Antalya via Çatalhöyük

Back to see the dig site and museum, open today.  This is an archaeological dig site of a human settlement occupied between 7100-5700 BCE (or about 9000 - 7700 years ago) - the Neolithic Period of Man.  The oldest human settlement sites found elsewhere date from 10,890 – 8,780 BCE (Syrian site).

The accompanying museum is really World class - great graphics and presentations, models, and layout.

We spent almost 2 hours in the museum, before we even went out to the dig site - it was that good.

The first exhibit illustrates where this settlement sits in time with respect to the earliest to the latest broad categories of world-wide civilizations.

The site sits amongst the earliest civilizations of Man - the orange colored area.  Prior to these settlements Man was living a wandering/hunting/gathering existence.  The arrows show that once farming and settlement was figured out in the colored areas, the people spread their ways outward to the dashed line extents (pretty much where farming is still concentrated today - at least where pumped irrigation isn't required).

Here's a graphic of what this settlement looked like in its peak.  Sorta like pueblos, but with no doors/windows - you crawl across the other house to yours and drop in through the roof/fire hole on a ladder.

Another cool exhibit uses actors to explain what this society was like based on evidence found from the 'trash' - you can select topics and the actors would provide the explanations with a video narration.

Multiple intact skeletal remains were found buried within the living spaces.  Gerri is learning about how "sedentary" lives brought new experiences good and bad to the body.

Here's a model of what the dwellings looked like, based on what they found in the dig site.

We head off to the actual dig site...

The site is part of a mound (scientifically called a "tell"), rising up from the terrain, where a mound isn't expected to exist naturally - how it was noticed by a British archaeologist back in the 1950s.

In archaeology a "tell" is an artificial topographical feature, a mound consisting of the accumulated and stratified debris of a succession of consecutive settlements at the same site, the refuse of generations of people who built and inhabited them and accumulated natural sediment.

Less than 5% of the site, first discovered in the 1950s, has been escavated.  This is the older dig site, and newer one is nearby, but apparently it's not available to see today (no issues, admission is still free to all this).

​Now in Antalya, our overnight spot...we checked out a waterfall dropping right into the Mediterranean Sea.

Hadrian's Gate is a memorial gate,  which was built in the name of the Roman emperor Hadrian, who visited the city in 130 A.D..  It was later incorporated in the walls that surround the city and harbor, of which it is the only remaining entrance gate today.

See the two grooved tracks worn away by the countless passages of Roman-era wagons and chariots.

Looking at the gate from the outside...

It's pizza and falafel burrito time...

Attalus II Philadelphus (220–138 BC) was a ruler of the Attalid kingdom of Pergamon and the founder of the city of Attalia (Antalya).

Many flavored teas (powdered - you mix it with hot water) - Gerri tried the pink one, and thought it tasted like Hall's Mentholated Cough Drops.  The store owner says it treats a long list of ailments.  Don't ask about the question marked one, I just noticed this now.

Personal boats - like back home? - waiting for days and weeks for their owners to take them out??

These boats below go out almost daily, weather depending, with tourists.