Marsh Villages Set The Pattern For Permanent Farming Settlements

A good reconstruction of Catalhoyuk showing it on fertile marshy ground surrounded by fields between two streams. The Akkadian speakers were starting their migration westwards.
(Painting by Dan Lewandowski. Found at: http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/science-catalhoyuk-map-mural-volcanic-eruption-01681.html)
Below is a map from the interdisciplinary Sheffield Archaeology department showing its location in a lowland marsh in what is today south central Turkey. (from https://www.archatlas.org/atlas/visualisations/sitesfromsatellites/catalhoyuk/)

Çatalhöyük Set the Pattern For Marsh Village Settlement

(April 19, 2025) Catalhoyuk (7100 to 5700 BCE) set the pattern for permanent Neolithic farmer settlements. It was an early agricultural settlement of about 8,000 people in south central Anatolia. It was located in an ideal agricultural setting being next to a marsh allowing for many flat agricultural fields separated by a network of small streams providing a natural sort of irrigation and abundant fish and shell fish. Floods would have renewed the soil every year. It was the first stop of the Neolithic farmer settlers coming out of the Middle East.

References

Ian Holder’s 2014 Flikr stream at https://www.flickr.com/photos/catalhoyuk/albums/72157647113315030

The more permanent Neolithic farming villages were located on raised areas in marshlands with many villages building their houses on stilts. This is a pattern seen from Çatalhöyük onwards because occasional Spring flooding kept the soil fertile. Villages not on marsh lands has to move every few years because Druid civilization dry land farmers practiced slash and burn agriculture which eventually robbed the soil of its fertility. Not until the arrival of the Indo-Europeans with their better farming practices (probably crop rotation and manuring fields) did permanent non-marsh villages become established. These wet conditions allowed their organic material goods to be preserved. This marsh living also implies that malaria had not yet appeared in Europe. Image from the wonder artist Burninggraph at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/bkndE

Central European Marsh Villages

(April 19, 2025) Numerous European Neolithic lake sites have preserved objects made from perishable materials. Examples include Charavines, on Lake Paladru, France, with ropes, textiles and baskets dating to 4000 BCE, the use of lime (Tilia sp.) bast and flax at Arbon-Bleiche, Lake Constance, Switzerland, dated to 3400–3300 BCE. Also in Switzerland, excavation of the Egolzwil settlement, located on the former Lake Wauwilermoos, yielded textiles, cordage and basketry made of flax, and oak and lime bast. Artefacts of lime and Clematis sp. bast have also been recovered from La Draga (5300–5000 BCE), on the shores of Lake Banyoles, Spain.

Reference

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/textiles-basketry-and-cordage-from-the-early-neolithic-settlement-of-la-marmotta-lazio/FE8D1CA463494756036E38CBE925B61F

La Marmotta Marsh Village Site is now located just offshore in Lake Bracciano, Italy just north of Rome. The site lies approximately 300 meters from the modern shoreline at a depth of 11 meters (8 meters of water and 3 meters of sediment). Lake Bracciano is connected to the Tyrrhenian coast by the river Arrone which would have provided access to the sea. Three phases or levels have been defined, dating to between c. 5700 and 5150 BCE. Ths village used canoes almost 11 meters in length.

from: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/antibody-treatment-protects-adults-against-malaria

(April 20, 2025) This wooden idol was found in an Irish marsh around the time when malaria would have reached the island. It is dated to about 400 CE. It consists of the head, now mostly rotted away, and 4 lines representing the exposed ribs of a victim wasting away. The site in the rural area of Gortnacrannagh, in County Roscommon, was considered a pagan holy place by later Christians. Given the rate at which wood rots in damp Ireland it would not have remained upright for long.
It may have been a warning to stay away from the marsh as its powers had changed.

Reference

Tom Metcalfe (September 3, 2021) 8-foot-tall Pagan Idol Unearthed in Irish Bog. Live Science. Online at: https://www.livescience.com/pagan-idol-unearthed-ireland.html

Malaria Was Not A Concern During Neolithic And Bronze Age Times

(April 19, 2025) Endemic malaria, which claimed 229 million new cases and 409,000 deaths in 2019 mainly in Africa, was eradicated from Europe by the mid-20th century.

Malaria is a disease in which Plasmodium parasites are transmitted via the bite of the infected female Anopheles mosquito. The genus Plasmodium is composed of more than 250 species, but only five species Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium ovale Wallikeri, Plasmodium ovale curtisi, and Plasmodium malariae are involved in human-to-human transmission after Anopheles bites. Additionally, 3 simian parasites Plasmodium cynomolgi, Plasmodium inui, and particularly Plasmodium knowlesi can spread malaria to humans. This last species is the most common cause of human malaria in Malaysia.

P. falciparum may have emerged from gorilla parasites about 10,000 years ago, while P. vivax may have emerged much earlier from non-specific ape hosts. P. knowlesi probably arose in Southeast Asia among macaque monkeys about 478,000–98,000 years ago, while the origins of P. malariae and P. ovale remain uncertain, although these parasites are currently associated with gorilla, chimpanzee, and bonobos in Africa.

According to historical sources, malaria seems to have been described for the first time during the 400's and 300's BC. For example, the Hippocratic Corpus mentioned a disease characterized by intermittent fevers. Hippocrates (460-370 BC) described episodes of benign tertian fever (fevers every 3rd day) that have been interpreted as P. vivax malaria, while the term quartan fever (fevers every 4th day) could refer to P. malariae malaria. Hippocrates reported on the seasonality of the disease and its correlation to locations near standing water.

The new field of Paleomicrobiology is confirming the historical sources for the presence of malaria causing parasites. Paleomicrobiology was born in 1993 thanks to the work of Spigelman and Lemma with the detection by molecular biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA from an ancient human skeleton.

In Italy, studies based on immunological tests on bone samples from the Medici family of Florence, dating from the 16th century, detected proteins of P. falciparum in four members of the family. Also, an immunological study targeting the P. falciparum highly specific HRP-II protein on 34 individuals dating from 14th BC to the 16th century, in Sardinia indicated that malaria may date back to the Carthaginian period (510 BCE onward)

References

Mahmoud A. Boualam, Bruno Pradines, Michel Drancourt. and Rémi Barbieri (June 20, 2021) Malaria in Europe: A Historical Perspective. Frontiers in Medicine. Online at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2021.691095

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