Proved

Lying on the Konya plain in the south of modern day Turkey, Çatalhöyük is the world’s earliest known town. Founded roughly 9500 years ago, the settlement covered 35 acres — making it larger than the ancient city of Jericho, founded some 500 years later. Archaeological evidence unearthed at Çatalhöyük suggests that the town’s 5000 to 8000 residents lived in a society with no class system or gender barriers. They subsisted on cereal farming, the raising of livestock and, most importantly, the trading in black obsidian mined from the mountain Hasan Dag, located 87 miles to the east. Most interesting still was the town’s configuration. All homes in Çatalhöyük were built from sun-dried brick and entered through the roof. There were no streets, alleyways or plazas in the town — each house was built wall-to-wall to its neighbor. The result was a large cube, and eventually a mound, whose outer most walls formed a defensive boundary around the edge of the settlement.