Sixth Grade Social Studies: First Permanent Settlements: Jericho and Çatalhöyük
The emergence of permanent settlements marked the critical transition from temporary farming villages to dense proto-urban communities.
The Birth of Sedentary Communities
As the Agricultural Revolution took root, human groups shifted from nomadic foraging camps to sedentary villages. Having access to year-round water sources, fertile soils, and domesticated crops, communities constructed permanent buildings designed for generational use. Two archaeological sites stand out as quintessential examples of early urban experimentation: Jericho in the Jordan River Valley and Çatalhöyük in modern Turkey.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic Settlements
The earliest permanent settlements are classified by archaeologists as Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN). During this phase, communities had mastered plant cultivation, architecture, and animal management, but had not yet invented ceramic vessels. Instead, they stored food in plastered stone pits, woven baskets lined with bitumen, and hollowed stone bowls.
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| EARLY PERMANENT SETTLEMENTS AT A GLANCE |
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| SETTLEMENT | LOCATION | NOTABLE ARCHITECTURAL FEAT |
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| Jericho | Jordan River Valley | Massive stone defensive wall |
| (Tell es-Sultan) | (Modern West Bank) | and monumental circular tower|
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| Çatalhöyük | Konya Plain | Interconnected mud-brick |
| | (Central Anatolia) | houses with rooftop access; |
| | | no public streets. |
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Ancient Jericho: The City by the Spring
Jericho, known archaeologically as Tell es-Sultan, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in human history, with evidence of permanent occupation dating back to approximately 9,000 BCE.
Geographic Advantages: The Oasis of Ein es-Sultan
Jericho was built in an arid depression near the Dead Sea, roughly 800 feet below sea level. Its survival and wealth derived from a perennial freshwater spring known as Ein es-Sultan (or the Spring of Elisha). This spring yielded thousands of gallons of clean freshwater every minute, turning an otherwise desert landscape into a lush, fertile oasis capable of supporting irrigated fields of wheat, dates, and barley.
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| THE MONUMENTAL TOWER OF JERICHO |
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| [ Flat Top Observation Platform ] |
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| | | |
| | Massive Solid Stone Construction | |
| | Height: ~8.5 meters (28 feet) | |
| | Base Diameter: ~9 meters (30 feet) | |
| | | |
| | Internal 22-Step Spiral Staircase | |
| | Carved from dressed stone blocks | |
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| | |
| [ Embedded in Massive Wall ] |
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Monumental Architecture: The Wall and Tower
Around 8,000 BCE, the inhabitants of Jericho constructed an astonishing architectural complex: a massive perimeter wall of rough-cut stone over 12 feet high and six feet thick, backed by a monumental stone tower. The Great Tower of Jericho stood 28 feet high with a base diameter of nearly 30 feet, containing an interior hollowed staircase of 22 precisely fitted stone steps. Archaeologists debate the function of this monumental architecture; while Kathleen Kenyon argued it served as a defensive fortification against marauding nomadic raiders, other researchers suggest it was a flood-control levee or an astronomical observation tower. Regardless of its exact purpose, its construction required thousands of hours of organized communal labor, demonstrating early civic coordination.
Ancestor Veneration: Plastered Skulls
Excavations at Jericho revealed an intimate spiritual tradition: plastered human skulls. Inhabitants removed skulls from deceased ancestors, filled the eye sockets with cowrie shells, and molded fine lime plaster over the bone to reconstruct lifelike facial features. These modeled skulls were kept in family living rooms or buried beneath house floors, demonstrating deep reverence for ancestral lineage and property claims.
Çatalhöyük: The Honeycomb Settlement of Anatolia
Discovered in central Turkey by James Mellaart and excavated extensively by Ian Hodder, Çatalhöyük flourished between approximately 7,500 and 5,700 BCE. At its zenith, it was home to between 5,000 and 8,000 people.
Urban Layout Without Streets
Çatalhöyük possessed a unique urban design: it contained no streets, alleys, plazas, or public courtyards. Houses were constructed directly adjacent to one another in a dense honeycomb cluster. Buildings were constructed of standardized sun-dried mud bricks framed with wooden beams.
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| ÇATALHÖYÜK ROOFTOP DOMESTIC LIFE |
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| [Rooftop Activity] Community travel, grain drying, crafting |
| | |
| | (Wooden ladder through roof hatch opening) |
| v |
| [Interior Room] Central hearth/oven for cooking bread |
| Raised plaster platforms for sleeping & sitting |
| Sub-floor burials of deceased relatives |
| Wall murals of aurochs, vultures, and leopards |
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Rooftop Living and Defense
Because houses shared exterior walls, the entire settlement presented an unbroken, solid outer perimeter that protected the community from floods and hostile outsiders. Access to homes was exclusively through roof hatches via wooden ladders. Daily social life occurred upon the flat rooftops, where neighbors traversed the settlement, dried grain, spun wool, knapped flint, and socialized. The roof hatch also functioned as a chimney, allowing smoke from interior clay hearths to escape.
Domestic Rituals and Murals
Every home in Çatalhöyük functioned as both a living space and a household shrine. Archaeologists found walls decorated with vibrant fresco paintings of wild bulls (aurochs), vultures circling headless human bodies, and geometric patterns. Inhabitants molded clay bull heads and installed genuine horn cores (bucrania) directly into plaster benches and walls. Like the people of Jericho, families in Çatalhöyük buried their dead beneath the plaster sleeping platforms inside their homes, living directly above the bones of their ancestors.
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| OBSIDIAN TRADE AT ÇATALHÖYÜK |
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| Near Mount Hasan (volcano) -> High-grade volcanic glass (obsidian) |
| Inhabitants extracted, shaped, and polished obsidian into: |
| - Razor-sharp surgical knives and projectile points |
| - Highly reflective obsidian vanity mirrors |
| - Exported across the Levant for shells, copper, and turquoise |
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The Obsidian Trade
Çatalhöyük's prosperity was driven by its control over valuable natural resources, particularly obsidian (black volcanic glass). Located near the twin-peaked volcano Mount Hasan, the community quarried obsidian and fashioned it into razor-sharp cutting blades, spear tips, and polished reflective mirrors. Inhabitants traded obsidian across hundreds of miles in exchange for shells from the Mediterranean Sea, flint from Syria, and copper from the Black Sea region.
Social Organization in Early Settlements
Archaeological analysis reveals surprising information about how these early dense communities organized themselves.
Egalitarian Domestic Life
Despite having thousands of residents, Çatalhöyük shows remarkably little evidence of social hierarchy or centralized monarchy. Houses were roughly uniform in size, construction quality, and interior amenities; no palatial royal mansions or impoverished slums have been discovered. Analysis of human skeletons reveals that men and women consumed nearly identical diets and spent comparable amounts of time working indoors and outdoors, suggesting that early urban life remained largely egalitarian.
Review Exercises
Exercise 1: Describe the geographic advantages of Jericho, explaining how the Ein es-Sultan spring supported one of the world's first permanent settlements.
Exercise 2: Explain the architectural design of Çatalhöyük, including how people moved through the settlement, accessed their homes, and defended against external threats.
Exercise 3: Discuss the religious practices found at both Jericho and Çatalhöyük, focusing on how both communities treated and remembered their deceased relatives.
Solutions
Solution 1: Ancient Jericho was located in an arid rift valley near the Dead Sea where farming would ordinarily be impossible. The settlement flourished because of the perennial freshwater spring of Ein es-Sultan, which supplied an uninterrupted flow of clean water. This enabled inhabitants to irrigate fertile alluvial soils, grow abundant crops of wheat and barley, and maintain permanent residences year-round.
Solution 2: Çatalhöyük was designed without streets, alleys, or plazas; houses were built directly against one another in a dense honeycomb arrangement. Residents walked across flat rooftops to travel across the community and entered their homes through roof openings using wooden ladders. This design offered excellent defense because the exterior wall of the settlement formed a continuous defensive barricade with no exposed street-level doorways for attackers to breach.
Solution 3: Both Jericho and Çatalhöyük practiced intense ancestor veneration. In Jericho, inhabitants removed the skulls of deceased ancestors, covered them with modeled lime plaster to recreate human facial features, and placed shell eyes in the sockets. In Çatalhöyük, families buried deceased relatives beneath the plaster platforms of their living rooms where they slept. Both practices demonstrate that these early societies maintained ongoing spiritual connections with their ancestors to affirm family heritage and property rights.