Was this the first city?

9,000 years ago, this place was home to one of the world's largest settlements!

At a time when most of the world's people were nomadic hunter-gatherers, Çatalhöyük was a bustling town of as many as 10,000 people.

Mud brick houses were built close together more and more of them as the population grew. Eventually, the settlement became terraces of houses rising above one another. Over time, layers of debris from demolished houses accumulated. Erosion smoothed the ruins into a hill-like mound.