Image Details

The Art Archive / Museum of Anatolian Civilizations Ankara / Dagli Orti

Ancient hunters try to bring down a stag in this 9,000-year-old wall painting from the Neolithic village of Catalhoyuk in south-central Turkey. The 3-foot-high painting (now in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, in Ankara), found on a wall of one of the village’s houses, was excavated in the early 1960s by the British archaeologist James Mellaart. Some seven to ten thousand people once lived in the densely packed houses of Catalhoyuk.