First Neolithic City causes Massacre
My reading of “First Neolithic City Was So Overcrowded People Started Trying to Kill Each Other” reveals how overcrowding or overpopulation can cause violence or Massacre. When a small space or city is overcrowded, conflicts are likely to arise due to competition for limited resources. Everyone desires to live in a city where there is enough personal space. Lack of own such space can trigger violence or differences, which can precipitate the situation into unprecedented violence or massacres.
The significance of this reading is the importance of proper urban planning. Cities that are appropriately planned are likely to solve problems such as overcrowding. Urban planners can learn from this reading the need to take seriously urban planning to avoid overcrowding in cities. If a city is planned correctly, it becomes possible to some level to solve the problem of congestion because the movement of people would be guided (Weisberger, 2019). However, this is not mean that population growth in a city can only be solved by proper planning. Usually, when a city is planned, the city planners plan with a certain number of people in mind. If the population increases stratospherically, it would be challenging to have order in such a city.
This reading underscores how a stressful environment contributed to the Massacre. There can only be order in a situation where people are comfortable. The text shows that people living in Çatalhöyük felt that their environment was stressful. Ideally, this means that this environment puts people under pressure or hard situations that they could manage. When under stress, people tend to look for ways to relieve themselves from such a burden. Ostensibly, people living in Çatalhöyük considered killing as the best way to relieve themselves pressure. Thus, this reveals the need always to create situations where people are peaceful and under less pressure or stress. When stress amounts, people definitely would look for ways possible to eliminate the source of their troubles. Ideally, city living is no joke if people are stressed and unable to meet their needs. When city living becomes more stressful, violence will be triggered, and that would lead to another crisis. Therefore, this reading is significant in the sense that allows people to reflect on social order and how it can quickly be destabilized/disrupted in the event people are uncomfortable and stressful.
Also, this reading is essential because it informs how diseases become rampant when people are overcrowded. Based on the text, conditions became rampant in Çatalhöyük. Bacterial infections and dietary problems are likely to arise in cities where people are many and struggling to survive (Weisberger, 2019). Primarily, keeping many people in a small town where they cannot meet their needs can cause problems in the city.
In a nutshell, this reading is significant because it underscores the history of the city living in Turkey. From this reading, the history of Turkey is captured. Çatalhöyük that is discovered in this reading, is part of Turkey. The people living in this city or near it are now able to connect to its history. History is not just important to historians, but any person who may be keen to know what happened in the past. Therefore, this reading is significant to other previous readings because it raises critical historical aspects of challenging it is when people overcrowd in a small city.