National Geographic History - 03.2019 - 04.2019

Residents buried the dead under their homes.
At its peak, the town housed as many as 8,
people, who supported themselves through ag-
riculture and raising livestock.
Aside from revealing fascinating details as to
what life in a Stone Age town was like, the site
chronicles a critical moment in human history:
when people were starting to abandon nomad-
ic ways. Prior to the settlement at Çatalhöyük,
humanity had been wanderers for hundreds of
thousands of years. Çatalhöyük marks a time
when people embarked on one of the earliest
experiments in “urban” living.

From Stone to Copper
Çatalhöyük’s earliest occupation has been dat-
ed to 7400 B.C., as part of the westward spread
of settled farming associated with the Neolith-
ic, or New Stone Age. Other Neolithic settle-
ments located in Turkey include the nearby site
of Hacilar, which dates to around 7500 B.C.
Hacilar was identified and dated in the 1950s
by the British archaeologist James Mellaart. An
Egyptologist, Mellaart developed a fascination

for very ancient cities after working at the Tall as

Sultan site near Jericho, considered to be the old-

est town in the world. In 1961 Mellaart started to

dig near the forked path at Çat

hills had caught his interest a

and he became convinced the

hunch paid off: After excavatin

he had stumbled on the find

time allotted to him, howeve

but productive. Caught up in

antiquities trafficking, Mellaa

withdrawn, but in his four y

documented 14 separate occu

eastern mound and many hou

For 25 years, between 1993 a

ish archaeologist Ian Hodde

an international research p

Çatalhöyük. Renewed attent

the ancient town led to its des

tion as a UNESCO World Herit

site in 2012. Çatalhöyük is priz

NG MAPS

ÇATALHÖYÜKlies at the western end of the Fertile Crescent, the

area in which farming settlements first appeared at the dawn

of the Neolithic period. From 13,000 b.c., the Natufian people

had gathered grain and founded early villages, including a site

near modern-day Jericho. Even so, historians consider that the

general trend to settled farming began around 10,000 b.c.

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