Settled life in Konya starts earlier than almost anywhere else. Çatalhöyük, on the plain near Çumra south-east of the city, is described by the Ministry of Culture as the oldest and most developed Neolithic settlement yet found — the place where, on a world scale, cooking, farming, the use of fire, life in one fixed spot and the shared defence of a village against wild animals all first appear. It is on the UNESCO World Heritage List and has its own page here.
The same kind of Neolithic traces turn up in the middle of the modern city. Alâaddin Tepesi, the mound the old town is built around, was founded in the late Neolithic and early Chalcolithic and has been lived on continuously since about 2000 BC. Excavations in the region have produced Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman material from the same ground.
