Very interesting!
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Good stuff....an old college friend of mine has worked there on and off for a number of years. It's interesting about the rooftop entrances....a lot of people speculate that it was a precursor defense mechanism before they began erecting walled cities, because of maurading wild animals that would have been incapable of figuring out how to get to what they were smelling as food.
Also, near here is where almost all of the wheat in the world can be genetically traced back to, as well, based on ancient grains found at sites throughout Europe, Asia and Africa.
Fascinating, V; thanks for the post. Nice to get away from it all and go back in time.
Archaeologists do know a lot more now than they did at the time of Mellaart’s discovery about other Anatolian settlements dating from the Neolithic. But for any student of that era—myself included—Çatalhöyük and its mysteries hold a special appeal. What led to the concentration of art in so many houses at one site? Why was the settlement so large—what drew people to that particular place? And how much can be learned from what is perhaps the most intriguing feature of all about Çatalhöyük: that the site was built and rebuilt over the centuries in ways that provide an unusually rich record of the minutiae of daily life?
Answer: geography and climate.
Geography.
a. There were probably fewer earthquakes there, as remembered by each generation. Earthquakes are regular catastrophes still today for all those hilly, mud-hut dwellers.
b. There was substantial water and arable soil to farm and feed animals.
c. There was some natural barrier that protected the area from easy invasion/conquest.
d. The elements there favored easy building materials.
Climate: There was enough rain and sun to live with. It was NOT the Norse/Siberian, marginal-living mountains or desert climate where it takes 99% of people's time and efforts to "merely" survive.
Result: When people don't have to spend SO much time just surviving, they do have time for other stuff: collection of minutiae of daily living, art, that is, creating a civilization.
Has the flightline been found?
You know, where the bored spear toting guard walked 468 step circles around the sleeping pteradaktyls?
Great Post, Besides the site in Turkey have you been any where else?
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