Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction by Newitz Annalee

Author:Newitz, Annalee [Newitz, Annalee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385535922
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

An artist’s conception of what the ancient city of Çatalhöyük might have looked like. There were no streets, and people entered their homes through holes in the roofs. (illustration credit ill.10)

(Click here to see a larger image.)

Cities didn’t just change the environment with agriculture; they changed humanity, too. Stanford University anthropologist Ian Hodder, who has led excavations at Çatalhöyük since the early 1990s, believes that cities “socialize” people. Their routines are transformed by what he calls “bodily repetition of practices and routines in the house,” as well as the “construction of memories.” He writes about one house in Çatalhöyük whose residents rebuilt the structure six times over a couple of centuries, each time with exactly the same layout. Like their neighbors, these people shared a religious tradition of burying the bones of their ancestors in the floor of the house. As time passed, the house became more than just a dwelling. It was a monument to previous versions of the house, to the family, and to the city itself. This is a useful way to think about cities in general, and helps illuminate why we attach so much significance to preserving ancient structures in our modern cities. Our cities are monuments to our shared history. Though the bones of our ancestors aren’t literally built into the floors of our homes anymore, they remain there in a symbolic sense. That ineffable megapolisomancy that gives cities their allure comes from the way they are constructed of memories as much as they are constructed from brick and steel.

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