Çatalhöyük belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 7500 BCE at Konya plain, Anatolia. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
A Neolithic town of rooftop streets and plastered houses packed like a honeycomb, with no streets at ground level.
How it was made
Wall paintings of leopards, bulls, and a volcanic landscape. Burial under floors made the house a tomb and a shrine.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It never needed a Greek list to be a wonder: the labour, the alignment, or the survival is enough.
It is a wonder of density: 8,000 people living in a single organism of mud brick.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 7500 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 41 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.