Mycenae
Mycenae is an archaeological site near Mykines in Argolis, north-eastern Peloponnese, Greece. It is located about 120 kilometres south-west of Athens; the site is 19 kilometres inland from the Saronic Gulf and built upon a hill rising 900 feet above sea level. In the second millennium BC, Mycenae was one of the major centres of Greek civilization, a military stronghold which dominated much of southern Greece, the Cyclades and parts of southwest Anatolia; the period of Greek history from about 1600 BC to about 1100 BC is called Mycenaean in reference to Mycenae. At its peak in 1350 BC, the citadel and lower town had a population of 30,000 and an area of 32 hectares; the first correct identification of Mycenae in modern literature was during a survey conducted by Francesco Grimani, commissioned by the Provveditore Generale of the Kingdom of the Morea in 1700, who used Pausanias's description of the Lion Gate to identify the ruins of Mycenae. Although the citadel was built by Greeks, the name Mukanai is thought not to be Greek but rather one of the many pre-Greek place names inherited by the immigrant Greeks.
Legend has it. Thus, Pausanias ascribes the name to the legendary founder Perseus, said to have named it either after the cap of the sheath of his sword, or after a mushroom he had plucked on the site; the earliest written form of the name is Mykēnē, found in Homer. The reconstructed Mycenaean Greek name of the site is; the change of ā to ē in more recent versions of the name is the result of a well-known sound change in Attic-Ionic. Mycenae, an acropolis site, was built on a hill 900 feet above sea level, some 19 kilometres inland from the Gulf of Argolis. Situated in the north-east corner of the Argive plain, it overlooked the whole area and was ideally positioned to be a centre of power as it commanded all easy routes to the Isthmus of Corinth. Besides its strong defensive and strategic position, it had good farmland and an adequate water supply. There are only faint traces of Neolithic settlement on the site although it was continuously occupied from the Early Neolithic through the Early Helladic and Middle Helladic periods.
EN Rainbow Ware constitutes the earliest ceramic evidence discovered so far. The population had grown by the Middle Helladic; as elsewhere, a dominant Cretan influence prevailed from c. 1600, the first evidence of this coming from the shaft graves discovered in 1876 by Heinrich Schliemann. Schliemann's shaft graves came to be known as Circle A to distinguish them from the Circle B graves which were found at a date, although Circle B are the earlier graves dated c. 1650 to c. 1550 and within MHIII. Circle A is dated to the sixteenth century BC including the transition from Middle to Late Helladic IA; the contents of Circle B are less wealthy than those of Circle A. Pottery material spanning the entire Early Helladic was discovered 1877–78 by Panagiotis Stamatakis at a low depth in the sixth shaft grave in Circle A. Further EH and MH material was found beneath the walls and floors of the palace, on the summit of the acropolis, outside the Lion Gate in the area of the ancient cemetery. An EH–MH settlement was discovered near a fresh-water well on top of the Kalkani hill south-west of the acropolis.
The first burials in pits or cist graves manifest in MHII on the west slope of the acropolis, at least enclosed by the earliest circuit wall. In the absence of documents and objects that can be dated, events at Mycenae can only be dated within the constraints of Helladic chronology which relies on categorisation of stratified material objects pottery, within an agreed historical framework. Mycenae developed into a major power during LHI and is believed to have become the main centre of Aegean civilisation through the fifteenth century to the extent that the two hundred years from c. 1400 BC to c. 1200 BC are known as the Mycenaean Age. The Minoan hegemony was ended c. 1450 and there is evidence that Knossos was occupied by Mycenaeans until it too was destroyed c. 1370 BC. From on, Mycenaean expansion throughout the Aegean was unhindered until the massive disruption of society in the first half of the eleventh century which ended Mycenaean civilisation and culminated in the destruction of Mycenae itself c. 1150 BC.
Outside the partial circuit wall, Grave Circle B, named for its enclosing wall, contained ten cist graves in Middle Helladic style and several shaft graves, sunk more with interments resting in cists. Richer grave goods mark the burials as regal. Mounds over the top contained broken drinking vessels and bones from a repast, testifying to a more than ordinary farewell. Stelae surmounted the mounds. A walled enclosure, Grave Circle A, included six more shaft graves, with nine female, eight male, two juvenile interments. Grave goods were more costly than in Circle B; the presence of engraved and inlaid swords and daggers, with spear points and arrowheads, leave little doubt that warrior chieftains and their families were buried here. Some art objects obtained from the graves are the Silver Siege Rhyton, the Mask of Agamemnon, the Cup of Nestor, weapons both votive and practical. Alan Wace divided the nine tholos tombs of Mycenae into three groups of three, each based on architecture, his earliest – the Cyclopean Tomb, E
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, in some areas proto-writing, other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, for classifying and studying ancient societies. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by producing bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Bronze itself is harder and more durable than other metals available at the time, allowing Bronze Age civilizations to gain a technological advantage. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact that there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition. Although the Iron Age followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic.
Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems; the overall period is characterized by widespread use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction and development of bronze technology were not universally synchronous. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques. Tin must be mined and smelted separately added to molten copper to make bronze alloy; the Bronze Age was a time of developing trade networks. A 2013 report suggests that the earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to the mid-5th millennium BC in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik, although this culture is not conventionally considered part of the Bronze Age; the dating of the foil has been disputed. Western Asia and the Near East was the first region to enter the Bronze Age, which began with the rise of the Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer in the mid 4th millennium BC.
Cultures in the ancient Near East practiced intensive year-round agriculture, developed a writing system, invented the potter's wheel, created a centralized government, written law codes and nation states and empires, embarked on advanced architectural projects, introduced social stratification and civil administration and practiced organized warfare and religion. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and astrology. Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details The Ancient Near East Bronze Age can be divided as following: The Hittite Empire was established in Hattusa in northern Anatolia from the 18th century BC. In the 14th century BC, the Hittite Kingdom was at its height, encompassing central Anatolia, southwestern Syria as far as Ugarit, upper Mesopotamia. After 1180 BC, amid general turmoil in the Levant conjectured to have been associated with the sudden arrival of the Sea Peoples, the kingdom disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived until as late as the 8th century BC.
Arzawa in Western Anatolia during the second half of the second millennium BC extended along southern Anatolia in a belt that reaches from near the Turkish Lakes Region to the Aegean coast. Arzawa was the western neighbor – sometimes a rival and sometimes a vassal – of the Middle and New Hittite Kingdoms; the Assuwa league was a confederation of states in western Anatolia, defeated by the Hittites under an earlier Tudhaliya I, around 1400 BC. Arzawa has been associated with the much more obscure Assuwa located to its north, it bordered it, may be an alternative term for it. In Ancient Egypt the Bronze Age begins in the Protodynastic period, c. 3150 BC. The archaic early Bronze Age of Egypt, known as the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt follows the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt, c. 3100 BC. It is taken to include the First and Second Dynasties, lasting from the Protodynastic Period of Egypt until about 2686 BC, or the beginning of the Old Kingdom. With the First Dynasty, the capital moved from Abydos to Memphis with a unified Egypt ruled by an Egyptian god-king.
Abydos remained the major holy land in the south. The hallmarks of ancient Egyptian civilization, such as art and many aspects of religion, took shape during the Early Dynastic period. Memphis in the Early Bronze Age was the largest city of the time; the Old Kingdom of the regional Bronze Age is the name given to the period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement – the first of three "Kingdom" periods, which mark the high points of civilization in the lower Nile Valley. The First Intermediate Period of Egypt described as a "dark period" in ancient Egyptian history, spanned about 100 years after the end of the Old Kingdom from about 2181 to 2055 BC. Little monumental evidence survives from this period from the early part of it; the First Intermediate Period was a dynamic time when the rule of Egypt was divided between two competing power bases: Heracleopolis in Lower Egypt and Thebes in Upper Egypt. These two kingdoms would come into conflict, with the Theban kings conquering the north, resulting in the reunification of Egypt under a single ruler during the second part of the 11th Dynasty.
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt laste
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Roman Republic period of the ancient Roman civilization. Ruled by emperors, it had large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus. From the constitutional reforms of Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, the Empire was a principate ruled from the city of Rome; the Roman Empire was ruled by multiple emperors and divided in a Western Roman Empire, based in Milan and Ravenna, an Eastern Roman Empire, based in Nicomedia and Constantinople. Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus after capturing Ravenna and the Roman Senate sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople; the fall of the Western Roman Empire to barbarian kings, along with the hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire, is conventionally used to mark the end of Ancient Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The previous Republic, which had replaced Rome's monarchy in the 6th century BC, became destabilized in a series of civil wars and political conflict.
In the mid-1st century BC Julius Caesar was appointed as perpetual dictator and assassinated in 44 BC. Civil wars and proscriptions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesar's adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC; the following year Octavian conquered Ptolemaic Egypt, ending the Hellenistic period that had begun with the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon in the 4th century BC. Octavian's power was unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power and the new title Augustus making him the first emperor; the first two centuries of the Empire were a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana. It reached its greatest territorial expanse during the reign of Trajan. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus. In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a crisis that threatened its existence, but was reunified under Aurelian. In an effort to stabilize the Empire, Diocletian set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West.
Christians rose to power in the 4th century following the Edict of Milan in 313 and the Edict of Thessalonica in 380. Shortly after, the Migration Period involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and the Huns of Attila led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD by Odoacer, the Western Roman Empire collapsed and it was formally abolished by emperor Zeno in 480 AD; the Eastern Roman Empire, known in the post-Roman West as the Byzantine Empire, collapsed when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks of Mehmed II in 1453. Due to the Roman Empire's vast extent and long endurance, the institutions and culture of Rome had a profound and lasting influence on the development of language, architecture, philosophy and forms of government in the territory it governed Europe; the Latin language of the Romans evolved into the Romance languages of the medieval and modern world, while Medieval Greek became the language of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Its adoption of Christianity led to the formation of Christendom during the Middle Ages. Greek and Roman art had a profound impact on the late medieval Italian Renaissance, while Rome's republican institutions influenced the political development of republics such as the United States and France; the corpus of Roman law has its descendants in many legal systems of the world today, such as the Napoleonic Code. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Neoclassical architecture. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside the Italian peninsula until the 3rd century BC, it was an "empire" long before it had an emperor. The Roman Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of towns left to rule themselves and provinces administered by military commanders, it was ruled, not by annually elected magistrates in conjunction with the senate. For various reasons, the 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which led to rule by emperors.
The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of imperium, which means "command". Successful consuls were given the honorary title imperator, this is the origin of the word emperor since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors upon their accession. Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts and civil wars from the late second century BC onward, while extending its power beyond Italy; this was the period of the Crisis of the Roman Republic. Towards the end of this era, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar was perpetual dictator before being assassinated; the faction of his assassins was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by an army led by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian's division of the Roman world between themselves did not last and Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, ending the Final War of the Roman Republic. In 27 BC the Senate and People of Rome made Octavian princeps ("first citi
Battle of Marathon
The Battle of Marathon took place in 490 BC, during the first Persian invasion of Greece. It was fought between the citizens of Athens, aided by Plataea, a Persian force commanded by Datis and Artaphernes; the battle was the culmination of the first attempt by Persia, under King Darius I, to subjugate Greece. The Greek army decisively defeated the more numerous Persians, marking a turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars; the first Persian invasion was a response to Athenian involvement in the Ionian Revolt, when Athens and Eretria had sent a force to support the cities of Ionia in their attempt to overthrow Persian rule. The Athenians and Eretrians had succeeded in capturing and burning Sardis, but they were forced to retreat with heavy losses. In response to this raid, Darius swore to burn down Eretria. According to Herodotus, Darius had his bow brought to him and shot an arrow "upwards towards heaven", saying as he did so: "Zeus, that it may be granted me to take vengeance upon the Athenians!".
Herodotus further writes that Darius charged one of his servants to say "Master, remember the Athenians" three times before dinner each day. At the time of the battle and Athens were the two largest city-states in Greece. Once the Ionian revolt was crushed by the Persian victory at the Battle of Lade in 494 BC, Darius began plans to subjugate Greece. In 490 BC, he sent a naval task force under Datis and Artaphernes across the Aegean, to subjugate the Cyclades, to make punitive attacks on Athens and Eretria. Reaching Euboea in mid-summer after a successful campaign in the Aegean, the Persians proceeded to besiege and capture Eretria; the Persian force sailed for Attica, landing in the bay near the town of Marathon. The Athenians, joined by a small force from Plataea, marched to Marathon, succeeded in blocking the two exits from the plain of Marathon; the Athenians sent a message asking for support to the Spartans. When the messenger arrived in Sparta, the Spartans were involved in a religious festival and gave this as a reason for not coming to aid of the Athenians.
The Athenians and their allies chose a location for the battle, with marshes and mountainous terrain, that prevented the Persian cavalry from joining the Persian infantry. Miltiades, the Athenian general, ordered a general attack against the Persian forces, composed of missile troops, he reinforced his flanks. The inward wheeling flanks enveloped the Persians; the Persian army broke in panic towards their ships, large numbers were slaughtered. The defeat at Marathon marked the end of the first Persian invasion of Greece, the Persian force retreated to Asia. Darius began raising a huge new army with which he meant to subjugate Greece. After Darius died, his son Xerxes I restarted the preparations for a second invasion of Greece, which began in 480 BC; the Battle of Marathon was a watershed in the Greco-Persian wars, showing the Greeks that the Persians could be beaten. The battle showed the Greeks that they were able to win battles without the Spartans, as they had relied on Sparta previously; this victory was due to the Athenians, Marathon raised Greek esteem of them.
Since the following two hundred years saw the rise of the Classical Greek civilization, enduringly influential in western society, the Battle of Marathon is seen as a pivotal moment in Mediterranean and European history. The main source for the Greco-Persian Wars is the Greek historian Herodotus. Herodotus, called the "Father of History", was born in 484 BC in Halicarnassus, Asia Minor, he wrote his Enquiries around 440–430 BC, trying to trace the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars, which would still have been recent history. Herodotus's approach was novel, at least in Western society, he does seem to have invented "history" as we know it; as Holland has it: "For the first time, a chronicler set himself to trace the origins of a conflict not to a past so remote so as to be utterly fabulous, nor to the whims and wishes of some god, nor to a people's claim to manifest destiny, but rather explanations he could verify personally." Some subsequent ancient historians, despite following in his footsteps, criticised Herodotus, starting with Thucydides.
Thucydides chose to begin his history where Herodotus left off, may therefore have felt that Herodotus's history was accurate enough not to need re-writing or correcting. Plutarch criticised Herodotus in his essay On the malice of Herodotus, describing Herodotus as "Philobarbaros", for not being pro-Greek enough, which suggests that Herodotus might have done a reasonable job of being even-handed. A negative view of Herodotus was passed on to Renaissance Europe. However, since the 19th century his reputation has been rehabilitated by archaeological finds which have confirmed his version of events; the prevailing modern view is that Herodotus did a remarkable job in his Historiai, but that some of his specific details should be viewed with skepticism. There are still some historians who believe Herodotus made up much of his story; the Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the 1st century BC in his Bibliotheca Historica provides an
Beehive tomb
A beehive tomb known as a tholos tomb, is a burial structure characterized by its false dome created by the superposition of successively smaller rings of mudbricks or, more stones. The resulting structure resembles a beehive, hence the traditional English name. Tholoi were used for burial in several cultures in the Mediterranean and West Asia, but in some cases they were used for different purposes such as homes and fortification. Although Max Mallowan used the same name for the circular houses belonging to the Neolithic culture of Tell Halaf, there is no relationship between them. In Greece, the vaulted tholoi are a monumental Late Bronze Age development, their origin is a matter of considerable debate: were they inspired by the tholoi of Crete which were first used in the Early Minoan period or were they a natural development of tumulus burials dating to the Middle Bronze Age? In concept, they are similar to the much more numerous Mycenaean chamber tombs which seem to have emerged at about the same time.
Both have chamber, doorway stomion and entrance passage dromos but tholoi are built while chamber tombs are rock-cut. A few early examples of tholoi have been found in Messenia in the SW Peloponnese Greece, near Troezen in the NE Peloponnese; these tholoi are built on level ground and enclosed by a mound of earth. A pair of tumuli at Marathon, Greece indicate how a built rectangular central chamber was extended with an entrance passage. After about 1500 BCE, beehive tombs became more widespread and are found in every part of the Mycenaean heartland. In contrast, however, to the early examples these are always cut into the slope of a hillside so that only the upper third of the vaulted chamber was above ground level; this masonry was concealed with a small mound of earth. The tombs contain more than one burial, in various places in the tomb either on the floor, in pits and cists or on stone-built or rock-cut benches, with various grave goods. After a burial, the entrance to the tomb was filled in with soil, leaving a small mound with most of the tomb underground.
The chamber is always built in masonry in the earliest examples, as is the stomion or entrance-way. The dromos in early examples was just cut from the bedrock, as in the Panagia Tomb at Mycenae itself. In examples such as the Treasury of Atreus and Tomb of Clytemnestra, all three parts were constructed of fine ashlar masonry; the chambers were built as corbelled vaults, with layers of stone placed closer together as the vault tapers toward the top of the tomb. These stone layers were trimmed from inside the tomb, creating a smooth dome; the entrances provided an opportunity for conspicuous demonstration of wealth. That of the Treasury of Atreus, for example, was decorated with columns of red and green “Lapis Lacedaimonius” brought from quarries over 100 km away; the abundance of such tombs with more than one being associated with a settlement during one specific time period, may indicate that their use was not confined to the ruling monarchy only, although the sheer size and therefore the outlay required for the larger tombs would argue in favour of royal commissions.
The larger tombs contained amongst the richest finds to have come from the Late Bronze Age of Mainland Greece, despite the tombs having been pillaged both in antiquity and more recently. Although the Vapheio tholos, south of Sparta, had been robbed, two cists in the floor had escaped notice; these contained, among other valuable items, the two gold “Vapheio cups” decorated with scenes of bull taming which are among the best known of Mycenaean treasures. Circular structures were built in the Near East, including the examples known as tholoi found in the Neolithic Halaf culture of Iraq and Turkey, they were used as both houses and as storage structures, but ritual use may have occurred. Other examples are found in Cyprus, where they were used as homes. There is no clear connection between these domestic, circular buildings and tholos tombs. In the Chalcolithic period of the Iberian peninsula, beehive tombs appear among other innovative "megalithic" variants, since c. 3000 BCE. They are common in southern Spain and Portugal, while in Central Portugal and southeastern France other styles are preferred instead.
The civilization of Los Millares and its Bronze Age successor, El Argar, are related to this burial style. The Bronze Age fortifications known as motillas in La Mancha use the tholos building technique; the imposing stone structures known as nuraghi as well as the similar structures of southern Corsica, dominated the Bronze Age landscape of Sardinia. Nuraghi are truncated conical towers of dry-laid stone, about 40 feet in diameter, sloping up to a circular roof some 50 feet above the ground; the vaulted ceiling is 20 to 35 feet above the floor. Although the remains of some 7,000 nuraghi have been found, up to 30,000 may have been built. There are recorded Etruscan tombs at a necropolis at Banditaccia from the 6th and 7th Centuries BCE having an external appearance similar to a beehive; the interiors are furnished as Etruscan dwellings. The beehive Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak is an example of the richly decorated tholoi tombs of Thracian rulers, many of which are found in modern Bulgaria and date from the 4th-3rd century BC.
The walls of the Kazanlak tomb are covered with plaster and stucco, with ornate scenes from the life of the deceased. O
Turkey
Turkey the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country located in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. East Thrace, located in Europe, is separated from Anatolia by the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorous strait and the Dardanelles. Turkey is bordered by Bulgaria to its northwest. Istanbul is the largest city. 70 to 80 per cent of the country's citizens identify as Turkish. Kurds are the largest minority. At various points in its history, the region has been inhabited by diverse civilizations including the Assyrians, Thracians, Phrygians and Armenians. Hellenization continued into the Byzantine era; the Seljuk Turks began migrating into the area in the 11th century, their victory over the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 symbolizes the start and foundation of Turkey. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, when it disintegrated into small Turkish principalities. Beginning in the late 13th-century, the Ottomans started uniting these Turkish principalities.
After Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453, Ottoman expansion continued under Selim I. During the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent the Ottoman Empire encompassed much of Southeast Europe, West Asia and North Africa and became a world power. In the following centuries the state entered a period of decline with a gradual loss of territories and wars. In an effort to consolidate the weakening social and political foundations of the empire, Mahmut II started a period of modernisation in the early 19th century, bringing reforms in all areas of the state including the military and bureaucracy along with the emancipation of all citizens. In 1913, a coup d'état put the country under the control of the Three Pashas. During World War I, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian and Pontic Greek subjects. Following the war, the conglomeration of territories and peoples that comprised the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into several new states; the Turkish War of Independence, initiated by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his colleagues against occupying Allied Powers, resulted in the abolition of monarchy in 1922 and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, with Atatürk as its first president.
Atatürk enacted numerous reforms, many of which incorporated various aspects of Western thought and customs into the new form of Turkish government. The Kurdish–Turkish conflict, an armed conflict between the Republic of Turkey and Kurdish insurgents, has been active since 1984 in the southeast of the country. Various Kurdish groups demand separation from Turkey to create an independent Kurdistan or to have autonomy and greater political and cultural rights for Kurds in Turkey. Turkey is a charter member of the UN, an early member of NATO, the IMF and the World Bank, a founding member of the OECD, OSCE, BSEC, OIC and G-20. After becoming one of the first members of the Council of Europe in 1949, Turkey became an associate member of the EEC in 1963, joined the EU Customs Union in 1995 and started accession negotiations with the European Union in 2005 which have been stopped by the EU in 2017 due to "Turkey's path toward autocratic rule". Turkey's economy and diplomatic initiatives led to its recognition as a regional power while its location has given it geopolitical and strategic importance throughout history.
Turkey is a secular, unitary parliamentary republic which adopted a presidential system with a referendum in 2017. Turkey's current administration headed by president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of the AKP has enacted measures to increase the influence of Islam, undermine Kemalist policies and freedom of the press; the English name of Turkey means "land of the Turks". Middle English usage of Turkye is evidenced in an early work by Chaucer called The Book of the Duchess; the phrase land of Torke is used in the 15th-century Digby Mysteries. Usages can be found in the Dunbar poems, the 16th century Manipulus Vocabulorum and Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum; the modern spelling "Turkey" dates back to at least 1719. The Turkish name Türkiye was adopted in 1923 under the influence of European usage; the Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world. Various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period.
Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family. In fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated; the European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has been inhabited since at least forty thousand years ago, is known to have been in the Neolithic era by about 6000 BC. Göbekli Tepe is the site of the oldest known man-made religious structure, a temple dating to circa 10,000 BC, while Çatalhöyük is a large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately
Ithaca
Ithaca, Ithaki or Ithaka is a Greek island located in the Ionian Sea, off the northeast coast of Kefalonia and to the west of continental Greece. Ithaca's main island has an area of 96 square kilometres and had a population in 2011 of 3,231, it is the second-smallest of seven main Ionian Islands, after Paxi. Ithaca is a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, the only municipality of the regional unit; the capital is Vathy. Modern Ithaki is linked with Homer's Ithaca, the home of Odysseus, whose twenty-year absence is part of the plot of the classical Greek poem and allegory: Odyssey of Homer; the island was named by Pterelaus, the son of Taphius, king of the Taphians. The Taphians were mariners and slave-traders from Taphos, an island off the coast of Arcanania in north-western Greece. Pterelaus' sons Ithakus and Polyctor colonised the island of Ithaki around 1,320 BC, which took the name of his oldest son. Although the name Ithaki has remained unchanged since ancient times, written documents of different periods refer to the island by other names, such as: Val di Compare, Piccola Cephallonia, Anticephallonia Ithaki nisos, Thakou, Thiakou Thiaki Teaki Fiaki The island has been inhabited since the 2nd millennium BC.
It may have been the capital of Cephalonia during the Mycenaean period and the capital-state of the small kingdom ruled by Odysseus. The Romans occupied the island in the 2nd century BC, it became part of the Byzantine Empire; the Normans ruled Ithaca in the 13th century, after a short Turkish rule it fell into Venetian hands. Ithaca was subsequently occupied by France under the 1797 Treaty of Campo Formio, it was liberated by a joint Russo-Turkish force commanded by admirals Fyodor Ushakov and Kadir Bey in 1798 and subsequently became a part of the Septinsular Republic, established as a protectorate of the Russian Empire and Ottoman Empire. It became a French possession again in 1807, until it was taken over by the United Kingdom in 1809. Under the 1815 Treaty of Paris, Ithaca became a state of the United States of the Ionian Islands, a protectorate of the British Empire. In 1830 the local community requested to join with the rest of the newly restored nation-state of Greece. Under the 1864 Treaty of London, along with the remaining six Ionian islands, were ceded to Greece as a gesture of diplomatic friendship to Greece's new Anglophile king, George I.
The United Kingdom kept its privileged use of the harbour at Corfu. The origins of the first people to inhabit the island, which occurred during the last years of the Neolithic period, are not clear; the traces of buildings, walls and a road from this time period prove that life existed and continued to do so during the Early Hellenic era. In the years some of the population migrated to part of the island; the buildings and walls that were excavated showed the lifestyle of this period had remained primitive. During the Mycenaean period, Ithaca rose to the highest level of its ancient history. Based on the Odyssey and oral traditions, it is believed that the island became the capital of the Ionian Kingdom-State, which included the surrounding lands, was referred to as one of the most powerful states of that time; the Ithacans were characterized as great navigators and explorers with daring expeditions reaching further than the Mediterranean Sea. The epic poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, shed some light on Bronze-Age Ithaca.
Those poems are thought to have been composed sometime in the 9th or 8th centuries BC, but may have made use of older mythological and poetic traditions. Recent studies concluded. After the end of the Mycenaean period Ithaca's influence diminished, it came under the jurisdiction of the nearest large island. During the ancient Hellenic prime, independent organized life continued in the northern and southern part of the island. In the southern part, in the area of Aetos, the town Alalcomenae was founded. From this period, many objects of important historical value have been found during excavations. Among these objects are coins imprinted with the name Ithaca and the image of Odysseus which suggest that the island was self-governed. According to the different periods and circumstances, the population of the island kept changing. Although there is no definite numerical information until the Venetian period, it is believed that from the Mycenaean to the Byzantine period, the number of inhabitants was several thousand, who lived in the northern part of Ithaca.
During the Middle Ages, the population decreased due to the continuous invasions of pirates, forcing the people to establish settlements and live in the mountains. In 1479, Ottoman forces reached the islands and many of the people fled from the island out of fear of the new Turkish settlers; those that remained hid in the mountains to avoid the pirates who controlled the channel between Cephalonia and Ithaca and the bays of the island. In the following five years, the Turks and Venetians laid claim to the islands diplomatically. Possession of the islands was taken by the Ottoman Empire from 1484 to 1499. During this period, the Venetians had strength
