When humankind learned to farm it was a huge game hanger for our species. No longer would our ancestors have to rely on hunting and gathering for resources, placing so much of their survival on luck. However, an ancient farming settlement discovered in Turkey in the 1960’s didn’t have the population boom we once thought, according to new research.
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00:00 [Music]
00:03 When humankind learned to farm, it was a huge game changer for our species.
00:07 No longer would our ancestors have to rely on hunting and gathering for resources,
00:11 placing so much of their survival on luck. However, an ancient farming settlement discovered
00:16 in Turkey in the 1960s didn't have the population boom we once thought, according to new research.
00:22 The site is called Çatalhöyük, and it was likely one of the first large-scale farms,
00:26 with Neolithic humans building it around 8,600 years ago. And it's big, roughly the size of
00:32 around 26 football fields. Archaeologists have long believed that upwards of 2,800 to 10,000
00:38 people lived and worked here, suggesting human population exploded around the advent of farming.
00:43 However, experts now say that number is grossly inflated, and only around 600 to 800 people
00:48 probably dwelled here at any given time. So what's going on? According to the new study,
00:52 the buildings at this site weren't all built and lived in at the same time. The researchers
00:57 liken it to modern hotels, which are not all occupied and full at the same time,
01:01 saying this is what is artificially inflated population numbers, with the study concluding
01:05 that each of the buildings at the site was only used for one generation of families.