Before silk (and that goes back a long time) there was a long-range trade in various stones; lapis lazuli came out of Afghanistan, obsidian came out of several large deposits, amber came out of the Baltic region, and it was all getting swapped and traded around over a massive chunk of the prehistoric world. Later on, the Indus Valley (Harappan) civilization made cool beads, and those show up all over the place. Catal Huyuk (33 acres), which was abandoned about 7500 years ago (5500 BC for the main site; a smaller site across the creek must have been started by refugees, but only sputtered along for 50 years and croaked), was on the obsidian route, and either controlled access to points west, or was itself controlled by some as-yet unidentified city which used Catal Huyuk as its western (? eastern?) gate.