TROPIC OF CANCER SERIES: Houses of Çatalhöyük (Reconstruction) – modern-day Konya, Turkey, c. 7,000 BC. The Mud-brick houses were clustered together and there were no outside doors. People went in and out of the houses through openings in the roofs:
The entrance to the houses was by going down a portable ladder through an opening in the roof. Daily life was probably spent both on rooftops and inside the houses, despite poor lighting and ventilation conditions:
Each house had a room and a warehouse. Inside the rooms, there are platforms (benches) slightly raised from the ground and niches on the walls. They used these platforms for sleeping, sitting, and doing their daily works:
They buried their dead together with their grave gifts under the platforms. A number of tools and jewelry made of seashells, bones and stones have been discovered as burial gifts. The vultures and headless human figures seen in some wall paintings are also thought to be related to the burial customs. The walls of the houses in Çatalhöyük were plastered, and after the plaster was painted white, wall paintings were made in red, black, and yellow tones:
These paintings are a continuation of the tradition started by the Paleolithic men who painted on the cave walls. Among the depictions painted on the walls, geometric motifs, handprints, human and animal figures (vulture, leopard, wild deer), hunting and dance scenes that may have been made for good hunting, and wall paintings reflecting the natural environment come to the forefront:
Another type of decoration used apart from the paintings is the depictions made in relief and the bull heads and horns placed on the platforms in the buildings. There are reliefs made by plastering real bull heads with clay on the walls of many houses:
9000 years ago! Was there anything else in the world at this time even remotely this advanced as this corner in Turkey? And nowadays:
Sourced from: Archeology & Art
