Year 7500 bce

Construction

The large village -- population 10,000 -- of Çatalhöyük (Turkey) is started, with mud brick houses crowded together. People enter the dwellings from a hole in the roof. Families live for several generations in a house, burying the dead under the floors. Interior walls are covered with murals. When a family line dies out, the old house is filled in from the top, and a new house is built on top of the old. See also 80,000 bce Communication; 6000 bce Construction.

The Maglemosian culture of the northern European plain, in addition to stone axes and microliths, uses wooden canoes with paddles to carry out a fishing industry that involves both nets and fishhooks. Many of these organic items (including wooden fishhooks and harpoons) are preserved in bogs and other wet sites. See also 120,000 bce Materials; 4300 bce Transportation.

The Sauveterrian tool industry (inland France) produces some of the smallest microliths, especially microblades with two sharpened edges. See also 15,000 bce Tools.