FIND OUT MORE. Early Americans 380 • Farming 66 • Maya 381 • Western Asia and the Middle East 264–265
History^365
WHY WAS ÇATALHÖYÜK SO PROSPEROUS?
Çatalhöyük was founded in around 7000 BCE, and grew to be the largest settlement
in the Middle East. Its wealth came from farming and trade. The farmers kept cattle
and grew wheat, barley, and peas. Çatalhöyük made itself especially prosperous
by controlling the trade in obsidian (a coarse, glassy rock), which came from a
nearby volcano. Craftworkers used this volcanic glass to make high-quality tools.
WHY DID FARMING BEGIN HERE?
The Fertile Crescent had regular rainfall, making it ideal for growing grains such
as emmer and einkorn, and for raising herds of grass-eating animals such as sheep
and goats. In Mesopotamia, where the soil was particularly fertile, large-scale farming
became possible once irrigation methods had developed to supply the land with water.
Archaeologists use the name Fertile Crescent to describe an area to
the east of the Mediterranean Sea, where farming first developed.
It was a crescent-shaped strip of land that stretched across the
Levant region (now known as Israel, Lebanon, and Syria), and
around the edges of the Tarus and Zagros mountains.
WHAT WERE THE FIRST DOMESTICATED ANIMALS?
Dogs were the first animals to be domesticated,
c. 12,500 BCE. They were descended from wild wolf cubs
that had learned to live with human families, who fed
and petted them. By 10,000 BCE, hunters were managing
wild herds of gazelle, sheep, and goats, watching over
them and killing the weakest for food. Around 7500 BCE,
farmers were taking the best animals from their herds
to breed them for meat and milk.Domestication is the process of making wild plants and animals more
useful to humans, through selective breeding. Farmers select and plant
only the best seeds from their last crop. Wild cattle or other animals
are selectively bred to make a herd docile (easy to control).
HAND MILL 3
This is a hand mill
known as a quern.
It consists of a
curved slab of stone
and a ball-shaped
stone roller. Querns
were used by farming
women, between
c. 6000 BCE and 4000 BCE,
to grind grains of wheat
and barley into flour.9000 BCE Wheat/barley,
Fertile Crescent8000 BCE Potatoes,
South America
7500 BCE Goats/sheep,
Middle East
7000 BCE Rye, Europe
6000 BCE Chickens,
South Asia3500 BCE Horse, West Asia
3000 BCE Cotton,
South America
2700 BCE Maize,
North America4 HERDED ANIMALS
This seal came from the ancient city of Susa, north of the Persian Gulf,
and was made around 3000 BCE. By this time, herding animals was a way
of life for farmers. Cattle were also being used to prepare the land
where farmers grew crops. Sheep with longer hair had been selectively
bred to develop fleecy coats, which the farmers used to make wool.ÇATALHÖYÜK HOMES 3
Excavation of the Çatalhöyük
site found mud-brick houses
closely packed together,
without any streets. Access to
each home was by ladders
leading up to doorways on a
flat roof. Rooms had hearths
for heating, benches for
sitting and sleeping on, and
ovens for baking bread. When
family members died, they
were buried under the floor.1 HOME OF THE FIRST FARMERS
The Fertile Crescent stretched in a crescent-shaped curve from the
northern tip of the Red Sea around to the Persian Gulf. Some of the
world’s first settlements, including Jericho, were built in this region.
Important trading centres, like Çatalhöyük, also developed nearby.FERTILE CRESCENT
DOMESTICATION
4 STONE SICKLE
This sickle has a wooden handle and a sharp flint blade,
carefully shaped by a stoneworker around 6,000 years ago.
Farmers used sickles to cut ripe ears of grain from the stalk.TIMELINE OF
EARLY FARMINGCutting edge of
blade slices wheat
and barley stalksStone is rolled
backwards and
forwards to
crush grainsSeal (stamp)
engraved with
rams and goatsMediterranean
SeaRed
SeaBlack
SeaPe
rsi
an(^) Gu
lf
Fertile Crescent
Ni First towns
le^
Eu
ph
rates
Ti
gri
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Jericho
Çatalhöyük
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