The story of Çatalhöyük

At Çatalhöyük, you did not walk into a house through a door at street level: the entrances were in the upper part of the homes. Near Küçükköy, 11 km north of Çumra and 52 km southeast of Konya, two mounds sit side by side in the wheat fields of the Konya Plain. The eastern one, settled in the Neolithic, grew until it stood 20 metres above the plain; the western one was lived in during the Chalcolithic.

Diggers have found 18 Neolithic layers dated to 7400–6200 BC. More than eight thousand people are thought to have lived here, in a place that had outgrown village life and was becoming a town, home to some of the first farmers. James Mellaart discovered it in 1958; since 1993 Ian Hodder of Cambridge University has led the excavations.

UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List in 2012.