DECIPHERING PREHISTORIC MURALS OF ÇATALHÖYÜK AS CALENDARS OF FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE CYCLE

Abstract

The article ventures to uncover and decode sacred and practical meaning of abstract wall images from the Stone Age settlement of Çatalhöyük. Based on our reconstruction, we came to believe that they testify to the intellectual development of people who lived there 8500 years ago, specifically to their understanding of the female reproductive cycle.

Since discovered in 1958, the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük has never ceased to amaze the scientific world with stunning finds, including its mind-boggling city plan and a collection of astounding artifacts and other material remains. When examining them, one question inevitably arises: what was the level of sophistication of people who built and made them and how they preserved and passed knowledge well before any hint of literacy? To answer, we focus on some well-preserved abstract wall paintings (murals), presumed by scholars to be prototypes of ancient carpets. 

The authors, who are engaged in deciphering of the visual ‘language’ of Turkic carpets, have read pictorial abstractions from Çatalhöyük and concur that they attest to the incredible knowledge of the first people. We see the murals as calendars preserving and displaying priestly knowledge about the nature of the female monthly cycle. Such knowledge, depicted on walls of dwellings among other sacred objects, apparently had ritual and magical significance.

  Decipherment of the ‘calendars’ reveals to the scientific world the level of intellectual development level of people before written history. The knowledge revealed shatters the established paradigm about the nature of consciousness and poses questions for new scientific models about its development