* It was in Western Anatolia that man first began his process of intellectual discovery that was to take him out of the darkness of ignorance into the light of critical thought. The science based on a determination of natural laws sprang from observations of natural phenomenon in Miletus in the sixth century B.C.
* Mankind passed from the darkness of dogmas to the sunshine of science with the aid of critical thinking far the first time in western Anatolia. The Milesian pioneers of science recognized that Nature had its own laws and they thus liberated the interpretation of natural phenomena from religious straight jackets and began to reevaluate it with a free and critical contemplation, thus laying the foundations of the natural science that form the basis of the present human civilization. History knows these first Ionian scientists as the Milesian School The light created by the Milesians led to the blooming of an Ionian school during the pre-Socratic period and other Ionian cities also produced thinkers, who have illuminated mankind like the rising sun. Anatolia, “the place where the sun rises,” indeed earned this appellation for the first time with its Ionian pioneers of science.
* The pioneer of the Milesian scientists, Thales, who was both a mathematician and a natural scientist, is famous because the tradition ascribes to him the prediction of the eclipse o n28th May 585 B.C. (Herodotus, I 74). He was among the first to observe the attraction exercised on iron by certain ores in Magnesia, in ancient Lydia. Certain theorems of elementary geometry carry his name. Tradition also has celebrated him as an able engineer far his alleged feat of diverting the course of the river Halys to carry the army of the Lydia king Croesus across it. The foundations of western civilization, whose dominant component is the natural sciences, and especially of the most important source of this civilization, the Greek philosophy, were laid in western Anatolia, in lonia and especially in the home of science, Miletus.
* With the first rational criticism he made, the first rational cosmology he developed, the first world map (pinax) he drew, the first theory of organic evolution he conceived, and the first prose book he wrote on natural sciences, Anaximander, who the tradition says was some fifteen years younger than Thales, appears not only as the rule founder of natural sciences, but as the greatest architect of the civilization of free-thinking humans, who are ready to question everything and everybody, including themselves. Ascription to him of the invention of the gnomon was probably a result of his interest in astronomy. This modest Anatolian, who created a monumental tradition of thought that changed the destiny of mankind, was also the first person who stated that the earth is suspended in void. That this conclusion, which was not based on any observation but was purely a deduction from a local analysis of his friend Thales’ hypothesis, later appeared in the Book of Job (XXVI, 7) in the Bible, testifies to the range of the rays of the sun that had risen in Miletus.
* Anatolia, which means “the place where the sun rises” also gained significance as the place where science was fırst born thanks to early Ionic scientists, Thales, Anaximander, and Heraclitus.
* The fırst use evidence of use of glassware in the eastern Meditarranean region was found in the cargo section of a sunken merchant ship as early as 2000 BC, near a southwestern town of Turkey, namely, Kaş. Merchandise included ingots of blue glass formed by pouring molten glass into moulds.
* The fırst church built by man (Si. Peter’s Church) is in Antioch (Antakya), Turkey. The fırst church of Christianity was carved in a cave in Antioch and called St. Peter’s Grotto.
* The believers of Christ were called “Christian” for the first time in Antakya. Followers of Jesus wereftrst called “Christians” in Antioch-on-the-Orontes.
* St Paul preached his fırst recorded sermon in Pisidian Antioch.
* The First Ecumenical Council was held in Nicae (iznik), Turkey. The fırst eight of the Counsil meetings which have been held 19 times until now, were held in Turkey. Especially, holding of the ftrstand seventh meetings in İznik established the tradition of holding these meetings regularly.
* Virgin Mary spent the last days of her life in Ephesus. The ftrst church dedicated to her is also in Ephesus.
* For many centuries the manufacturing of silk had remained a closely guarded secret in China and the export of silkworms was punishable by death. First in history, in 552 CE, two Nestorian monks succeeded in smuggling silkworm from China to Istanbul and by the early seventh century sericulture was well established in Asia Minor. Silk produciion has developed to excellent levels in the Turkish city of Bursa, one of the Ottoman capitals. The basis of that development was an earlier tradition.
* Coffee introduced to Europe firstly by Turks.
* Cherry was first introduced to Europe from Giresun (Northern Turkey)
AND MORE…
* First known inhabitants – the Hattians, the Louvites, the Hurrians. As far as we know, the Hattians (3000BC) were the first distinct race of people tol ive in Anatolia. They left us no written testimony, and our knowledge of the Hattian language comes to us from Hittite or Assyrian sources. According to the indications these provide, Hattian was an indigenous language, different from all other known languages. From its language, its religion,and its art, the Hattian civilization appears to have been one of the most advanced of its time, because the whole of Anatolia was named Hatti. TheHittites, successors of the Hattis, were to inherit their capital, Hattusas, and numerous linguistic and cultural legacies. Before the coming of the Hittites, another civilizing population apperared in the south-west of the peninsula. These people were known as the Luvians, and they lived side by side with the Hattians. If certain hieroglyphic texts found at Hattusas are indeed in Luvian, it can be claimed that their language was Indo-European, belonging, like Hittite, to the Anatolian group. Place names deriving from Luvian are encountered not only in Anatolia, but in Crete, the Aegean islands, mainland Greece, and as far away as Italy, Sicily and the Balkans. Thus, long before the Hellenes, the Luvians appear as the first invaders who, by their influence on the indigenous populations of Anatolia, may have stimulated the flowering of a new culture. Around 2000 BC, the east and the south-east of Anatolia were occupied by the Hurrians, who were neither Indo-Europeans nor Semites. Their civilisation reached its peak about 1700 BC, at which period Aryan warriors established a State called Mitanni. They maintained and radiated the Sumeric-Babylonian cultural heritage for much longer than they kept their political independence. Their language, which was agglutinative, does not fall into any known group. Their principal influence on the Hittites was in transmitting to them some of their religious beliefs. The Hurrian mythology influenced Hesiod and Homer through the late Hittites and the Phoenicians. The Gilgamesh epic, which was found in Hattusha, is a Hurrian interpretation.
The Hittite Empire ultimately encompassed all the population groups of Anatolia, and represented ane of the first civilized societies of its time. It was organized as a confederation, a structure which enabled it first to establish, and then to maintain for eight centuries, the unity of Anatolia, and to protect it from barbarian invasion. In fact, the usual waves of invasions were absent during the Hittite period. It was during this time, therefore, that the territory first appeared as a geopolitical unity on the world scene. For the first time political unity was superimposed on the geographical unity of the peninsula, creating in people’s minds the idea of belonging to Anatolia. I see in this an essential contribution by the Hittites to the history of Anatolia-the establishment and maintenance of itsterritorial unity.
* It is important here to note that populations remote from each other and speaking different languages, such as the Mysians (Pergamum region), the Dardanians (Çanakkale), and the Cilicians (south-east of Anatolia, facing Cyprus), took part in the Kadesh combat alongside the Hittites-a clear sign of Anatolian unity. The Trojan war, which occurred later but which dates from the same century, seems to present certain similarities with the battle of Kadesh. The peace treaty drawn up ten years later undoubtedly has more significance for us than the result of the battle itself. The Egyptian text of this treaty was discovered in Egypt, and a version written in cuniform characters in the Akkadian language, which the Hittites ıısed in international relations, was found in the ruins of Hattusas. Other tablets relating to other agreements show that the Hittites attached a sacred character to these treaties..
* The influence of the
Hittite deities on the
Greek gods is quite clear.
It was in Crete and Anatolia that the anthropomorphic development of the gods reached its conclusion’s. The cult of
the Mother-Goddess, with a dying and resurrected god as consort and son, is very important in
Crete. This cult,
which was born in Anatolia, spread throughout the Middle East and the West right up until the corning of
Christianity. Like so many things Minoan, the cult of the bull symbol -representing strength and fertility – probably came originally from the East. This ‘East’ implies
Anatolia more particularly
Neolithic Çatalhöyük, for
sanctuaries in Cretan palaces, like those in Çatalhöyük, have bull-horns everywhere frescoes display bulls, and the doors of burial places are filled in with bull skulls.
* The Hellenes inherited from the Anatolian peoples many other important cultural elements such as architecture, metallurgy, fresco painting, etc. I do not believe I am detracting from the Hellenic civilization by observing that, like all other civilizations, it owed much to those which went before. No civilization flowers in a void. It was a piece of historical good fortune that placed at the disposal of the Hellenes the inestimable heritage of the advanced civilizations of Anatolian origin. Those who attempt today to explain civilizations must not display less objectivity than the historians of antiguity, such as Herodotus for example. To do that would be to show a lack of respect both for the rationalist thought left to us by Greece, and for the cultural heritage formed since.
* The ethnocentrism interpretation of history, the tendency to consider the Indo-European Hellenesas the one and only starting point for Western civilization, is in reality merely an expression of cultural weakness. The Greeks formed one ancient society which owed much to the others. Their successes must be measured against the achievements of other peoples, principally those of the Pelasgians. The debt which the Hellenes owe to them has to be recognized.
* The Pelasgians similarly have links with the Maeonians or Lydians. These people emigrated, at a date somewhere between 1000 and 800 BC, towards Umbria or Etruria where they becarne theEtruscans, as Herodotus records. Neither Indo-Europeans nor Semites, they can be numbered among the peoples who, a thousand years before, became the Pelasgians. The Etruscan language, related to that of the Lycians and Lydians, has not yet been deciphered.
* Working in gold was one of the arts at which the Etruscans excelled. In the Museum of Etruscan Art at the Villa Giulia in Rome one can see gold filigree bracelets almost identical to those made and sold even now in the historic Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, which are typically Anatolian. The role of the Etruscans in the civilization of Rome has long been just as misunderstood as the contribution made by the Pelasgians to Greek civilization, though Dante did lay claim to having had Etruscan ancestors.
* The flow of migration from Anatolia towards the west has involved other peoples in a similar way. The Sardians colonized Sardinia, and the Sicels settled in Sicily. As to the legend that the Romans were descendants of the Trojans, that could possibly be explained by migrations of Lydian origin.
* An Anatolian king who has mesmerized the world with his power and
wealth was the
Phrygian King Midas (725-695 B.C.). The grave of King Midas, whose very touch, according to the legend, could turn everything to gold.
* One of the Seven Wonders of the World is the monumental tomb built in the sixth century B.C. in today’s Bodrum by the Carian King, Mausolos, for his wife, Artemisia. Mausolos, was an important Anatolian historical character who lived during the time of the Persian Rule. At his death, the ancient world acquired one of its Seven Wonders. According to Pliny,the monumental tomb (the Mausoleum) erected for him by his sister and widow Artemisia in 353 B.C. Due to impact of this colossal structure on the ancient world, the world “Mausoleum” became an architectural term that represents monumental tombs.
* Homer, the father of the classical and Anatolian Archeological works, has immortalized the nearly 50-day period of the 10-year long Trojan War in the Iliad. His renowned works of art, the Iliad and theOdyssey, are the most ancient epics of the history of civilization.
* The oldest and yet most advanced
examples of
multi-chambered rock hewn burial chamberswere those built by the
Urartu civilization.
* Heraclitus, a prominent representative of the great Ionian natura! scientists, was born to the royal family in Ephesus. His statements that “one cannot step into the same river twice ” and that ileverything is in constant flux” have made him famous through the ages.
* Hellenistic civilization developed and thrived on Anatolian soil and left a firm foundation of its culture on these lands. The remnants of the Anatolian-Ionic synthesis which deeply affect the world even to this day permitted the birth and advancement of a civilization which was to come af ter it.
*From the establishment of some of man’s earliest permanent settlements here during the 7th millennium BC, Turkey has long been at the center of developments and trends which have had an impact far beyond Asia Minor. Some of history’s greatest trading routes passed through Turkey: the great arc from Plovdiv to Samarkand and beyond; north-south trade between the lands north of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
* The famous Trojan Wars took place in Western Turkey, around the site where the Trojan horse rests today
* Ephesus and Halicarnosus – two of the wonders of the ancient world – are in Turkey.
* Anatolia is the birthplace of historic legends, such as Homer (the poet), KingMidas, Heredotus (the father ofhistory), and St. Paul the Apostle.
* Julius Caesar proclaimed his celebrated words, ” Veni, Vidi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered) “in Turkey when he defeated the Pontus, a formidable kingdom in the Black Sea region of Turkey.
* Female goddesses dominated the Central Anatolian pantheon for thousands of years before these supernatural powers were transformed to male gods.
* The Hittites sold Abraham the cave where he buried his wife Sarah, when the Israelites came to Palestine.
* The Sumerian texts constitute man’s oldest known written documents and in the Gilgamesh Epic the term “Garden of the Sun” was used to signify the concept of paradise. As mentioned in the Old Testament, the exact location of this heavenly area was the Anatolian landmass lying between the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. “Then the lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and he placed there the man he had formed… A river rises in Eden to water the garden; beyond there it divides and becomes four branches. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it is the one that flows east of Ashur. The fourth river is Euphrates. Old Tesiament. Genesis (2:10-14)” The “Garden of the Lord” mentioned in the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament is called Eden, and is synonymous with “heaven” or “paradise”. In Sumerian sources, the writings of which constitute the world’s oldest written records, this area was called the “Garden of the Sun,” and they believed that this Paradise belonged to the God of the Sun, Shamash. According to the Sumerian Gilgamesh Epic the “garden” was entered by passing between the two summits of Mashu (Probably MountNemrud/Tatvan) which were as high as (the wall of) the sky. The book of Genesis in the Old Testament states very clearly that the land of this paradise lies between the wellsprings of the Tigrisand Euphrates rivers. So the “paradise on earth” is in that area of Anatolia which lies between the sources of these two rivers. During the past several centuries many travelers (e.g. J.P. Tournefort 1656-1708) have come to Anatolia, especially to the area around Mount Ararat, to search for the “Garden of Eden “.
* Patara, the birth place of Santa Claus. St. Nicholas, also known as Santa Clause, was born in Demre, on Turkey’s Mediterranean Coast. St Nicholas or Santa Claus was the sııbstance behind the composite legend, and the source of the gift giving and association with children. St Nicholas was a bishop of Myra in southwest Turkey, and his church still stands just outside the modern town of Demre. He was born in 280 AD in the city of Patara 80 km. away, and died in Myra on 6 December 345. Saint Nicholas was born in Tatara and became bishop in Myra.
* Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Ararat (Agri Dagi) in Eastern Turkey. The last meal on Noah ‘s Ark, a pudding of sweet and sour taste (aşure), is still served throughout Turkey.
* The Apostole St Philip lived in Hierapolis and was martyred there.
* Anatolia is also significant area for Christians and is considered holy
and sacred for many reasons.
* St Paul, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ, devoted himself to the dissemination and expansion of Christianity, was born in Tarsus.
* The Seven Churches of the Apocalypse which were mentioned in Revelations and are located inAnatoüa; Ephesus (Efes), Smyrna (İzmir), Pergamum (Bergama), Thyatria (Akhisar), Sardis (Sart), Philadelphia (Alaşehir), Laodicea (Denizli).
* Saint John lived and died in Ephesus. His grave and the church is in Selçuk, Izmir, nearby Ephesus.
* Turks gave the Dutch their famous tulips.
* Istanbul is the only city in the world built on two continents.
* Tradition in Turkey says that a stranger at one’s doorstep is considered “God’s guest” for at least three days.
* Turkey is noted for having one of the three most famous and distinctive traditional cuisines in the world.
*
Modern Europe is a venture of civilization that has evolved over three thousand years, and present-day
Turkey at its
geographical heart Modern Europe was born in the Eastern Mediterranean with roots in Egypt, Syria-Palestine-Asia
Minor, Greece and Italy. This civilization has evolved over three thousand years. Present-day
Turkey lies at the geographical heart of the region.
It was largely in Turkey that belief in a single God came into being and spread, giving rise to the Judeo-Hellenic synthesis that is central to contemporary civilization. Today,
Turkey is home to the most magnificent works of the
Hellenistic-Roman era, which are daily reminders of this extraordinary heritage. Indeed, it is a synthesis of the legacies of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Anatolia..
Civilization began in Anatolia around 6000 B.C. with the Neolithic town of Çatal Höyük. This was followed between 2000 and 1170 B.C. with the glories of the
Hittite Empire, comprised by peoples from Mesopotamia, the Caucasus and the steppes of southern Russia, thus creating a fascinating blend of cultural and religious traditions. The importance of the Hittites in the history of the Middle East as a whole is steadily becoming more apparent. Later,
Ionia, the west coast of Anatolia, was to emerge as the seed bed of classical civilization and philosophy. In the adjacent province of
Caria, a synthesis of ancient Iranian and Greek culture blossomed from the sixth century B.C. onwards. The heritage of the Hellenistic period in Anatolia was later passed on to the
Roman Empire in its entirety. When the
Turks arrived in
Asia Minor in the 11 century, they were already thoroughly acquainted with
Roman culture and the spirit of the classical empire, whose institutions they inherited. Both the administration of cities and their
names remained practically unchanged. The state sysiem persisted, as did the church, along with its architecture, art and material forms of life. Even the name of the state included that of Rome:
the Roman Seldjuk State (Rum Selçuklu Devleti). The fbundation of lslamic civilization and learning in the 9th and 10thcenturies was in fact Hellenistic.
* Many experts on the history of Turkey have considered that the achievements of the Greek andRoman civilizations in Anatolia were greater, both in number and sophistication, than those actually in Greece and Italy. Can it, therefore, be claimed that Anatolia contributed in an original and significant way to world civilization, or was it merely the stage upon which the Indo-Europeansplayed their role of civilizes, while the Anatolian was only the spectator or had, at the very most, a walk-on part? Was Anatolia a crucible in which diverse civilizations fused to give an exceptional cultural amalgam, or was it merely the antechamber of a continent ruled, it was believed, by dark and barbarous forces? Was the Aegean Sea simply a strait separating two peninsulas of the northern Mediterranean, or a terrible abyss isolating from each other two different, hostile worlds, the East and the West? Moreover, what is the East, what is the West? Do the categories ‘Asia’ for the barbarians, and Europe far the civilized and civilizing Indo-Europeans, correspond to reality? These questions gave rise, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to misconceptions which we come across even now. Have the civilizations which succeeded one another long ago in Anatolia influenced our present culture? Despite the diversity of peoples who have lived in this land, is there a continuityin its culture? In other words, did the civilizations created by these successive peoples have points in common which are still discernible? We cannot disregard, moreover, the contribution made over thousands of years by the succession of cultures in this land where the Turkish nation has dwelt far centuries. It is evident that our present cultural synthesis has evolved throughout this history as a result of the interaction of the cultural heritage of the land, as well as our Islamic and pre-Islamic cultures. Though it is impossible to assess precisely the influence of geography over the making of the culture, it is nonetheless not negligible, A country’s position on the globe, its configuration, its climate, and the nature of its soils, affect the axes of its politics (hence the term ‘geopolitics’), its economy, and its relationships with the rest of the world. The role played by Asia Minor in Western culture was: primarily determined by its geographical position. Whereas all the Mediterranean peninsulas – Iberian, Italian, Greek-extend from north to south, Asia Minor, alone stretching from east to west, forms a unique bridge. It was this which caused the civilizations arising in theEast in general, and on its territory in particular, to orient themselves towards the West, by way of the Aegean islands. The two high mountain ranges, which follow the coastal line of the Black Sea in the north and the Mediterranean in the south, join the eastern highland mass, which virtually separatesAnatolia from Iran and Mesopotamia, thus creating the geographical unity of the peninsula.Inside Anatolia, however, plateaus, mountains, plains, river basins, and lakes create numerous distinct climatic and microclimatic regions, each suitable far the formation of small kingdoms with different cultures, given the difficulty of communication between regions in the past. In other words, it is the physical features of the peninsula which underlie the Anatolian ‘diversity within unity’. Our knowledge of the exact location and date of origin of the earlier civilizations is not as precise as we might wish.
SOURCES:
Turgut Özal, Turkey in Europe, Europe in Turkey
Nezih Basgelen, The Garden of the Sun, Istanbul, 1996
Anna G.Edmonds, The Religious Sites of Turkey, Istanbul, 1997
John Noble Wilford, Tracing Origins of Farming, International Herald Tribune 20.11.1997
Pasabahçe A Brief History of Glass
