The remnants of the first settlement within the city were discovered in the “Prehistoric Settlement Area” in the middle of the Bornova Plain. Excavations began in 2005 at Yeşilova Höyük and in 2010 at Yassıtepe Höyük, revealing a rich, multi-layered cultural process.

Today, buried under a thick layer of alluvium and covering an area of more than 70,000 square meters, Yeşilova Höyük has been inhabited since at least 8500 years ago, from the beginning of the Neolithic Age. The earliest villagers settled in this area for over a thousand years. Rich finds obtained from the 10 architectural layers identified in the Neolithic Age, reveal the existence of an Aegean society engaged in hunting, gathering, and farming, characterized by organized structures with sun-shaped baked clay seals. It is known that this Neolithic community enriched their food sources with fish such as turbot and sea bream and by collecting mussels, establishing trade relations with distant overseas settlements such as the Cappadocia region of Anatolia and the island of Melos. Mud-clay layers found between settlement layers indicate frequent struggles with floods, showing that the settlements were rebuilt after suffering damage.

After the departure of the Neolithic community, the Early Bronze Age culture took its first steps towards urbanization at Yassıtepe Höyük, northeast of Izmir’s Prehistoric Settlement Area, about 5,000 years ago. The society, which established a radial-planned settlement surrounded by walls at Yassıtepe, played an important role in the development of political and commercial relations among Anatolian and Aegean communities.

Yassıtepe, mostly using the rear rooms of buildings as storage, showed three groups of products that gained commercial importance for the settlers. These were grapes, pottery, and, as understood from some bronze findings, metal production.

All this data indicates that the area containing the Yeşilova-Yassıtepe Mounds, where the city’s culture originated in the middle of the Bornova Plain, along with the unexcavated İpeklikuyu Höyük, is one of the most important points where the city’s culture and commercial life developed. This region, hosting three mounds in close proximity showing cultural continuity from the Neolithic period onwards, is also the largest “Prehistoric Settlement Area” in Western Anatolia. A major flood around 5800-5700 BC marked the end of the Neolithic settlement.