Post/Author/DateTime	Post
yellowdingo 07-16-07, 01:24 AM	Catal Huyuk Population: 1952 people (including children) <390 families @ 61 people/acre> Geographical Area: Town: 32 acres Grain-fields: 2,535 acres Grazing land: 65,715 acres Woodlot: 97,600 acres Total: 165,882 acres (259.2 square miles) Description: Earliest known Neolithic community (9000BC-5000BC). It is a Commonwealth of families. It is a crowded community. There is considerable industry, it is a regional trading hub situated on the edge of a river. Wooden Artefacts dominate instead of Pottery. Families live in clusters of roof accessed dwellings surrounding family courtyards. Families farm their own land, tend their own herd animals although these are somewhat malnourished by comparison, and hold their own grain and food. The dominant livestock is sheep for wool, milk, meat, and leather. There are hens and eggs, yet they must hunt seventy percent of their meat as wild oxen and red deer. Family requirements 1820lb meat per year (70% wild)=1 oxen (1000lb), 1 deer (220lb). Fine clothing with beadwork is common. The people are above average in wealth and health. Hunting is a collective venture that takes place in parties that might venture out once a month leaving 600lb of meat to be drawn from domestic herds (8 sheep domestic killed). There is trade with the Obsidian Scroungers of Kara Dag (a volcanic Obsidian source within fifty miles of the community) Skills: Craft (Woodworking), Craft (Bead-working), Craft (Obsidian-craft) Domesticated Sheep: A Family Sheep-herd will only slaughter ¼ of the herd per year so 4x8=32 sheep. Land supporting the family herd=3 acres per sheep=96 acres @ 57%=168.5 acres 32 sheep Wool: 2&1/2 lb wool x 32=80lb Milk: 32-4 rams=28 ewes x ¼ gallon=7 gallons per day Hides: 8/year Daily Individual Share: 1lb meat & 1.4 gallons of Milk Barley and Wheat: Family field (6&1/2 acres for growing grain Barley @ 28 bushels/acre x 57%=15.96 bushels x 6.5 acres= 103.74 bushels -seed (6.5 bushels) -religious offerings (1 Bushel at harvest) 96.24 bushels x 50lb=4812 lb grain 7025&1/2 loaves per year 3.8 loaves per person per day - Religious offering (1 loaf per day) Daily Individual Share: 2.8 loaves Other: Foraging Fruit and nut from the forest that surrounded the community. Fuel: 1952 people x 10,000lb wood=19,520,000lb firewood 8,714 tons of firewood 19,520,000lb/20,000lb=976 acres 976x 100 years regrowth=97,600 acres/640 acres=152.5 square miles Timber Clearing: 1.52 square miles per year Trade: The Community produces 31,200lb wool per year. Assuming each individual uses 6lb/year remaining wool= 19,500lb. This is sufficient to provide 6 lb wool to 3,250 other people and is a naturally occurring surplus residue of other processes necessary to the community. Exportable Surplus: 19,500lb Foodstuffs: Stuffed breads. Un-yeasted flatbreads of Barley and ewes-milk stuffed with meat and or fruits and nuts. Some Yeast breads occurring due to livestock handling. Alcohols. Fermented grain and fruit. Pottage. Breaddough Cooking pots with a fill of grain and meat. Cereal. Some grain soaked in milk Religious Practices: Ancestor Worship, Annual harvest offerings, Hunting Offerings, Daily bread Offerings. Tools & Weapons: Flint and Obsidian arrowheads, spears, cutting tools
DonThelonious 07-16-07, 03:47 AM	Your nuts dude. There is so much detail there that I feel like a newb DM. All I goota say is Damn.:clap::clap::clap::clap:
yellowdingo 08-05-07, 12:27 AM	Any thoughts on the Obsidian Scroungers of Kara Dag?
thenomadofkirintor 08-05-07, 03:59 AM	Could probably add in the little hobbit dudes they found a while back ago if you want to add in halflings. They were mostly cavern dwellers, and died out a few thousand years ago. Actually lived up to about the time of the Egyptians.
GoriceXII 08-05-07, 04:27 AM	I love the name of their trading partners. And very nice writeup btw. It would be interesting if you could come up with a system to do that for communities, it would have come in handy for my siege campaign.
Orbb_was_railed_by_God 08-05-07, 07:58 AM	What do people do for fun? Do they have any military of any kind?
yellowdingo 08-05-07, 08:57 AM	What do people do for fun? Do they have any military of any kind? Catal Huyuk is a Neolithic Community. They have Settled on the banks of a river. They are in a transition state between Settled Hunter-Gatherer and Herder-Farming. They hunt wild game and run livestock. They gather nuts and berries while farming grain, peas and other simple vegetables. Once a week the hunting parties go out so the men probably did that Deerhunter thing while out with the rest of the young warriors of the Greater family. Sex was probably popular as a fun pasttime, Artisan crafts, Wood working, Wallpainting seems to have been something the family did together. They have no millitary beyond the roll of families to the greater Commonwealth. I suppose if you break the laws you get kicked out by people with burning torches and Obsidian Spears...From what excavation there is, there was never a military conflict in the entire five thousand years that Catal Huyuk existed. This is the kind of Commonwealth D&D associates with Halfling Cultures. Perhaps their position on the Anatolian Plateau afforded them protection from Other Warlike cultures, the richness of the Volcanic soils, the wild Game, all provides for a very peaceful region. But by the end evidence points to a major trading hub that is mostly a producer of Woven Wool, yet exports Obsidianware, Woodcraft, statues, bead jewelery, Some Hides. It is not until the rise of the warlike Sumerians and Babylonians that the region is abandoned. I suppose the idea that the longest lasting civilization the human race has ever known might be a very unwarlike Commonwealth of farming families rubs the War equals Civilization Proponents the wrong way. More importantly, this city is the design on which the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Babylonians build. We are talking roof accessed family clusters about family courtyards, It is here that Religion and Commerce finaly begins to be defined. Trading parties from other tribes are evolving into Traveling Merchants.
GoriceXII 08-05-07, 11:26 PM	Interesting...what sort of use do you imagine a DM could get out of this exact community? Could it be the equivalent of a city of sages for a neolithic type campaign?
DM_Fiery_Fist 08-06-07, 12:09 AM	Well done! :clap:
yellowdingo 08-06-07, 12:50 AM	Interesting...what sort of use do you imagine a DM could get out of this exact community? Could it be the equivalent of a city of sages for a neolithic type campaign? What do you mean City of Sages? CATAL HUYUK is pretty much the above average (Archeologists consider them well off) neolithic community. Its a five thousand year old Commonwealth city-state run by sheep farmers. Slap Halfling Golden Age somewhere on it and plunk it down in a huge forested valley in the middle of a desert. If you are realy keen you can call it the city of the Gods and your tribe can tell every one they meet that your ancestor was expelled from the city for sleeping with his sister (aka tasting the fruit of that tree).
OravennasBrother 08-06-07, 05:11 PM	Are those yields (28 bushels/acre) realistic for neolithic farming? 28 bushels per acre reminds me of 12th century yields, but it has been a while since I looked.
yellowdingo 08-06-07, 09:21 PM	Are those yields (28 bushels/acre) realistic for neolithic farming? 28 bushels per acre reminds me of 12th century yields, but it has been a while since I looked. Oddly enougn Volcanicly rich soil brings grain yields to 80 bushels per acre. Leaving it at 28 bushel/acre (hand/primitive plow farming limit) yield suits a culture with truly limited tool agriculture and ideal environmental conditions.