Around eight thousand years ago, someone painted a small human figure on the back of a wild bull.That was more than four millennia before the famous bull-leaping fresco of Knossos in Crete.
The scene comes from the decorated Level V structure at Çatalhöyük often called the “Shrine of the Hunters.”
Çatalhöyük was a large Neolithic settlement near Cumra, Konya, in modern-day Turkey. Its East Mound was occupied from about 7400 to 6200 BC, while the West Mound continued into the Chalcolithic from about 6200 to 5200 BC.
It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2012. Its houses were packed tightly together in a streetless layout; people moved across roofs and entered interior spaces through roof openings by ladder.
The mural was part of the richly decorated structure F.V.I, excavated during Mellaart’s 1960s campaigns. The room’s walls carried a sequence of animal-and-human scenes, among the most dynamic images known from Çatalhöyük.
The “bull” is best understood as an aurochs, the extinct wild ancestor of domestic cattle. Male aurochsen could stand close to two metres at the shoulder, with long legs, heavy horns, and a more athletic build than many modern cattle.
The last known aurochs died in 1627 in Poland’s Jaktorów Forest. Royal protection kept the remnant herd alive for a time, but it could not save the species.
The fascinating part is that this may not be a straightforward kill scene.
The human figures seem to be surrounding, teasing, or baiting the animal. Some carry objects such as bows, sticks, or axes, while others reach toward tails, tongues, horns, or bodies. There is no clear scene of slaughter, and the action feels closer to a dangerous spectacle, ritual, or game than to a simple hunt.
At Çatalhöyük, wild bulls were more than meat. Their size, danger, and difficulty made them powerful social and symbolic animals.
At Çatalhöyük, walls and floors were repeatedly renewed. Some floors were replastered dozens of times, and some walls hundreds of times over the life of a house. Each coat sealed the surface beneath it, and some phases carried new painted images.