Çatalhöyük (Catal hoyuk, Catalhoyuk) is a vibrant center for commerce, agricultural development and innovation. A Stone Age settlement in today's Turkey, by c. 7000 BCE it's an innovative culture based on metallurgy, farming, dyes or pigments and trade.
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The area is first occupied by Neolithic tribes in clan groups, centered on agriculture. By 7400 BCE, the settlement of Çatalhöyük has evolved into an industrious urban landscape of permanent whitewashed mud brick buildings.
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Çatalhöyük is the oldest and among the most advanced of Neolithic habitations. As an active site of commerce Çatalhöyük exists from c. 7500 - 6400 BCE. Items traded on Neolithic routes include metals, obsidian, beads, bitumen, honey, pottery and salt.
The city reaches its height c. 7000 BCE. It's noted for carefully made figurines. Mostly female, they're carved and molded from various media including marble, blue and brown limestone, schist, calcite, basalt, alabaster and clay.
Female Venus figures are often discovered in storage vats of grain, as fertility or protector deities. She may also occupy the Mother Goddess role common to early people. No definite temples or shrines to any gods have ever been found.
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Although a male deity seems to exist, female statues take precedence. The female majority ends after Level Six of the main excavation with no further evidence goddess worship or matriarchal connections.
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Flax is one of the earliest fiber plants grown and cultivated. Its long fibers are processed through various methods such as soaking and beating. Flax is used to make linen, the first known textile. It's also beloved by later Egyptians.
About 7400 BCE the Çatalhöyük population is 3500 - 8000, later up to 10,000 people. Inhabitants live in mudbrick houses. There are no streets. The settlement is composed of domestic dwellings with large numbers of buildings clustered tightly together.
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Çatalhöyük is a mound site, one of many in Anatolia and other regions. Habitations are built atop each other, forming artificial hills on the terrain. Eighteen levels of previous settlements have so far been found by archaeologists.
Society seems egalitarian, with men and women having equal status. Pottery and obsidian are the major materials for vessels and weapons. Obsidian tools are for personal use, or in trade for items such as Mediterranean sea shells and flint from Syria.
No footpaths, alleys or streets exist between dwellings. Rooftops serve as streets and walkways. Most homes have access through ceiling holes, ceiling doors or doors on the side of the houses, some reached only by ladders and stairs.
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Typical houses have two main rooms and side rooms for storage. Walls are plastered smooth. A ceiling hole lets out the smoke from the fire, which is usually to the south of the house.
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The residents of Çatalhöyük are very clean, keeping their waste and sewage areas away from the main residences. Corpses, however, they like to keep close. Interior walls are painted in whitewash or light tones. Home decor may include multiple bull skulls.
Rooftops are also sites for socializing or gathering for events, a type of plaza. Later, communal ovens are built on the roofs. The houses are sometimes deconstructed and rebuilt for new occupants.
The people of Çatalhöyük grow a variety of foods including wheat, barley, peas, almonds and pistachio. They domesticate sheep and start on cattle. Pottery and the volcanic glass obsidian are plentiful and become major exports.
Art abounds. Beads and jewelry are created by artisans. Figurines and murals appear through the settlement on interior and exterior walls, including men with erect phalluses and animals such as Aurochs. At Çatalhöyük are the earliest signs of bull worship.
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Indications of trade with Mediterranean groups include sea shells and Syrian flint. Flint is known as a fire stone, and for keeping a sharp edge in tools and weapons. Çatalhöyük becomes a center for fabric dyes. The oxide mineral hematite is used in red colorants.
Level VI at Çatalhöyük is the earliest known site of copper smelting, c. 6500 BCE. Local smelting of copper metal by c. 1500 years is the first recorded evidence of the procedure.
In funerary ritual, red ochre is most commonly used sprinkled on bodies of adults and children. This is a tradition among several Neolithic cultures. Cinnabar or mercury sulfide is found on male bodies, and blue/green (possibly verdigris) is associated with females.
While temples aren't obvious, bull skulls with horns (bucrania) are preserved in an 8th millennium BCE sanctuary. They're the earliest known remnants from the cross-cultural Cult of the Bull.
The Bull motif survives in various mythologies including Hurrian and Hittite mythology as Seri and Hurri (Day and Night), the bulls who carry the weather god Teshub on their backs or in his chariot, and graze on the ruins of cities.
People of Çatalhöyük bury their dead in the village proper. Bodies are found in pits under the floors of houses, beneath hearths, installed beneath platforms in the main rooms or even under beds.
Sometimes a head is removed and replaced, possibly for a ritual. The living dwell very close to the dead. The corpses are tightly flexed before burial, often inhumated in baskets or wrapped up in reed mats.
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Some bones show they might have been outside a considerable time before inhumation. The people know at some point, another level of residences will be built over those of their own generations, just like the strata of rocks.