Catal Hoyuk PaintingRemarkable discoveries have been made in Anatolia. Excavations at Hacilar, Catal Hoyuk and elsewhere have shown that the central Anatolian plateau was the site of a flourishing culture between 7000 and 5000 BC.
Animal husbandry was well established, hunting continued play an important part in the early Neolithic economy of Catal Hoyuk.
The important of hunting as a food source (until about 5700 BC) is reflected also in wall paintings, where in the older decorated rooms, hunting scenes predominate.
In style and concept, however the deer hunt mural ay Catal Hoyuk is worlds apart from the wall painting the hunters of the Paleolithic period produced.
Perhaps what is most strikingly new about the Catal Hoyuk painting and others like it is the regular appearance of the human figure – not only singly but also in large, coherent groups with wide variety of poses, subjects and settings.
Human were unusual in Paleolithic cave paintings, and pictorial narratives have almost never been found.
In Neolithic paintings, human themes and concerns and action scenes with human dominating animals are central.
More remarkable is a water color painting in one of the older rooms at Catal Hoyuk that art historians generally have acclaimed as the world’s first landscape.
As such it remained unique to thousands years. According to radiocarbon dating, the painting was executed around 6150 BC.
The foreground has been interpreted as a town with rectangular house neatly laid out side by side, probably representing Catal Hoyuk itself.
Behind the town appears a mountain with two peaks. Many archeologists think that the dots and lines issuing from the higher of the two cones represent a volcanic eruption and have a suggested that the mountain is the 10,600 foot high Hasan Dag. It is located within view of Catal Hoyuk and is the only twin-peak volcano in central Anatolia.
Catal Hoyuk Painting
