Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Image not available - no digital rights
Such tracings come down to us intermittently and partially.
We only have such artefacts as have been discovered, and such
myths as have been recorded. When the volcano Hasan Da
ˇ
in the Karapinar field in Anatolia, western Turkey, erupted in
around 6200 bc, it caused suicient disturbance and alarm in
Çatal Hüyük, 90 miles (145 km) away, to seep into the local
consciousness of this very large and long-established settlement,
and become the subject of a wall painting of the volcano erupting
over tightly packed houses.¹ Çatal Hüyük, which was first exca-
vated in the late 1950s and into the following decade, was by the
standards of this early period a sophisticated place, the world's
first town of up to about 10,000 people. The inhabitants, who
Çatal Hüyük , the
world's first town,
which developed 7500
to 5700 bc in a fertile
volcanic landscape.
