CATALHOYUK, WORLD'S OLDEST TOWN

CATALHOYUK, WORLD’S OLDEST TOWN

Çatalhöyük (48 kilometers, 30 miles southeast of Konya in Turkey) is widely accepted as being the world's oldest village or town. Discovered in the 1950s and founded around 7100 B.C., it covered 32 acres at is peak and was home to between 3000 to 8000 people. Because of the way of the houses are packed so closely together it is hard to dispute it as being anything other than a village, town or city. [Sources: Ian Hodder, Natural History magazine, June 2006; Michael Batler, Smithsonian magazine, May 2005; Orrin Shane and Mine Kucuk, Archaeology magazine, March/April 1998]

Catalhoyuk was occupied for about 1,400 years, between 9,100 and 7,700 years ago, which is fairly long when you consider that New York City was founded not much more than 300 years ago. The people that lived in Catalhoyuk at a given time were hunters, gatherers, farmers and herders of cattle. They venerated bulls and worshiped a mother goddess; they produced paintings of hunting scenes and shaped object from obsidian quarried hundred of miles to the north, indicating long distance trade. Catal Huyuk, produced many kinds of local goods (suggesting division of labor) and goods from elsewhere (suggesting trade). There is also evidence of an irrigation system previously thought to have originated in Mesopotamia over a thousand years later.

Çatalhöyük was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2012 as one of the world’s first places of urbanization. Research at the well-preserved site has revealed distinctive housing layouts and extensive features such as wall paintings and reliefs and is thus considered “the most significant human settlement documenting early settled agricultural life of a Neolithic community,” according to the UNESCO website.

Çatalhöyük (pronounced Chah-tel-hew-yook) means “fork mound” in Turkish, a reference to a fork in the footpath before the main mound at the site. Clustered in a honeycomb-like maze, it consists of two mounds on either side of an ancient channel of the Carsamba River on the fertile Konya Plain. The largest mound, 33.5-acre Çatalhöyük East, was occupied between 7400 and 5000 B.C. but there are older undated levels below it. The smaller mound, Çatalhöyük West, was occupied between 5000 and 4,700 B.C. In addition to being very old Catalhoyuk is remarkably well-preserved. Around it today are melon fields and wheat fields. In 7500 B.C. there were marshes nearby that may have been flooded for two or three months a year. At that time agricultural fields were some distance from the town.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus wrote in The New Yorker: Çatalhöyük seems to have been occupied for approximately fifteen hundred years — which is “roughly the same period of time that separates us from Amalafrida, Queen of the Vandals, who reached the height of her influence around AD 523. The settlement was home to about five thousand people, but it had neither an obvious center nor any communal facilities. There weren’t even streets: households were densely packed together and accessed via roof ladders. The residents’ living areas were marked by a “distinctly macabre sense of interior design,” with narrow rooms outfitted with aurochs skulls and horns, along with raised platforms that encased the remains of up to sixty of the households’ dead ancestors. [Source: Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, November 8, 2021]

Good Websites Archaeology News Report archaeologynewsreport.blogspot.com ; Anthropology.net anthropology.net : archaeologica.org archaeologica.org ; Archaeology in Europe archeurope.com ; Archaeology magazine archaeology.org ; HeritageDaily heritagedaily.com; Live Science livescience.com/

Çatalhöyük Site

Çatalhöyük map

According to UNESCO: Two hills form the 37 ha site on the Southern Anatolian Plateau. The taller eastern mound contains eighteen levels of Neolithic occupation between 7400 bc and 6200 B.C., including wall paintings, reliefs, sculptures and other symbolic and artistic features. Together they testify to the evolution of social organization and cultural practices as humans adapted to a sedentary life. The western mound shows the evolution of cultural practices in the Chalcolithic period, from 6200 bc to 5200 B.C. Çatalhöyük provides important evidence of the transition from settled villages to urban agglomeration, which was maintained in the same location for over 2,000 years. It features a unique streetless settlement of houses clustered back to back with roof access into the buildings.[Source: UNESCO =]

“The vast archaeological site of Çatalhöyük comprises two tells rising up to 20 meters above the Konya plain on the Southern Anatolian Plateau. Excavations of the Eastern tell have revealed 18 levels of Neolithic occupation dating from 7,400-6,200 BC that have provided unique evidence of the evolution of prehistoric social organisation and cultural practices, illuminating the early adaptation of humans to sedentary life and agriculture. The Western tell excavations primarily revealed Chalcolithic occupation levels from 6,200-5,200 B.C., which reflect the continuation of the cultural practices evident in the earlier Eastern mound. =

Importance of Çatalhöyük

Some archaeologists believe that Catalhoyuk was the source of the settled farming life. The town produced many kinds of local goods (suggesting division of labor) and contained many goods from elsewhere (suggesting trade). According to UNESCO: “Çatalhöyük is a very rare example of a well-preserved Neolithic settlement and has been considered one of the key sites for understanding human Prehistory for some decades. The site is exceptional for its substantial size and great longevity of the settlement, its distinctive layout of back-to-back houses with roof access, the presence of a large assemblage of features including wall paintings and reliefs representing the symbolic world of the inhabitants. On the basis of the extensively documented research at the site, the above features make it the most significant human settlement documenting early settled agricultural life of a Neolithic community. =

opening to Catalhoyuk room

Çatalhöyük is important according to UNESCO because: 1) Çatalhöyük provides a unique testimony to a moment of the Neolithic, in which the first agrarian settlements were established in central Anatolia and developed over centuries from villages to urban centres, largely based on egalitarian principles. The early principles of these settlements have been well preserved through the abandonment of the site for several millennia. These principles can be read in the urban plan, architectural structures, wall paintings and burial evidence. The stratigraphy of up to 18 settlement layers provides an exceptional testimony to the gradual development, re-shaping and expansion of the settlement. =

2) “The house clusters of Çatalhöyük, characterized by their streetless neighbourhoods, dwellings with roof access, and house types representing a highly circumscribed distribution of activity areas and features according to a clear spatial order aligned on cardinal directions, form an outstanding settlement type of the Neolithic period. The comparable sizes of the dwellings throughout the city illustrate an early type of urban layout based on community and egalitarian ideals. =

3) The excavated remains of the prehistoric settlement spanning 2,000 years are preserved in situ in good condition, and are completely included in the property boundaries. The two archaeological mounds rise from the surrounding plain and constitute a distinctive landscape feature which has preserved its visual integrity. Shelters constructed above the two main excavation areas protect the archaeological structures from direct effects of the climate and thereby reduce the immediate dangers of rainfall and erosion. =

Catalhoyuk Location and Time Period

In Neolithic times, the Konya Basin, where Catalhoyuk is located, was a semiarid plain with steppe vegetation, grasses, sedges and small bushes. The soil was mostly residue from a vanished lake that was high in calcium carbonate and low in nutrients.

The town instead was located near marshes. One explanation for this is that marshes provided a water source and food such as fish and waterfowl. The more likely explanation is that the marshes were sources of clay that was essential to make the plaster used to renovate their dwelling and was a source material for religious figures. Archaeologists have deduced that it was much easier to transport relatively light crops to their villages from some distance rather than heavy clay A river that flowed by Catalhoyuk could have been used to float juniper and oak logs, also used in construction, to the town and may have been used to transport food too.

A mural from Çatalhöyük shows a large polka-dotted shape above a series of boxes. It was once thought to depict a leopard skin, but researchers now believe the spotted form is showing a volcanic eruption. According to Archaeology magazine The painting may depict the city beneath two peaks, one of which appears to be erupting. The painting could represent Hasan Dağı, , a now dormant volcano, is situated 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Çatalhöyük, making it the oldest known depiction of an eruption. Volcanologists believe the eruption was mild — a bit of a lava “burp.” [Source: Samir S. Patel Archaeology magazine, March-April 2014]

restoration of a room Hasan Dağı was a rich source of obsidian, the volcanic rock prized by Çatalhöyük’s residents. In 2013 volcanologist Axel Schmitt, using a new dating technique for volcanic rocks, showed that Hasan Dag erupted about 9,000 years ago, around when the painting was made. Schmitt believes this wall painting could be considered the world’s oldest map because it shows an overhead view of the village below. [Source: Cristina Belmonte, National Geographic History, March 27, 2019]

Çatalhöyük is situated in Anatolia in present-day Turkey on the western side of the Fertile Crescent, the area in which farming settlements first appeared at the beginning of the Neolithic period. Starting around 13,000 B.C., the Natufian people, who lived to the southeast primarily in present-day Palestine, Israel and Jordan, were collecting grain in a form of proto-agriculture and founded early villages, including a site near modern-day Jericho. Despite this, historians say the general trend towards settled farming began around 10,000 B.C. [Source: Cristina Belmonte, National Geographic History, March 27, 2019]

Çatalhöyük is also valued for its longevity. The eastern mound was inhabited for as many as 1,500 years up until the beginning of the Copper Age, which began around 5500 B.C. In this later phase, the eastern mound was abandoned, and the western mound developed. Pottery decorated with colored paint, a feature associated with the Copper Age, has been found on this later, western mound. [Source: Cristina Belmonte, National Geographic History, March 27, 2019]

Çatalhöyük Agriculture

The people of Çatalhöyük grew grains and legumes, kept sheep and goats, and hunted wild animals such as bison, deer, elk, boar, and birds. The surrounding countryside offered wild food sources, such as apples, almonds, pistachios, fish, and waterfowl eggs. Çatalhöyük inhabitants grew naked barley. “Naked” barley has a covering, or hull that is so loose that it usually falls off during harvesting. Most barley is “covered barley,” which means it has a tough, inedible outer hull around the barley kernel. This covering must be removed before the barley can be eaten.

One unusual thing about Catalhoyuk that archaeologists have discovered is that the agricultural fields that grew the town’s crops were several kilometers outside of town. Archaeologists determined this by examining phyiliths — the silica skeletons that form in or around plant cells — which showed that grains the Catalhoyukans ate was a dry-land variety not a variety that grew well in the marshes nearby.

The far away location of the fields was unexpected for an agricultural community of several thousand people. According to Hodder and his team, one possible explanation lies in the high demand for plaster and clay in the village. If people lived closer to their farmland, they would have been forced to travel to get clay to build their homes. The cane baskets they used to transport it were unsuited to hauling vast quantities over large stretches of territory. It was easier to transport their harvests and store them. [Source: Cristina Belmonte, National Geographic History, March 27, 2019]

According to Newsweek: Analysis of the bones revealed the diet of the residents was heavy in wheat, barley and rye. This may have caused tooth decay — findings revealed that between 10 and 13 percent of the population suffered from cavities. Over the period of occupation, residents were found to have walked significantly more toward the end of occupation compared with the start. This indicates that the people were having to travel further to find and farm fertile land — suggesting environmental degradation had taken place at the site. This, coupled with the climate becoming drier, could have contributed to the city's demise, researchers say. [Source: Newsweek, June 17, 2019]

New Look at Çatalhöyük and the Switch From Hunter-Gatherers to Farmers

Gideon Lewis-Kraus wrote in The New Yorker: Çatalhöyük was, as far as we know, one of the first large settlements to have practiced agriculture: the citizens derived most of their nutrition from cereals and beans they grew, as well as from domesticated sheep and goats. For a long time, all of this was taken together as a key example of the “agricultural revolution” in action, and the material remnants were interpreted to support the old story. Corpulent female figurines, assumed to be part of fertility rituals, were found in what were understood to be proto-religious shrines of some sort — the first indications of organized cultural systems. [Source: Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, November 8, 2021]

“In the past three decades, however, new archeological methods have disturbed many of these long-standing assumptions. The “shrines” were, Graeber and Wengrow tell us, just regular houses; the female figurines could be the discarded Barbie dolls of the Anatolian Neolithic, but they could also be a way of honoring female elders. The community seems to have supported itself for a thousand years with various forms of agriculture — floodplain farming and animal husbandry — without ever having committed itself to new forms of social or cultural organization. From what we can derive from wall murals and other expressive residues, Graeber and Wengrow say, “the cultural life of the community remained stubbornly oriented around the worlds of hunting and foraging.”

“So what was actually going on in Çatalhöyük? Graeber and Wengrow interpret the evidence to propose that the town’s inhabitants managed their affairs perfectly well without the sort of administrative structures, royal or priestly, that were supposedly part of the agricultural package. “Despite the considerable size and density of the built-up area, there is no evidence for central authority,” the authors maintain. “Each household appears more or less a world unto itself — a discrete locus of storage, production and consumption. Each also seems to have held a significant degree of control over its own rituals.” Some houses appear to have been more lavishly furnished with aurochs horns or prized obsidian (which was brought in from Cappadocia, more than a hundred miles away), but there is no sign of élite neighborhoods or marks of caste consolidation. Different forms of social organization likely prevailed at different times of year, with greater division of labor necessary for cultivation and hunting in the summer and fall, followed by something more equitable — and, perhaps, matriarchal — during the winter.

Catalhoyuk Organization and Equality

20120207-Catal trench.jpg
From what archaeologists have determined so far Catalhoyuk was simply a collection of single-family dwelling. No evidence of any public spaces or administration building or other structures used by a group other than a family have been found. The eastern mound has two peaks, which suggests that perhaps the town was divided into two intermarrying kin groups, further supported by the fact no other settled communities have been found that could have supplied people to marry.

Çatalhöyük is sometimes characterized as being the home of an egalitarian Stone Age society. Cristina Belmonte wrote in National Geographic History: Much of the economic, social, and ritual life of Çatalhöyük was organized around the home. The houses, all very similar in size, sheltered families of five to 10 people. A typical home had no windows, one main room, and two ancillary rooms for storage or domestic work. The walls were made of adobe and covered with plaster. They measured some 20 inches thick and stood more than eight feet tall. [Source: Cristina Belmonte, National Geographic History, March 27, 2019]

On of the more unpleasant aspects of Catalhoyuk’s organization Hodder wrote “the fact the buildings were embedded in extensive midden areas piled with trash, fecal material and rotting organic material — not in accordance with modern sensibilities, Perhaps it is little wonder the access to the houses was along the roofs and down the stairs!”

Catalhoyuk Archaeology

Catalhoyuk was first brought to the attention of the world by James Mellaart, an English archaeologist who discovered the site and excavated the area between 1961 and 1965, revealed 14 levels of occupation, created as people tore down old houses and built new ones, and uncovering 160 buildings. An Egyptologist by training, Mellaart developed a fascination for very ancient cities after working at the Tall as Sultan site near Jericho. In the 1950s he identified and dated Hacilar, near Catalhoyuk, to around 7500 B.C. In the end he was forced to leave Turkey and barred from carrying out archeological work by the Turkish government following a scandal involving the reported theft of artifacts. Even though he was exonerated by a distinguished panel of archaeologists he was never allowed to work at the site again. But during his four years of work Mellaart documented 14 separate occupations in the eastern mound and many houses. [Source: Cristina Belmonte, National Geographic History, March 27, 2019]

Catalhoyuk lay unstudied until a team led by British archaeologist Ian Hodder of the University of Cambridge (later at Stanford) began working there in 1993. Their objective was to investigate the site, preserve what had been unearthed so far and establish an interpretive center for visitors. As of 2006, in addition to the 14 levels of occupation revealed by Mellaart Hodder’s team unearthed four more plus 80 more buildings. For 25 years, between 1993 and 2018, Ian Hodder ran an international research project at Çatalhöyük.

Only about 5 percent of Catalhoyuk has been excavated. One of the primary goals of the archaeological work is to gain some insight into why people chose to settle in communities like Catalhoyuk. In the millennium before Catalhoyuk the Near East was largely occupied by nomads who hunted gazelle, goats, sheep and cattle and gathered eatable grasses, cereals and fruits.

Hodder is among those who believe that the Neolithic revolution came about as human cognition and psychology changed. He has theorized that before Neolithic people could be comfortable with the idea of being settled farmers they had to tame their wild nature and they did this through their art and religion — which were so important to the people of Catalhoyuk that they located their town where it was for aesthetic reasons, namely to collect clay from the local marshes to make goddess figures. This Hodder argues may explain why the agricultural fields were so far outside the town.

ruins of Catalhoyuk

One of the leading Turkish archaeologists working at Catalhoyuk is Basak Boz, of Hacettepe University in Ankara. A team headed by Douglas Baird of Liverpool University is looking for other sites in the Konya plain to figure what people might have preceded Catalhoyuk.

Archaeology of the Catalhoyuk Dwellings

Cristina Belmonte wrote in National Geographic History: The use of clay and plaster as building materials made archaeologists’ work easier. Floors, walls, and art had to be renewed continually. In some buildings more than 450 layers of fine plastering have been documented on just four inches of wall. Each of these layers provides information about the period when the building was constructed and on occasion gives subtle details about the occupants’ daily lives, such as the marks left by baskets or rugs on floors. [Source: Cristina Belmonte, National Geographic History, March 27, 2019]

The inhabitants of Catalhoyuk lived in mud-brick and timber houses built around courtyards. The village had no streets or alleyways. Houses were packed so close together people entered their houses through their roofs and often went from place to place via the roofs, which were made of wood and reeds plastered with mud and often reached by ladders and stairways. Hodder wrote in Natural History magazine, “The main reason for the abundance of the archaeological record was that the Catalhoyukans used a particular kind of construction material. Instead of making hard, lime floors that held up for decades (as was the case in many sites in Anatolia and the Middle East), the inhabitants of Catalhoyuk made their floors mostly of out of a lime-rich mud plaster, which remained soft and in need of continual resurfacing.

“Once a year — in some cases once a month — floors and wall plates had to be resurfaced. Those thin layers of plaster, somewhat like the growth rings in a tree, trap traces of activity in a well-defined temporal sequence...The floors even preserve such subtle tokens of daily life as the impressions of floor mats. Maddens are just as finely layered, making it possible to identify details as subtle as individual dumps of trash from a hearth. When a house reached the end of its practical life, people demolished the upped walls and carefully filled in the lower half of the house, which then became the foundation of a new house. The mound itself came into being largely through such gradual accumulation. Taking it apart enable users to revisit the past.”

Why was the softer plaster used, especially since the hard plaster was found in some of the oldest dwelling? It seems likely that this was because there was an abundant supply of the soft plaster nearby and firing lime to make it hard requires a lot of fuel, which would have rapidly used up the wood supplies in the area.

a couple of rooms in a Catalhoyuk dwelling

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, except Boncuklu Höyük, Archaeology News

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated June 2024