Vital Sectors
For thousands of years, Mesopotamia and Anatolia, which has remained within the borders of the Republic of Turkey, have been centers of;
- agricultural,
- manufacturing and
- construction industries.
That is to say that these three vital sectors have been present in these lands for thousands of years.
If a particular sector has been present in this country and involved every inch of land and all its people, it is impossible to erase it from the “DNA” and “genetics” of that country. That is why it is impossible to even consider the possibility of Turkey failing in the agricultural, manufacturing and construction sectors.
Just like no one can strip our ability in the fields of textiles and ready-to-wear garments and the agricultural and manufacturing industries.
In the initial months after the crisis, the debate centered on the percentage Patriot sectors should have in the GDP of a country. Patriotic sectors are defined as the manufacturing, agricultural and construction industries.
The general consensus emerged that the manufacturing industry or industry in general should be 25 %, agriculture 10 % and construction 7 % of GDP. (http://english.yenisafak.com/columns/kerem-alkin/lets-reclaim-the-genetics-of-the-turkish-economy-2004693)
Textile
Taking into consideration that the oldest textile product found in Turkish lands dates back 8,500 years, we should not be surprised at Turkey’s production capability.
For many centuries the manufacturing of silk had remained a closely guarded secret in China and the export of silkworms was punishable by death. First in history, in 552 CE, two Nestorian monks succeeded in smuggling silkworm from China to Istanbul and by the early seventh century sericulture was well established in Asia Minor.
Silk production has developed to excellent levels in the Turkish city of Bursa, one of the Ottoman capitals. The basis of that development was an earlier tradition.
Construction Industry:
Considering that Turkey ranks second after China, when it comes to construction subcontracting firms and that Turkish companies carry out vital construction projects both domestically and internationally, it is not possible for anyone to strip this ability from Turkey’s “DNA.”
Starting with Adobe, Anatolian Housing Culture hosts the first examples of the housing culture created by the mankind in the world.
From Adobe to Khorasan Mortar relays housing insulation culture from Turkey to the global markets.
Çatalhöyük, Hacılar and Beycesultan are the first examples of the first housing culture created by the mankind in the world.
Civilization began in Anatolia around 6000 B.C. with the Neolithic town of Çatal Höyük.
The first known human settlement is in Çatalhöyük, Turkey (7 Millenium B.C.).
Mesopotamia has long heen considered as the first home of civilization in the Old World, about the fifth millennium BC, but the so-called neolithic revolution or transition to so-called agricultural society about 10,000 BC probably occurred first in Anatolia.
The origin and ethnic derivation of the most ancient inhabitants of Anatolia are not known, but it is certain that they were among the first if not the first, to have built a city. Before that, between 15,000 and 13,000 BC, we know only of nomadic hunters, as at Lascaux.
At Çatal Höyük in the middle of the Anatolian plateau, a cluster of the first real houses was discovered on an area of thirteen hectares. They were constructed from clay bricks, the walls were regularly colour-washed on the outside, and certain of them were covered on the inside with wall paintings, similar to cave drawings but fulfilling an aesthetic function. Linked together in tiers, the upper houses opened onto the flat roofs of the ones below.
The fourteen levels built up there correspond to a little more than one thousand years of occupation, from 6750 BC to about 5600 BC, that is to say, during the Neolithic period.
These first ‘town dwellers’ were primarily farmers. They lived in family groups of five to seven persons, and were already cultivating wheat and vines, raising sheep and goats, and keeping dogs. They grew and wove flax, and possessed weapons of copper and lead, both for hunting and defence. They also traded with distant countries. At Çatal Höyük objects have been found made of volcanic glass and apatites which were unknown locally.
The first Neolithic paintings found on man-made walls are in Çatalhöyük, Turkey.
Çatalhöyük is a center of “firsts” -first ceramic pots, first mirrors, first examples of woven materials, first wooden bowls, first wallpaints, among many other firsts.
Agriculture: The Fertile Crescent
Excavations at more than 50 sites over the last half-century have established the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East as the homeland of the first farmers.
This arc of land, broadly defined, extends from Israel through Lebanon and Syria, then through the plains and hills of Iraq and southern Turkeyand all the way to the head of the Gulf.
Among its “founder crops ” were wheat, barley, various legumes, grapes, melons, dates pistachios and almonds.
The region also produced the first domesticated sheep, goats, pigs and cattle. But guestions persist: Where in the Fertile Crescent were the first wheat and barley crops produced?
What conditions favored this region? Why was the transition from hunting and foraging to farming so swift, occurring in only a few centuries?
New genetic studies suggest possible answers. They pinpoint the Karacadağ mountains, in southeast Turkey at the upper fringes of the Fertile Crescent, as the site where einkorn wheat was first domesticated from a wild species around 11,000 years ago. The scientists concluded, this is “very probably the site of einkorn domestication. ”
