-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Re: Not a map, but a leopard's skin, at prehistoric Catalhoyuk
Date:   Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:17:22 -0000
From:   Nicholas Verge <[log in to unmask]>
To:     Maps, Air Photo & Geospatial Systems Forum <[log in to unmask]>



I think the inhabitants of Catalhoyuk were probably quite capable of
drawing a leopard skin. They were VERY advanced in other ways for the
period.

The Catalhoyuk "map" if it is a depiction of a leopard skin is not a very
good one or at least it is a very styalised one. Therefore I am sceptical
of this suggestion. I think the "map" is just that, a map or more
correctly a perspective view.

A picture of the the Map.

http://www.infovis.net/imagenes/T1_N110_A5_CatalHoyukMap.jpg

I dont think we should view ancient peoples as being so intellectually
primitive that they were incapablable of visualising their location in the
surrounding landscape and drawing this as a map.



Nicholas Verge

> And now, for something completely different:-
>
> A bird’s eye view – of a leopard’s spots : the Çatalhöyük ‘map’ and the
> development of cartographic representation in prehistory / Stephanie
> Meece. – /In/: Anatolian Studies (Ankara : The British Institute at
> Ankara ; Hertford : printed by Stephen Austin & Sons), 2006, *56*, 1-16:
> ill. – Bibliogr.: p.13-16. – Summ. in E & Tr. – “This article
> re-evaluates the claim that one of these [wall] paintings is a map of
> the village, with Hasan Dağ erupting above it. It is argued that the
> [1963] excavator [i.e. J. Mellaart (1964)]’s first interpretation of the
> objects . . . that they are a leopard skin above a panel of geometric
> design, is in fact a far more reasonable one, when . . . contextualised
> within the entire corpus of painting and other art objects found at the
> site.” – Summ. in E. - ISSN 0066-1546
>
> This re-interpretation of a Neolithic art work (and ideas of spatial and
> symbolic representation) may well ‘set the cat [or leopard] among the
> pigeons’ . . .
>
> PS: Some computers may not cope with the Turkish diacritics in this
> message (the ‘Subject’ header is simplified).
>
> Francis Herbert
>
> [log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>



--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nicholas J. Verge BSc. FGS
Geologist and geological remote sensing/GIS consultant

CEO,
Earthscience Technologies,
Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, UK.

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