In Turkey, a civilization surprises the archaeologists with its art and its religious fervor. Temples, places of ritual in every house, and wonders of craft, was this civilization fallen from heaven?

The civilization of Çatal Hüyük offers another insoluble riddle,See Civilisations tombées du ciel the total absence of past evolutionary traces. Here is the story of its discovery. Çatal Hüyük, the Fork Hill, stands in the plain of Konya, in central Anatolia, on the banks of the river Çarsamba. In 1961, the archaeologist James Mellaart went there to conduct excavations. Only a mound was visible then, with remains of pottery and very ancient fires. Soon the excavations reveal an ancient city.

The hill covered a network of tombs and houses of a proto-Neolithic community from the 7th millennium BC. Shock and awe. In the Sixties, we knew almost nothingFor the underground cities of Cappadoce, though quite near, had not been recognized as neolithic. Therefore they are. See Des villes sous la terre of the Neolithic period in this country. (source)Çatal Höyük et la révolution néolithique par Jean-Louis HUOT Dossiers d'archéologie déc 2000 And suddenly, James Melaart discovered the largest Neolithic site of the Middle East. Founded around -7000, it became an important center from -6500 to -5700. The city and its suburbs, at their peak, covered 13 hectares.0,05 mi2

The city was home to 5,000 people; it had a developed organization and culture,Like these antique cities of Northern India, Harappa, Mohenjodaro and other, from the Rama's empire. See India song maintaining a long-distance trade and producing quality crafts. It contained shrines with wall paintings, figurinesAs in neolithic Meso-America. See Civilisations orphelines and burials, evidence of a complex religious life. Some statuettes remind of the prehistoric Venus of Germany.See below And the graffitis evoke those of the Altamira Cave,Click + yet much more ancient.

In the surrounding countryside, they grewAgriculture appeared 3000 years before in Egypt, then 1000 years before in Mesopotamia. See Il y a 10.000 ans wheat, barley, peas, chickpeas, lentils, vetch; they picked apples, pistachios, bays, almonds and acorns. The meat was provided by fishing and hunting (deer, wild boar, wild ass). While the region allows a dry farming, we note a manipulation of water probably necessary for cultivating flax or obtaining a higher yield for cereals. But frankly, no one knows indeed.It turns out that all orphan civilizations, including that of Harappa, were hydraulic civilizations, ie expert in the art of water supply. Was it only to irrigation purpose? A story to be continued...

In any case, Neolithic people were fond of pipes and drains of all kinds, not just in the Andes.See Les cités des cimes The site was a center of trade for many commodities (wood, obsidian from the volcano Hasan Dag, flint, copper, shells from the shores of the Mediterranean), and its craftsmen mastered the copper smelting (most ancient attestation of metallurgy in the Middle East) and had specialized in many craft productions.

Melaart brought to light a wide variety of quality items: arrowheads, spearheads, obsidianOn the other side of Atlantic Ocean, the Olmecs too were working obsidian. See La grosse tête africaine and flint daggers, stone maces, stone and baked clay figurines, textiles, wooden and ceramic crockery, jewels (beads and copper pendants). We note that these remote ages were much more civilizedSee Les Egyptiens volants than more recent periods.See La théorie du déclin Where did these know-how, vanished afterwards, come from? Where did these people get this art of trade and crafts from?

The houses were closed up against each other, without any street or passage, only accessible by wooden ladders placed here and there. They were built in mud bricks covered with plaster and usually included a common room of 20-25 square meters and annexed rooms. The main room had benches and platforms for sitting and sleeping, a raised rectangular foyer and a vaulted bread oven. 

But the most beautiful, Melaart did not find it in ordinary houses. Many shrines contrasted by their refined decoration: frescoes or wall paintings, modeled reliefs, animal skullsOther animal figures if click > and figurines. In some places, the shrines were so numerous that Melaart thought to be in a specialized area. Further excavations showed thereafter that the shrines were everywhere in large numbers. It is even the main feature of this archaic culture.

The bodies of the dead were deposited under the resting platforms in shrines and homes, and piled up over the years and generations, suggesting an elaborate cult of ancestors. Before being buried, along with precious objects, the bodies of the dead were entrusted to vultures and carrion insects. (source)Wikipedia.fr  The interest of the site also lies in its unique iconography.

Everywhere, female figurines evoking a cult of fertility, like this woman giving birth seated on a sort of throne adorned with cats. The wall paintings also suggest a cult of mother goddess, often pregnant or parturient,ie giving birth surrounded by leopards and bulls symbolizing the gods. The reliefs could also represent a woman's breasts. Melaart also discovered strange masculine figures, like this naked man riding a bull. (source)

The mother goddessSee Pleine de grâces is the guarantor of rebirth, immortality and fertility. Symbol of eternal femininity, she appears in the midst of many triangles,See Eternelle trinité the body schematized until abstraction, often accompanied by her symbolic animal the bull which horns are reflected in her body. It is the symbol of her offspring to which she will give life and death by the ritual sacrifice of the bull dedicated to her, to ensure the fertility of the earth and the rebirth of nature after the winter frosts.

This universal rite related to the agriculture cycle is still prevalent today in the remote countryside of Anatolia. (source)Ody Saban 1986 The walls of some houses are decorated with frescoes depicting hunting, bulls, stags, rams, vultures and headless men, sometimes geometric patterns; on the walls are modeled in relief female characters or animals and on the walls delimiting the benches, clay bucranes with real horns. (source)

Considering the extraordinary level of detail and decoration of the buried constructions, jewels, tools, weapons and wall paintings, it was soon clear to Melaart that this culture was very advanced in its beliefs, its lifestyles and its arts. And this city is one of the most ancient ever discovered cities, which is not the least paradox. The more we go back in time, the more peaceful and advanced the behaviors seem, the more finely wrought craft is. Nothing similar had ever been found, in Turkey or elsewhere.

Melaart got surprised: "How could they, for example, polish a mirror of obsidian, which is a hard volcanic glass, without scratching it? Or drill through stone beads (including obsidian) holes so thin that they are impervious to modern steel needles? When and where did they learn to extract through smelting copper and lead, metals certified in Çatal Hüyük from -6400?" (source) Such a technical nature does not appear at one go. For Melaart, Çatal Hüyük represents the culmination of an "extremely ancient strain".Other authors think the same about the trogloyte cities of Cappadoce, quite near.See  Des villes sous terre

Why not that of the Serpent People?See page This people of goddesses and half gods might not be as mythical as historians think. It dates back to Paleolithic times, far before the end of the last ice age, the Wurm,See Les glaciers du Würm between -120000 and -8000, when an ice sheet covered much of Europe.

On this same site, the oldest known representation of a drum was discovered in a fresco. More than thirty characters, some of which playing percussions, dance around a huge bull. Two characters hold percussion instruments that remind strangely of the berimbau, a Brazilian instrument originally from Africa.See L'empire en miettes  Moreover, let us note the color of the dancers' skin. Some are black, others white, or half-white.

Blacks are sometimes covered with a leopard skin. All is as if the inhabitants of this Neolithic city belonged to the two ethnic groups, like the first Egyptians, and like the Atlanteans before the flood.See Les deux races atlantes

Still in Southern Turkey, near they Syrian border, we discovered the oldest stone temple in the world.ie according to archeologists accepted datation. Besides, temples like Teotihuacan, Tianahuaco, Abydos, or the great Pyramid of Gizeh seem to be older yet. Gobekli TepeClick > would be some 11,500 years old, probably built by the last hunter-gatherers, just before agriculture.See Il y a 10.000 ans The builders of this temple could be the first growers of oat: DNA analysises of domestic oats compared to wild oats showed that the strain used was from Mount Karacadag, next to the site.