Ancient Catalhoyuk

April 19, 2005 7:06 AM

"A skull coated in plaster, colored in red, and cradled in the arms of a female skeleton” is among the latest discoveries at the 9,000-year-old site of Catalhoyuk, located on Turkey's Anatolian plain.
posted by dfowler (12 comments total)

Anatolia previously discussed here.
posted by dfowler at 7:07 AM on April 19, 2005

dear odinsdream,
posted by dfowler at 7:29 AM on April 19, 2005

The Bull Shrine and the Leopard Goddess - you'll need to scroll down.

For a skeptical look at the Goddess associations : Since 1983, rug literature has been re-infected repeatedly with the Çatal Hüyük virus.
posted by TimothyMason at 7:52 AM on April 19, 2005

Fascinating, bookmarked, thanks dfowler!
posted by carter at 9:05 AM on April 19, 2005

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Earth = 6,000 yrs. old. Sorry, dude. Impossible.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 1:57 PM on April 19, 2005

Great stuff -- thanks!
posted by languagehat at 2:58 PM on April 19, 2005

Great links -- thanks everyone. Following up on TimothyMason's link, there's a more general overview of tendentious ancient Near Eastern/Goddess religion connections in Cynthia Eller's excellent 'Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory' (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000).
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:10 PM on April 19, 2005

totally cool. The first city. : >

I wonder what it was that brought them all together--or maybe it was just an extended clan that did well enough to stay put, and grew? (fertile place, no need to follow animals or when it got cold, etc)
posted by amberglow at 4:17 PM on April 19, 2005

fantastic! thanks, dfowler! :)
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:47 PM on April 19, 2005

Been there. Very cool site. (Not that I've encountered too many archaeological digs to compare it to.)
posted by Paragon at 11:09 PM on April 19, 2005

Earlier Çatalhöyük link (that one was for kids though).
posted by thatwhichfalls at 12:28 AM on April 20, 2005

I wonder what it was that brought them all together-

Steven Mithen seems to suggest that the settlement was the centre of a highly authoritarian cult - he refers to it as a "Neolithic hell". It could be that the impetus behind such early settlements was as much ideological as economic. Certainly it wouldn't have been for health reasons.
posted by TimothyMason at 1:14 AM on April 20, 2005