The name Anatolia derives from the Greek (anatolḗ) meaning “the East” or more literally “sunrise”, comparable to the Latin derived terms “levant” and “orient”. The oldest known reference to Anatolia – as “Land of the Hatti” – was found on Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets from the period of the Akkadian Empire (2350–2150 BC).
The first name the Greeks used for the Anatolian peninsula was Asía, presumably after the name of the Assuwa league in western Anatolia, a confederation of states in western Anatolia, defeated by the Hittites under an earlier Tudhaliya I around 1400 BC. The league formed to oppose the Hittite empire.
Alternatively, the etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word (w)aṣû(m), which means ‘to go outside’ or ‘to ascend’, referring to the direction of the sun at sunrise in the Middle East and also likely connected with the Phoenician word asa meaning east. This may be contrasted to a similar etymology proposed for Europe, as being from Akkadian erēbu(m) ‘to enter’ or ‘set’ (of the sun).
T.R. Reid supports this alternative etymology, noting that the ancient Greek name must have derived from asu, meaning ‘east’ in Assyrian (ereb for Europe meaning ‘west’). The ideas of Occidental (form Latin Occidens ‘setting’) and Oriental (from Latin Oriens for ‘rising’) are also European invention, synonymous with Western and Eastern.
Reid further emphasizes that it explains the Western point of view of placing all the peoples and cultures of Asia into a single classification, almost as if there were a need for setting the distinction between Western and Eastern civilizations on the Eurasian continent. Ogura Kazuo and Tenshin Okakura are two outspoken Japanese figures on the subject.
As the name of Asia came to be extended to other areas east of the Mediterranean, the name for Anatolia was specified as Mikrá Asía, or Asia Minor, meaning “Lesser Asia”, in Late Antiquity.
The Armenian Highlands, also known as the Armenian Upland, Armenian plateau, Armenian tableland, is the central-most and highest of three land-locked plateaus that together form the northern sector of the Middle East. During Antiquity, it was known as Armenia Major, a central region to the history of Armenians, and one of the three geo-political regions associated with Armenians, the other two being Armenia Minor and Sophene.
The region was historically inhabited by Hurro-Urartians, Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians, Kurds, Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks and Mongols. During the Middle Ages, Turkmens settled in large numbers in the Armenian Highlands. The Christian population of the Western half of the region was exterminated in an event known as the Armenian Genocide. Today, the region is mainly inhabited by Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Kurds and Turks.
The Armenian highland contains the oldest monumental structures in the world. For example, the monumental structures at Göbekli Tepe, known as Portasar in Armenian, were built by hunters and gatherers a thousand years before the development of agriculture.
Klaus Schmidt view, shared by most experts, is that Göbekli Tepe is a stone-age mountain sanctuary. Radiocarbon dating as well as comparative stylistic analysis indicates that it is the oldest religious site found to date.
Schmidt believes that what he calls this “cathedral on a hill” was a pilgrimage destination attracting worshippers up to 100 miles (160 km) distant. Butchered bones found in large numbers from local game such as deer, gazelle, pigs, and geese have been identified as refuse from food hunted and cooked or otherwise prepared for congregants.
Schmidt considers Göbekli Tepe a central location for a cult of the dead and that the carved animals are there to protect the dead. Though no tombs or graves have been found so far, Schmidt believes that they remain to be discovered in niches located behind the sacred circles’ walls.
Schmidt also interprets it in connection with the initial stages of an incipient Neolithic. It is one of several sites in the vicinity of Karaca Dağ, an area which geneticists suspect may have been the original source of at least some of our cultivated grains.
Recent DNA analysis of modern domesticated wheat compared with wild wheat has shown that its DNA is closest in sequence to wild wheat found on Mount Karaca Dağ 20 miles (32 km) away from the site, suggesting that this is where modern wheat was first domesticated. Such scholars suggest that the Neolithic revolution, i.e., the beginnings of grain cultivation, took place here.
Schmidt and others believe that mobile groups in the area were compelled to cooperate with each other to protect early concentrations of wild cereals from wild animals (herds of gazelles and wild donkeys).
Wild cereals may have been used for sustenance more intensively than before and were perhaps deliberately cultivated. This would have led to early social organization of various groups in the area of Göbekli Tepe. Thus, according to Schmidt, the Neolithic did not begin on a small scale in the form of individual instances of garden cultivation, but developed rapidly in the form of “a large-scale social organization”
Schmidt has engaged in some speculation regarding the belief systems of the groups that created Göbekli Tepe, based on comparisons with other shrines and settlements. He assumes shamanic practices and suggests that the T-shaped pillars represent human forms, perhaps ancestors, whereas he sees a fully articulated belief in gods only developing later in Mesopotamia, associated with extensive temples and palaces.
It is also apparent that the animal and other images give no indication of organized violence, i.e. there are no depictions of hunting raids or wounded animals, and the pillar carvings ignore game on which the society mainly subsisted, like deer, in favor of formidable creatures like lions, snakes, spiders, and scorpions.
Belbaşı culture is a cave and a late Paleolithic/Mesolithic site in southern Turkey, located southwest of Antalya. The tool kit includes tanged arrowheads, triangular points and obliquely truncated blades. Since the proto-Neolithic of Beldibi being a development from the Mesolithic of Belbaşı is only a possibility, although a strong one, sources differ in their choice of terms for the cultures concerned.
The term is sometimes used to describe the prehistoric culture, as well as being sometimes used to include also the succeeding Mesolithic/proto-Neolithic culture of Beldibi Cave nearby, at only a few kilometers distance to the north; or, in a wider sense, to cover the entire sequence constituted by half a dozen caves west of Antalya, encompassing, in this sense, also the Neolithic sites at, from south to north, Çarkin, Öküzlü and Karain caves.
Other sources may start the sequence at Beldibi, thus referring to a Beldibi culture, or treat each cave individually. Such a sequence from late Paleolithic to Neolithic in such closely located sites is unknown elsewhere.
Beldibi culture further offers coloured rock engravings on the walls of the cave, hitherto the only known cave art in western Asia, as well as furniture art decorated with naturalistic forms and geometric ornament. Its phases contained imported obsidian, presumably from eastern Taurus Mountains or from the north of the River Gediz, and early forms of pottery. Bones of deer, ibex and cattle occur, and subsistence was likely assisted by coastal fishing from the very close Mediterranean Sea and by the gathering of wild grain. There is as yet no evidence of food production or herding.
Belbaşı culture shows indications of an early connection to the Kebaran industry assemblages of Palestine. Their settlements were stable, typical of Natufian culture sites in this respect, and many later evolved into agricultural villages, similar to Jericho’s forerunner Tell es-Sultan, settled around 7800 BC.
Their most lasting effect was felt not in the Near East, where they seem to have left no permanent mark on the cultural development of Anatolia after 5000 BC, but in Europe, for it was to this new continent that the neolithic cultures of the Armenian highland introduced the first beginnings of agriculture and stockbreeding.
Remains of a mesolithic culture in the region can be found along the Mediterranean coast, and also in Thrace and the western Black Sea area. Mesolithic finds have been located in the same caves as the paleolithic artefacts and drawings. Additional findings come from the Sarklimagara cave in Gaziantep, the Baradiz cave (Burdur) together with cemeteries and open air settlements at Sogut Tarlasi, Biris (Bozova) and Urfa.
The Armenian highland, alongside Mesopotamia and the Levant, is a heart region for the Neolithic Revolution, one of the earliest areas in which humans domesticated plants and animals. Because of its strategic location at the intersection of Asia and Europe, the region has been the center of several civilizations since prehistoric times. Neolithic sites such as Çatalhöyük, Çayönü, Nevalı Çori, Hacilar, Norsuntepe, Kosk and Mersin represent the world’s oldest known agricultural towns.
Çatalhöyük (Central Turkey) is considered the most advanced of these, and Çayönü in the East the oldest (c. 7250 – 6750 BCE). We have a good idea of the town layout at Çayönü, based on a central square with buildings constructed of stone and mud.
Archeological finds include farming tools that suggest both crops and animal husbandry as well as domestication of the dog. Religion is represented by figurines of Cybele, a mother goddess. Hacilar (Western Turkey) followed Çayönü, and has been dated to 7040 BCE.
Straddling the Neolithic and early Bronze Age, the Chalcolithic era (c. 5500 – 3000 BCE) is defined by the first metal implements made with copper. This age is represented by sites at Hacilar, Beycesultan, Canhasan, Mersin Yumuktepe, Elazig Tepecik, Malatya Degirmentepe, Norsuntepe, and Istanbul Fikirtepe.
Scholars generally believe the earliest indigenous populations of the region were the Hattians and Hurrians. The Hattians spoke a language of unclear affiliation, and the Hurrian language belongs to a small family called Hurro-Urartian, all these languages now being extinct; relationships with indigenous languages of the Caucasus have been proposed but are not generally accepted.
Archeologists believe that food-producing societies first emerged in the Levantine region and the Armenian highland at the close of the mini-Ice Age around 12,000 BC, and developed into a number of regionally distinctive cultures by the eighth millennium BC.
Current evidence suggests that Neolithic material culture was introduced to Europe via western Anatolia. All Neolithic sites in Europe contain ceramics, and contain the plants and animals domesticated in Southwest Asia: einkorn, emmer, barley, lentils, pigs, goats, sheep, and cattle.
Genetic data suggest that no independent domestication of animals took place in Neolithic Europe, and that all domesticated animals were originally domesticated in Southwest Asia. The only domesticate not from Southwest Asia was broomcorn millet, domesticated in East Asia.
The Neolithic cultures of southeastern Europe (the Balkans, Italy, and the Aegean) show some continuity with groups in Southwest Asia and Anatolia (e.g., Çatalhöyük). Regardless of specific chronology, many European Neolithic groups share basic characteristics, such as living in small-scale, family-based communities, subsisting on domesticated plants and animals supplemented with the collection of wild plant foods and with hunting, and producing hand-made pottery, that is, pottery made without the potter’s wheel.
There are also many differences, with some Neolithic communities in southeastern Europe living in heavily fortified settlements of 3,000-4,000 people (e.g., Sesklo in Greece) whereas Neolithic groups in England were small (possibly 50-100 people) and highly mobile cattle-herders.
The details of the origin, chronology, social organization, subsistence practices and ideology of the peoples of Neolithic Europe are obtained from archaeology, and not historical records, since these people left none. Since the 1970s, population genetics has provided independent data on the population history of Neolithic Europe, including migration events and genetic relationships with peoples in South Asia.
A further independent tool, linguistics, has contributed hypothetical reconstructions of early European languages and family trees with estimates of dating of splits, in particular theories on the relationship between speakers of Indo-European languages and Neolithic peoples.
Neolithic Anatolia and the Armenian higland has been also proposed as the homeland of the Indo-European language family, although linguists tend to favour a later origin in the steppes north of the Black Sea. However, it is clear that the Indo-European Anatolian languages had been present in Anatolia since at least the 19th century BC.
Some archaeologists believe that the expansion of Neolithic peoples from southwest Asia into Europe, marking the eclipse of Mesolithic culture, coincided with the introduction of Indo-European speakers, whereas other archaeologists and many linguists believe the Indo-European languages were introduced from the Pontic-Caspian steppe during the succeeding Bronze Age. A few see Indo-European languages starting in Paleolithic times.
The diffusion across Europe, from the Aegean to Britain, took about 2,500 years (6500 BC – 4000 BC). The Baltic region was penetrated a bit later, around 3500 BC, and there was also a delay in settling the Pannonian plain. In general, colonization shows a “saltatory” pattern, as the Neolithic advanced from one patch of fertile alluvial soil to another, bypassing mountainous areas.
Archaeologists agree that the technologies associated with agriculture originated in Southwest Asia and then spread into Europe. However, debate exists whether this resulted from an active migratory process from the Near East, or merely due to cultural contact between Europeans and Near Easterners. Currently, three models summarize the proposed pattern of spread:
- Replacement model: posits that there was a significant migration of farmers from the Fertile Crescent into Europe. Given their technological advantages, they would have displaced or absorbed the less numerous hunter-gathering populace. Thus, modern Europeans are primarily descended from these Neolithic farmers.
- Cultural diffusion: in contrast, this model supposes that agriculture reached Europe by way of a flow of ideas and trade between the Mesolithic European population and Anatolian farmers. There was no net increase in migration during this process, and therefore, modern Europeans are descended from the “original” Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers.
- Pioneer model: recognises that models 1) and 2) above may represent false dichotomies. This model postulates that there was an initial, small scale migration of farmers from the Near East to certain regions of Europe. They might have enjoyed localized demographic expansions due to social advantages. The subsequent spread of farming technologies throughout the rest of Europe was then carried out by Mesolithic Europeans who acquired new skill through trade and cultural interaction.
Analysis of radiocarbon dates shows clearly that Mesolithic and Neolithic populations lived side by side for as much as a millennium in many parts of Europe, especially in the Iberian peninsula and along the Atlantic coast.
With some exceptions, population levels rose rapidly at the beginning of the Neolithic until they reached the carrying capacity. This was followed by a population crash of “enormous magnitude” after 5000 BC, with levels remaining low during the next 1,500 years. Populations began to rise after 3500 BC, with further dips and rises occurring between 3000 and 2500 BC but varying in date between regions.
Bronze metallurgy spread to Anatolia from the Transcaucasian Kura-Araxes culture, or the early trans-Caucasian culture, also known as Shengavit culture, a civilization that existed from 3400 BC until about 2000 BC, in the late 4th millennium BCE. Anatolia remained fully in the prehistoric period until it entered the sphere of influence of the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC under Sargon I.
The region was famous for exporting raw materials, and areas of Hattian – and Hurrian -populated southeast Anatolia were colonised by the Akkadians. The earliest historical records of Anatolia stem from the southeast of the region and are from the Mesopotamia-based Akkadian Empire during the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 24th century BC.
After the fall of the Akkadian empire in the mid-21st century BC, the Assyrians, who were the northern branch of the Akkadian people, colonised parts of the region between the 21st and mid-18th centuries BC and claimed the resources, notably silver. One of the numerous cuneiform records dated circa 20th century BC, found in Anatolia at the Assyrian colony of Kanesh, uses an advanced system of trading computations and credit lines.
Unlike the Semitic Akkadians and their descendants, the Assyrians, whose Anatolian possessions were peripheral to their core lands in Mesopotamia, the Hittites were centred at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia by 2000 BC. They were speakers of an Indo-European language known as the “language of Nesa”. Originating from Nesa, they conquered Hattusa in the 18th century BC, imposing themselves over Hattian- and Hurrian-speaking populations.
Filed under: Uncategorized
