[Lady Jag]

Turkey

Çatalhöyük

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Excavations at the South Area of Çatal Höyük

Çatalhöyük /ʧɑtɑl højyk/ (also Çatal Höyük and Çatal Hüyük, or any of the three without diacritics; çatal is Turkish for "fork", höyük for "mound") was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, dating from around 7500 BC for the lowest layers. It is perhaps the largest and most sophisticated Neolithic site yet uncovered.

Çatalhöyük is located overlooking wheatfields in the Konya Plain, southeast of the present-day city of Konya, Turkey, approximately 140 km from the twin-coned volcano of Hasan Dağ The eastern settlement forms a mound which would have risen about 20 metres above the plain at the time of the latest Neolithic occupation. There is also a smaller settlement mound to the west and a Byzantine settlement a few hundred meters to the east. The prehistoric mound settlements were abandoned before the Bronze Age. A channel of the Çarsamba river once flowed between the two mounds, and the settlement was built on alluvial clay which may have been favourable for early agriculture.

[Alas Babylon!]

A! Aye-yi-yi!!!!!!!

Too many A's!!!!!

(What is this, Turkish?)

[FMBass]

No offense, but you don’t type too good.

[SunkenCiv]

The guys from Monty Python helped prepare that Wikipedia entry.

[SunkenCiv]

There is also a smaller settlement mound to the west

The original settlement was burned and abandoned; one suggestion (by Ryan and Pitman) is that the egress of people driven out from the flooding Black Sea basin resulted in a number of sudden destructions in Anatolia, as well as the construction of the big wall etc at Jericho. The smaller settlement was constructed (on the opposite bank of a river? Can't recall for sure) shortly after the burning (possibly as much or little as 50 years), and lasted less than a century.