Defne’s Story
Love and Thrive
Time: 7,000 BC
Characters: Defne and her mother Efal, Emelia
Main points:
haplogroup divides
productivity
egalitarian society-matrilineal
fertility goddesses
In another 3,000 generations, my ancestors had walked some 2000 miles. My mother Defne was born around 7,000 BC in Çhatalhöyük, a city-like settlement in the fertile crescent of Anatolia in what today we call Turkey. Defne and her mother Efal both survived her birth.
Kali could not have imagined what it was like to have a home that you did not have to carry on your back. She could not have imagined cultivating food in a field, with enough to feed a large community——food that could be stored to last through the seasons. How thrilled she would have been to know that her own talents as Artifex—who could imagine time and create a viable life for her tribe through agreements for survival—were passed forward not only to her grand-daughter who made the trek across the Gate of Grief, but much further. Her talents would pass forward many generations, later showing up in Defne, who was one of the architects of Çhatalhöyük!
Çhatalhöyük was a farming settlement with rich lands and an urban infrastructure for daily living. Domestication of plants and animals allowed accumulation of a surplus—this is what we now call the “Neolithic revolution in productivity.”
6000 people lived at Çhatalhöyük. They grew wheat and barley and they raised flocks of sheep and herds of goats. As well as farming the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük also hunted wild animals like aurochs (cattle), wolves, foxes and leopards.
In addition, there was actual social wealth in the form of Obsidian, the volcanic rock residue of the active volcano at Mount Hasan; obsidian was mined, cut sculpted, and used to make all variety of tools that became a basis of trade throughout the region. This ability to exchange the accumulated wealth of increased productivity made Çatalhöyük a center of exchange.
As a young child, Defne was obsessed with stacking stones—what today we call cairns. When she could climb on her own, she went up and down the ladder from her house to the outside world. By the time she was 14, she worked daily with a team of maybe 100 people, to make the plans for growth and expansion of the tightly packed city. The houses were packed together, stacked just like cairns, one on top of the other, shifting back and forth so that the roofs were partially free for outdoor activities. And as there were not actual streets, people walked through the city, moving up and down on the rooftops, working their crafts, weaving, making pottery, carving sculptures, while others stacked grain. Defne’s mother Efal was always right outside her house, weaving linen and woolen cloth that she could use to make clothing or exchange in the market. Aunt Ethel worked next to her making jewelry from stone, bone and shell. And everywhere on these rooftop streets there were children, running, playing games, gathered in laughter in the safety of their surrounds.
Throughout the city there were also core urban units that consisted of the spaces where common needs were found—the marketplace, the fast food houses, the childcare centers, the women’s centers, and the gathering spaces for worship of the Great Mother.
Defne worked on designing the shared childcare spaces. We all know that one of the talents passed on by women is the wisdom that architects design childcare systems. In Çhatalhöyük, there was no idea of a nuclear family, women were fertile, and men were plenty. While women ceremoniously learned to “tell time,” to control their bodies and their pregnancies, they did not have any need to control paternity. So while the ancestral inheritance was matrilineal, most of the city’s children were related in some manner—everyone was assumed to be a sibling and the people of Çhatalhöyük loved all their children. The sociality was so great and the abundance secure that Mothers did not need to keep their own children in their still-small houses. Every child was safely placed in the best possible home, and the children (while knowing their mothers and siblings not their fathers) grew up understanding very well that what is good for the one is good for the all. Needless to say, this made Defne’s role as architect of childcare systems very important.
In Kali’s life, the tribes had been egalitarian largely because every human was needed to work cooperatively in order to survive until the next day, to wake each morning with as many people as possible alive. For Defne, daily survival for individuals was not at the front of her mind, but annual survival for her extended family was. The kind of issues the Kali addressed about how to organize the group for the good of all were essentially the same for Defne. While the division of labor was more complex, the basic principle remained and expanded in practice: What we do for the least of us, we do for us all. Thus, Çhatalhöyük was essentially a communal society, with men, women, children, and animals holding high standing.
Defne’s daughter Emelia (who did not have children of her own) was a priestess who coordinated social gatherings at the common shrines for Divine Mother worship—from grief rituals to childbirth celebrations to daily singing in gratitude for the fertility of the women, the animals, and the land. Women especially were celebrated for the gift of creation, their ability to create life. Most houses had small shrines within them, and small figurines of clay and stone in the form of goddesses were found everywhere in the city. One now-famous figure is that of a woman sitting on a throne giving birth to the future with leopards on each side.
Defne also taught in one of the schools. Despite great progress of civilization, life expectancy was about 30 years old. As more skills developed and greater division of labor, the teaching of those skills became more important. Plus, while the people were busy ‘making history’, some of them had to teach history.
By 35, Defne had lived through six pregnancies and three successful births—two girls—Emelia and Ruth (my ancestral mother) and a boy named Jereco.
Her daughter Emelia held women’s circles at the Great Mother shrine where she taught young women how to tell TIME.
Then she recited,
I am Emelia, daughter of
Defne, daughter of
Efal who is the daughter of
Kalifa
Bahati
Amare
the counting always ended with,
and I am the daughter of Eva—who survived the Big Death!
And the chorus:
“She lived! She lived! She lived and so lived her daughter and her daughter’s daughters.
“May she never go hungry. May she never thirst.
“Many she live to lead us forward on our journey of life!