This Çatalhöyük mural is thought to represent a nearby volcanic eruption. New scientific evidence confirms a contemporaneous eruption at nearby Hasan Dag.
Posted on 08/22/2018 8:26:06 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
In the early 1960s, archaeologist James Mellaart uncovered a mural at Çatalhöyük, the world's largest and best-preserved Neolithic site, which he interpreted to represent a volcanic eruption. Fifty years later, scientific tests done on pumice at the nearby volcano Hasan Dag confirm that there was, in fact, an eruption between 9,500 and 8,400 years ago -- a timespan including the era that the mural was likely painted.
...In an Archaeology Odyssey article, Michael Balter, author of The Goddess and the Bull, wrote: "One painting, he [Mellart] thought, seemed to represent a town plan of the Neolithic village, with an erupting volcano looming overhead."
Over the past two decades, prominent excavations at Çatalhöyük, under the direction of Stanford archaeologist Ian Hodder, have greatly expanded our image of the Neolithic proto-city. A study conducted by volcanologist Axel Schmitt of the University of California in Los Angeles returned attention to Mellaart's volcanic mural. The ochre-painted mural has been given a range of classifications over the years; those that see the peaks of Hasan Dag looming over a Neolithic village have described it as the world's oldest extant landscape scene or map, whereas skeptics have dismissed the theory, suggesting that the abstract shapes could instead represent a range of subjects, including a leopard's skin.
At a Geological Society of America conference held on October 30, 2013, Schmitt presented new evidence of a small scale eruption at Hasan Dag. Using uranium-thorium-helium dating in zircon crystals, Schmitt revealed that the volcanic deposits match the mural's chronology and depiction of a minor volcanic flare, resembling what is known as a Strombolian-type eruption.
(Excerpt) Read more at biblicalarchaeology.org ...
This Çatalhöyük mural is thought to represent a nearby volcanic eruption. New scientific evidence confirms a contemporaneous eruption at nearby Hasan Dag.
Years ago, a German scientist (beats me who, at this point... ) told me about this idea, on some public forum, and graciously emailed me a picture of the mural. Gee whiz, I saddled right on the idea, but a few years later I read a critique of the idea, and the prospect that the “volcano” is actually an animal skin came to make more sense to me. A few years after that as I learned what a loony fraud Mellaart had a habit of being, I lost all interest in this “first news story in history”. Anyway, here’s a search for related stories:
Notice the rooftop entrances? That was also the smoke hole, but the overall aspect on approach is a walled city (about 33 acres if memory serves), and so far no sign of a main gate (the 'streets' are the rooftops).
An artist's reconstruction of Çatalhöyük.
"They *fooled* me, Jerry!"
Oh, okay, it’s still lurking in the recesses of the hard drive — the nice German was Achim Utzmann.
Had to look at one of your links - this site is in Turkey. I don’t know, but the volcanic ash dated about the same time as the mural, along with the proximity of the similar shaped twin peaks of the mountains, it seems plausible to me.
The orange color of the mountains might be due to the recent deposits - or perhaps indicating fire? Or - how about red mountains from the sun shining through the ash in the sky? (Posting from smokey Seattle, with ash falling on everything at the moment, and a VERY red sky!)
It’s a good thing they haven’t had me interpret this mural because to me it looks like a stylized cow jumping over a pile of dominoes.
Heh... the blocky looking dark shapes could be a birds-eye (imagined) view of the town itself, and the "volcano" could be a sort of tent structure erected just outside the town for some kind of market, or annual festival. Or it could be basically anything, since there's no text in the town, as far as anyone knows they were not literate. The place wound up abandoned abour 5500 BC. Ryan and Pitman attributed the destruction of Catalhoyuk to the migration of the recently homeless refugees of the Black Sea flood.
Neolithic inhabitants at Çatalhöyük used volcanic obsidian to make tools and mirrors (shown here). New data connecting Hasan Dag to the Çatalhöyük mural contextualizes the important lithic industry. Photo: Catalhoyuk Research Project
Admittedly this doesn't look all that impressive now, but I've also seen one (in a photo, in a book, alas, couldn't find it online) about 7000 years old, obsidian, and carved with a handle, looks like something one might buy today.
I'm not as sanguine over the abilities of getting a tight date that is accurate from the volcano people. The classic "Gods, Graves, and Scholars" used to be the entree to archaeology for a lot of youngsters, and in its pages there's an interesting (true) story about a preColumbian temple and other ruins that were abandoned after getting partly or mostly buried by a lava flow. Perfect, thought the archaeologists, we'll get a date from the volcano people -- but they asked them to date the flow without telling them anything else. The figure came back at 9000 years. Well, the ruins are not 9000 years old. :^)
I'll bet all the Çatalhöyük Chicks really dug it!
The town plan is very different, but the construction reminds me of Chaco. Different materials, of course.
While doing the image search for obsidian mirrors, I reencountered something I’d forgotten about, that some precolumbian societies made and used the same kind of thing. There’s an amusing one from Wari that looks like the lower part of a human arm, and the mirror fit in the palm of the hand. The bottom was flat so the mirror would stand up by itself.
The first time someone made one of those or found a naturally occurring one, he got laid when he got it home. That’s probably what produced the trade revolution that drove Neolithic growth, and that created the world in which we live today. Oh, and prostitution.
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