Of course, there is a mixture, but most current Western societies have a foundation built around competition, rather than cooperation. Capitalism as it is practiced in the US (and other places) is very much hinged on the dog-eat-dog “I’ve got mine” mentality.
We’re not really guessing about places like Catalhoyuk and there is not really any significant difference in interpretation of the findings.
“Old Europeans never tried to live in inconvenient places such as high, steep hills, as did the later Indo-Europeans who built hill forts in inaccessible places and frequently surrounded their hill sites with cyclopean stone walls,” reports Gimbutas. “Old European locations were chosen for their beautiful setting, good water and soil, and availability of animal pastures. Vinča, Butmir, Petresti, and Cucuteni settlement areas are remarkable for their excellent views of the environs, but not for their defensive value. The characteristic absence of heavy fortifications and of thrusting weapons speaks for the peaceful character of most of these art-loving peoples. Moreover, here, as in Catal Huyuk and Hacilar — which show no signs of damage through warfare for a time span of over fifteen hundred years (30)”
Even when there is a written as well as an oral literary tradition, art is a form of symbolic communication. The extensive art of the Neolithic — be it wall paintings about daily life or about important myths, statuary of religious images, friezes depicting rituals, or simply vase decorations, pictures on seals, or engravings on jewelry — tells us a great deal about how these people lived and died. It also tells us a great deal about how they thought, for in a very real sense Neolithic art is a kind of language or shorthand symbolically expressing how people in that time experienced, and in turn shaped, what we call reality.(1)
Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade . HarperOne. Kindle Edition.
“When you extrapolate out a system that is based in the historical domination of men over women, weaker men, and children to the rest of the cultural landscape, you get a society that is obsessed with how it rates in relation to those around them. You also get a society where many members feel completely justified in using bullying and violence in order to keep certain people or demographics in their perceived place. In order to be a part of dismantling patriarchal norms, as well as racism, homophobia and sexual harassment, the first step is to move away from the constant desire to needlessly rank, stratify, and coerce others to stay in their perceived roles and lanes and to instead just let people who aren’t hurting anyone else alone to live.”
