About Çatal Hüyük

Archaeological discovery:

Uncovered in 1961 by the British archaeologist James Mellaart, Çatal Hüyük was a Neolithic settlement in Anatolia which some date to as early as the 8th millennia B.C.E. Excavations by Stanford archeologist Ian Hodder continue today. Çatal Hüyük is located on the Konya plain, the later birthplace of the famous Persian mystic poet, Rumi.
Çatal Hüyük was a city of honeycombed rooms and courtyards, a self-contained unit with interconnecting walls. There were no doors between dwellings. With the use of ladders, the people of Çatal Hüyük entered their homes through the roof. The city housed as many as 7,000—10,000 residents.

Reconstruction of the houses at Çatal Hüyük.

The people of Çatal Hüyük were agriculturalists and horticulturalists. They also hunted wild bulls, deer, horses, pigs and foraged wild plants, grains, mushrooms, berries. They engaged in extensive trade. In the dig site are items from Syria and the Mediterranean. Obsidian from a nearby twin-coned volcano, Hasan Dagi, offered them wealth.
The homes were kept meticulously clean. Within these dwellings were many large wall paintings and plaster reliefs. Each year, when the residents repainted and replastered, they also covered over or repainted these reliefs and murals. Some clearly served ritualistic purposes and identify the room as a shrine. For example: the plaster relief of twin leopards standing face to face between two torches, their bodies adorned with a painted rosette pattern. These leopards had many layers of paint, indicating this shrine was in use for continuous generations. Of the 139 rooms he uncovered, Mellaart identified 40 of them as shrines.

The “Shrine of the Leopard” discovered at Çatal Hüyük.

There are also murals of bulls and vultures.

Catal Hayuk Murals of Bulls and Vultures

Another “Shrine” at Çatal Hüyük with plaster reliefs of the heads of Bulls (Bucrania).

In one of the dwellings, a mural depicts the twin cones of Hasan Dagi and the village that spread below it before its historic explosion in 7500 B.C.E. Either the people of Çatal Hüyük witnessed this event or it was part of village lore. Other murals portray hunting scenes or large geometric patterns with designs similar to the rugs or “kilim” still produced in modern Turkey. In one shrine the sculpted relief of the head of a bull emerges from between the wide-open and birthing legs of a leopard. In an amazing depiction of the deep appreciation of the life/death process and the role vultures were playing at this time on Earth, we find the walls of one shrine to be adorned with the plaster forms of human breasts shaped around the entire beak of a vulture. The beaks protrude from the breasts as nipples.

A Depiction of the Hasan Dagi Volcano and the town below it from a wall painting in Çatal Hüyük.

Everywhere is the presence of the Goddess in Her many shapes and forms. Based on burial practices and artifacts left in graves, it is clear that women were held in high regard and occupied high positions in their communities.
The absence of violent death in the remains of the people of this Goddess-loving community, combined with the lack of depictions of violence in their artwork leads us to conclude that this was a peaceful culture.

Vultures:
In Çatal Hüyük a shrine was uncovered whose walls were painted with giant red vultures. They had wide, nine-foot, spreading wings and hands like beaks. Between them were headless human bodies lying in the fetal position. Here, as in many early cultures, a process of excarnation, whereby the physical body would be left out for decomposition by the sun and local scavengers such as vultures, was carried out upon death. When the bones were cleaned and bleached white by the sun, they would then be given proper burial. In Çatal Hüyük the bones of loved ones were buried under the platforms in the houses.

The “Vulture Shrine” from Çatal Hüyük.

Vultures have a deep and rich tradition in ancient cultures. In Egypt there is the Vulture Goddess “Mut.” The Egyptian hieroglyph for mother is a vulture. “In Hebrew R-M-T meant “pity,” “compassion,” and “womb” as well as “vulture.”
If there had been the kind of substantial death implied by the theory of the Cataclysm of 9500 B.C.E., it would make sense that the vulture population would explode. It would be natural for people at this time to assume that they had come to help clean up all the carnage.

Sources:
Gimbutas, Marija. The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe. HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.
Johnson, Buffie. Lady of the Beasts. HarperSanFrancisco, 1981.
Mellaart, James. Catal Huyuk, A Neolithic Town in Anatolia. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.