bread. Here it's Pida (pita) and Lavash and excellent. Lavash is one of the world's earliest breads, perhaps 6,000 years old. Made of wheat, and rolled out to 18-24 inches in diameter and about 1/32^nd of an inch thick. Almost paper. Traditionally it was cooked in a Tandor, a stone pit in the ground with burning charcoal in the bottom, and the raw dough was stuck against the inside of the pit to very quickly cook. It is then pulled off without dropping it, and another piece stuck on. We watched a small shop making them in a more modern way. Each piece was rolled out thin by hand and placed on a large steel platten with a propane burner underneath. The jewelry stores, clothing stores and shoe stores all look the same.

The river, from which the local agriculture gets it's water, is the Euphrates. We're near the headwaters of this mighty river. Just to the south of us is a ridge, and on the other side is the watershed of the Tigris River. We are in the land between two rivers. These mountains were thrust up when Gondwanaland broke apart and a small rift became the Atlantic Ocean. The African plate, Arabian plate, Anatolian plate and Indian plate sailed north and crashed into the Eurasian plate, building a great band of mountains from the Atlas in Morocco, Pyrenees in Spain and France, Alps, all of Turkey, the Himalayas, and continuing south to Indonesia. Truly a massive mountain range when considered together. Rains fell on these rocks of limestone, sandstone, granite, basalt and metamorphic, eroding them into sand, silt and clay. These particles were washed down the hills and carried away by the rivers. When the rains were hard, the rivers flooded, and the clay, silt and sand were deposited on the plains. Soil. On these plains grew some grasses that had particularly large seeds, that early humans found easy to harvest, thresh, winnow and store. The beginnings of agriculture. The beginnings of civilization. The Land Between Two Rivers. Mesopotamia.

Also just on the othe  side of the ridge, near the town of Ergane, are the ruins of an old town. We've visited some ruins of Roman age and thereabouts, but these are older. Much older. Between 9,500 to 12,000 years ago. Perhaps you've heard of Göbekli Tepe, it is of similar age. There are at least a dozen ruins of settlements of this era scattered around the Anatolian region of southern Turkey. And so we rented a car and drove there.

 

This ruin, called Çayönü Tepe boasts some evidence of worship. But more importantly is some early domestication of animals, including sheep, bovine (management, not domestication), and this may be where swine were first domesticated. There is also evidence of early metallurgy with copper ores. Copper mining continues in this general area to the present day. Çayönü is considered the preeminent example of neolithic hunter-gatherer's transition to settled life. Archaeologists have determined a transition from round houses placed randomly like you still see in Africa, to square houses built on a grid, evidence of some central planning.

Both emmer and einkorn wheat have been found here, although the origin of wheat probably occurred 20 miles southwest of here. While most of the site is pre-pottery, in later years pottery was used for making bowls and for clay drainage pipes, probably for waste disposal. Amazing early engineering. We picked up bits of obsidian (remember, this started as Neolithic) which probably came from outcrops 70 miles to the northeast. Obvious evidence of travel and trade to resources and to other nearby communities.

After strolling around the perimeter and talking with the crew working on digging a 5ft face of earth, we crossed the creek and walked up into the adjacent hill of limestone outcrops. There are shallow caves and tunnels, cow dung, and thistles. I clambered up on an outcrop, and found that someone apparently had dug a hole into the bedrock, about 18 inches across the top, widening to over three feet, and about 5 feet deep and very circular. Much too small and symmetrical to be a natural sinkhole. Perhaps a cistern or a tandor oven for cooking Lavash bread. I strongly suspect the latter. I sent an email to the lead archaeologist. He may already know of it.

We took a detour on the drive home and stopped at a farm where they make Lavash the traditional way, in a tandor oven. As soon as I saw it I knew that the hole I saw in the limestone was almost certainly one of these. Half a dozen women were working there. Rolling out the dough was done in another room, then one woman took a flat, very thin piece of dough, wetted one side, and stuck it onto the inside wall of the tandor. After a minute, another would pull it off and stack it with others, They had two tandors going. Kristen was very excited, as this was the bread she grew up on, and that her ancestors ate. Her enthusiasm rubbed off on the family, and soon we were offered tea and given a piece of dough that had been stuffed with spicy meat, folded over, and cooked right then in the tandor. Plus slices of tomatoes and cucumber. Typical Anatolian hospitality. Every stranger is treated as a gift from God. The western idea of 'stranger danger' would never catch on here in Turkey and the neighboring countries.