In a play on the old adage 'if walls could talk', a mural has been discovered that could be the world's earliest warning sign.
The 9,000-year-old painting, found on a wall buried in the ancient Turkish settlement of Catalhoyuk, shows a village in front of an erupting volcano. Researchers now believe, through the use of mineral dating and geochemical tests, that the volcano shown in the painting is the nearby Mount Hasan, found 70 miles from the settlement site.

It is thought the mural was painted to warn about the dangers of this stratovolcano, yet it may also have been the first landscape painting or even the first news report.
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A mural, pictured, found on a wall in the Turkish settlement of Catalhoyuk depicts a village in front of a volcano. The painting is thought to be a warning about the danger of nearby stratovolcano Mount Hasan, located 70 miles northeast from where the mural was found

The reddish-brown mural was painted using a natural earth pigment called ochre onto an adobe wall, made from sand, clay and water.

It was unearthed during excavations that began in 1993 on the site of the ancient settlement in the Turkish province of Konya.

Volcanologist Axel Schmitt from the University of California took volcanic rock from Mount Hasan and used mineral dating to establish when the volcano may have historically erupted.

These tests determined that there was an explosive eruption around 9,000 years ago.

This coincided with carbon-14 dating of the artefacts, and the wall on which the mural was painted, found at Catalhoyuk - give or take 1,000 years.
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This is how Mount Hasan looks today. Volcanologist Axel Schmitt took rock from this volcano and used mineral dating to establish when the volcano may have historically erupted. Tests determined there was an eruption 9,000 years ago and this coincides with when the mural is thought to have been painted
Schmitt and his team carried out the test to establish whether or not the volcano had ever been active. Previous theories suggested it was but there was little evidence proving these theories, or confirming when the eruptions took place.

The painting is considered locally to be a warning sign about Mount Hasan and this latest research adds weight to these claims.

Schmitt's research will be discussed at the Geological Society of America in Denver on Thursday.

Çatalhoyuk is Turkish for 'fork' and 'mound'.

It was a Neolithic settlement from 5700BC to 7500 BC and last year it was added as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In 1993 Ian Hodder from the University of Cambridge began extensive excavations on the site and discovered a series of domestic buildings, as well as artefacts and murals.

It is believed up to 10,000 people would have lived in the region, in mud-brick houses arranged in a maze.

Mount Hasan, also known as Hasan Dağ, is a stratovolcano situated around 70 miles northeast of Catalhoyuk in the Turkish province of Aksaray.

Its summit reaches 10,672 ft and it is the second highest mountain of central Anatolia.