Catal Huyuk

May 17 - We left Goreme this morning and headed west toward Konya.  This was the Iconium of Paul and Barnabas' day.  Just south of Konya, not all that far from the village of Lystra which the two apostles Paul also visited, lies the archaeological mound of Catal Huyuk.

Catal Huyuk is one of the oldest and largest Neolithic cities ever unearthed.  It is roughly the same age as the lower levels of Jericho.  It captures the time when man was just transitioning from hunting and gathering to farming with livestock.  These people planted wheat and barley for sustenance, but they also hunted wild game.  The city is estimated to contain in its heyday about 5,000 people living in 1,000 houses.  Back then, the town lie on the banks of a vast marsh populated with ducks and other wild life.

The city must have looked a bit like the Zuni pueblos of the American southwest.  The square mud-brick houses were built hard up against each other.  Curiously, the houses had no doors, with only small windows place high on the walls.  They all take access from a hole in the rooftop.  Each house in Catal Huyuk has its own oven for baking bread, placed just underneath the ladders leading to the rooftop, allowing the smoke to escape.  The walls and the floors were covered in plaster, and the walls decorated with panels of red.  Rush mats were used on the floors.   The furniture was built-in, with brick platforms for sitting on, working on and sleeping on.  They buried their dead under these platforms.

Many houses have religious shrines, and it is clear that bulls were sacred.  Bulls' heads and horns project from the walls and altars of their temples.  I have always wondered if the bull worship of early man didn't derive from the zodiac.  The earth moved through the constellation Taurus from about BC 4100 to BC 2200, and the ancients believed the planets and stars were gods.  Catal Huyuk has been carbon dated from roughly BC 7400 to BC 6200, so this theory would greatly compress the conventional C14 dating.

The Catal Huyukians were a fierce and bloodthirsty lot, as you can see. The oven to bake bread lie just below the ladder, and the smoke exited through the same hole in the roof.

This picture shows the excavations at the southern part of the mound

This picture shows the northern excavations.

This wall shows some of the artwork found at the settlement.

This beautifully worked flint knife reminded me of Abraham and his son.