Humanity's first neighbourhood — 9,000-year-old houses entered through the roof, walls painted with hunting scenes and headless men
Çatalhöyük ('Fork Mound' in Turkish) is a Neolithic settlement in the Konya Plain of south-central Turkey, 52km southeast of Konya, occupied from approximately 7500 to 5700 BCE. At its peak it housed 3,000–8,000 people in a settlement of densely packed mud-brick houses with no streets — entry was through holes in the roof, accessed by wooden ladders from above. The houses were abutted directly against each other, forming a continuous organic mass with no ground-level passages between them; the rooftops served as the community's public space. The interior walls were plastered and repainted mul…
Çatalhöyük was discovered and first excavated by James Mellaart of the British Institute of Archaeology between 1961 and 1965, whose finds — the painted walls, goddess figurines, bull skulls — made worldwide headlines. Mellaart's interpretations (a goddess-worshipping matriarchal society) were influential but have been substantially revised by subsequent excavation under Ian Hodder (from 1993) which revealed a more complex and egalitarian picture. UNESCO designation was conferred in 2012. The site has two mounds — the East Mound (the main Neolithic settlement) and the smaller West Mound (a la…