Anatolia is the portion of Turkey that extends from the Bosphorus and Aegean coast eastward to the borders of the Soviet Union, Iran, and Iraq. Because of its strategic location, at the intersection of Asia and Europe, Anatolia has been the centre of several civilizations, since prehistoric times. One of the first of these civilizations was at Catal Huyuk. It existed around the 7th millennium BC and was located in Central Anatolia.
Catal Huyuk was one of the world’s first towns. Its houses were made of mud bricks, and were built touching against each other. They did not have doors, and houses were entered through hatches in roofs. Since, houses were built touching each other, the roofs must have acted as streets!
The people of Catal Huyuk made clothes woven from wool. They also wore jewellery made of stone, bone and shell, and wove baskets of reeds. They made pottery, and they used obsidian, a hard volcanic rock to make tools and weapons. Craftsmen made dishes and boxes of wood.
Catal Huyuk was abandoned about 5,000 BC, and then forgotten for thousands of years, till it was rediscovered by James Mellaart in 1958.