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172-677: The region extends south from the mountains of Anatolia , east from the hills on the left bank of the Euphrates river, west from the mountains on the right bank of the Tigris river and includes the Sinjar plain. It extends down the Tigris to Samarra and down the Euphrates to Hit, Iraq . The Khabur runs for over 400 km (250 mi) across the plain, from Turkey in the north, feeding into

344-852: A Greek victory in 449 BCE, and the Ionian cities regained their independence. By the Peace of Antalcidas (387 BCE), which ended the Corinthian War , Persia regained control over Ionia. In 334 BCE, the Macedonian Greek king Alexander the Great conquered the Anatolian peninsula from the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Alexander's conquest opened up the interior of Asia Minor to Greek settlement and influence. Following

516-470: A bitter series of civil wars followed by a combined attack by Medes , Persians , Scythians and their own Babylonian relations. The last Assyrian city to fall was Harran in southeast Anatolia. This city was the birthplace of the last king of Babylon , the Assyrian Nabonidus and his son and regent Belshazzar . Much of the region then fell to the short-lived Iran-based Median Empire , with

688-435: A circular bank and ditch enclosure made of Late Cretaceous ( Santonian Age) Seaford chalk , measuring about 360 feet (110 m) in diameter, with a large entrance to the north east and a smaller one to the south. It stood in open grassland on a slightly sloping spot. The builders placed the bones of deer and oxen in the bottom of the ditch, as well as some worked flint tools. The bones were considerably older than

860-566: A feature unique among contemporary monuments. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones . Inside these are free-standing trilithons , two bulkier vertical sarsens joined by one lintel. The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice and sunset on the winter solstice . The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred tumuli (burial mounds). Stonehenge

1032-469: A few generations, but did not become widespread for more than a millennium (see PPNB ). Weaving and pottery followed about two thousand years later. From Al-Jazirah the idea of farming along with the domesticated seeds spread first to the rest of the Levant and then to North-Africa, Europe and eastwards through Mesopotamia all the way to present-day Pakistan (see Mehrgarh ). Earlier archeologists worked on

1204-562: A megalithic bluestone quarry at Craig Rhos-y-felin , near Crymych in Pembrokeshire, which is the most likely place for some of the stones to have been obtained. Other standing stones may well have been small sarsens (sandstone), used later as lintels. The stones, which weighed about two tons, could have been moved by lifting and carrying them on rows of poles and rectangular frameworks of poles, as recorded in China, Japan and India. It

1376-466: A natural tree throw ), which date to around 8000 BC, beneath the nearby old tourist car park in use until 2013. These held pine posts around two feet six inches (0.75 m) in diameter, which were erected and eventually rotted in place. Three of the posts (and possibly four) were in an east–west alignment which may have had ritual significance. Another Mesolithic astronomical site in Britain

1548-574: A procession route on the longest and shortest days of the year. Parker Pearson speculates that the wooden circle at Durrington Walls was the centre of a 'land of the living', whilst the stone circle represented a 'land of the dead', with the Avon serving as a journey between the two. Later in the Bronze Age , although the exact details of activities during this period are still unclear, the bluestones appear to have been re-erected. They were placed within

1720-647: A prolific manufacturing (food processing and cloth weaving) system. The region's position at the border of the Sasanian and Byzantine territories also made it an important commercial center, and advantage that the region continued to enjoy, even after the Muslim conquest of Persia and Byzantine possessions in the Levant . Al-Jazira included the Roman/Byzantine provinces of Osroene and Mesopotamia , as well as

1892-581: A religious site. In the 1960s, Gerald Hawkins described in detail how the site was apparently set out to observe the Sun and Moon over a recurring 56-year cycle. More recently, two major new theories have been proposed. Geoffrey Wainwright , president of the Society of Antiquaries of London , and Timothy Darvill , of Bournemouth University , have suggested that Stonehenge was a place of healing—the primeval equivalent of Lourdes . They argue that this accounts for

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2064-411: A ring of 30 lintel stones resting on top. The lintels were fitted to one another using tongue and groove joints – a woodworking method, again. Each standing stone was around 13.5 feet (4.11 m) high, 7.0 feet (2.13 m) wide, and 3.5 feet (1.06 m) deep, weighing around 26 tons. Each had clearly been worked with the final visual effect in mind: The orthostats widen slightly towards

2236-593: A second group brought from Wales. All the stones formed well-spaced uprights without any of the linking lintels inferred in Stonehenge 3 III. The Altar Stone may have been moved within the oval at this time and re-erected vertically. Although this would seem the most impressive phase of work, Stonehenge 3 IV was rather shabbily built compared to its immediate predecessors, as the newly re-installed bluestones were not well-founded and began to fall over. However, only minor changes were made after this phase. Soon afterwards,

2408-458: A similar fate after its Christian population left when it was annexed to Turkey. The Christian population of the city crossed the border into Syria and settled in Qamishli , which was separated by the railway (new border) from Nusaybin. Nusaybin became Kurdish and Qamishli became an Assyrian city. Things soon changed, however, with the immigration of Kurds beginning in 1926 following the failure of

2580-676: A sizeable Armenian population before the Armenian genocide ) an "ahistorical imposition" and notes that a growing body of literature is uncomfortable with referring to the Ottoman East as "Eastern Anatolia". The highest mountain in the Eastern Anatolia Region (also the highest peak in the Armenian Highlands ) is Mount Ararat (5123 m). The Euphrates , Aras , Karasu and Murat rivers connect

2752-520: Is Warren Field in Aberdeenshire , which is considered the world's oldest lunisolar calendar , corrected yearly by observing the midwinter solstice . Similar but later sites have been found in Scandinavia . A settlement that may have been contemporaneous with the posts has been found at Blick Mead , a reliable year-round spring one mile (1.6 km) from Stonehenge. Salisbury Plain

2924-496: Is a holdover from antiquarian use. Mike Parker Pearson , leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project based around Durrington Walls , noted that Stonehenge appears to have been associated with burial from the earliest period of its existence: Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid third millennium B.C. The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge's sarsen stones phase

3096-458: Is also possible that there were cities with the same names closer to Ebla. In many ways, the diplomatic interactions in the wider Ancient Near East during this period resemble those from the second millennium BC, which are particularly well known from the Amarna letters . Upper Mesopotamia is also the heartland of ancient Assyria , founded circa the 25th century BC. From the late 24th Century BC it

3268-622: Is also reflected in a general 'resurgence' of hunter-gatherer ancestry, predominantly from males, across western and central Europe in the Middle Neolithic. At the time the megalithic Stonehenge 3 II was constructed (2600–2400 BC) by Neolithic people, the Bell Beaker people arrived, around 2,500 BC, migrating from mainland Europe. They lived side by side for ca. 500 years, with the Bell Beaker people probably incorporating

3440-810: Is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Turkish Straits to the northwest, and the Black Sea to the north. The eastern and southeastern limits have been expanded either to the entirety of Asiatic Turkey or to an imprecise line from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Alexandretta . Topographically, the Sea of Marmara connects the Black Sea with

3612-448: Is likely just one of many from this later period of the monument's use and demonstrates that it was still very much a domain of the dead. Stonehenge evolved in several construction phases spanning at least 1500 years. There is evidence of large-scale construction on and around the monument that perhaps extends the landscape's time frame to 6500 years. Dating and understanding the various phases of activity are complicated by disturbance of

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3784-459: Is no evidence of glacial deposition within southern central England. A 2019 publication announced that evidence of Megalithic quarrying had been found at quarries in Wales identified as a source of Stonehenge's bluestone, indicating that the bluestone was quarried by human agency and not transported by glacial action. The long-distance human transport theory was bolstered in 2011 by the discovery of

3956-539: Is no excavated evidence of them. A recent excavation has suggested that the Aubrey Holes may have originally been used to erect a bluestone circle. If this were the case, it would advance the earliest known stone structure at the monument by some 500 years. In 2013, a team of archaeologists, led by Mike Parker Pearson , excavated more than 50,000 cremated bone fragments, from 63 individuals, buried at Stonehenge. These remains were originally buried individually in

4128-477: Is not known whether the stones were taken directly from their quarries to Salisbury Plain or were the result of the removal of a venerated stone circle from Preseli to Salisbury Plain to "merge two sacred centres into one, to unify two politically separate regions, or to legitimise the ancestral identity of migrants moving from one region to another". Evidence of a 110-metre (360 ft) stone circle at Waun Mawn near Preseli, which could have contained some or all of

4300-581: Is not well understood how the Osmanlı, or Ottoman Turks , came to dominate their neighbours, as the history of medieval Anatolia is still little known. The Ottomans completed the conquest of the peninsula in 1517 with the taking of Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum ) from the Knights of Saint John . With the acceleration of the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century, and as a result of

4472-681: Is probably a Medieval Latin innovation. The modern Turkish form Anadolu derives directly from the Greek name Aνατολή ( Anatolḗ ). The Russian male name Anatoly , the French Anatole and plain Anatol , all stemming from saints Anatolius of Laodicea (d. 283) and Anatolius of Constantinople (d. 458; the first Patriarch of Constantinople ), share the same linguistic origin. The oldest known name for any region within Anatolia

4644-471: Is related to its central area, known as the "Land of Hatti " – a designation that was initially used for the land of ancient Hattians , but later became the most common name for the entire territory under the rule of ancient Hittites . The first recorded name the Greeks used for the Anatolian peninsula, though not particularly popular at the time, was Ἀσία ( Asía ), perhaps from an Akkadian expression for

4816-706: The Aeolian , Ionian and Dorian colonies situated along the eastern coasts of the Aegean Sea , but also encompassing eastern regions in general. Such use of Anatolian designations was employed during the reign of Roman Emperor Diocletian ( r.  284–305 ), who created the Diocese of the East , known in Greek as the Eastern Diocese, but completely unrelated to the regions of Asia Minor. In their widest territorial scope, Anatolian designations were employed during

4988-603: The Anatolian languages , the earliest attested branch of Indo-European, have been spoken in Anatolia since at least the 19th century BCE. The earliest historical data related to Anatolia appear during the Bronze Age and continue throughout the Iron Age . The most ancient period in the history of Anatolia spans from the emergence of ancient Hattians , up to the conquest of Anatolia by the Achaemenid Empire in

5160-920: The Arab invasion of the Levant (634–638). In the 10 years following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Seljuk Turks from Central Asia migrated over large areas of Anatolia, with particular concentrations around the northwestern rim. The Turkish language and the Islamic religion were gradually introduced as a result of the Seljuk conquest, and this period marks the start of Anatolia's slow transition from predominantly Christian and Greek-speaking, to predominantly Muslim and Turkish-speaking (although ethnic groups such as Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians remained numerous and retained Christianity and their native languages). In

5332-635: The Balkans . The Phrygian expansion into southeast Anatolia was eventually halted by the Assyrians, who controlled that region. Another Indo-European people, the Luwians , rose to prominence in central and western Anatolia c.  2000 BCE. Their language belonged to the same linguistic branch as Hittite . The general consensus amongst scholars is that Luwian was spoken across a large area of western Anatolia, including (possibly) Wilusa ( Troy ),

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5504-467: The Black Sea , coterminous with the Anatolian Plateau . This traditional geographical definition is used, for example, in the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary . Under this definition, Anatolia is bounded to the east by the Armenian Highlands , and the Euphrates before that river bends to the southeast to enter Mesopotamia . To the southeast, it is bounded by

5676-969: The Büyük Menderes River as well as some interior high plains in Anatolia, mainly around Lake Tuz (Salt Lake) and the Konya Basin ( Konya Ovasi ). There are two mountain ranges in southern Anatolia: the Taurus and the Zagros mountains. Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire , England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury . It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones , each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones, held in place with mortise and tenon joints,

5848-467: The Eastern Anatolia Region , which largely corresponds to the historical region of Western Armenia (named as such after the division of Greater Armenia between the Roman / Byzantine Empire (Western Armenia) and Sassanid Persia ( Eastern Armenia ) in 387 AD). Vazken Davidian terms the expanded use of "Anatolia" to apply to territory in eastern Turkey that was formerly referred to as Armenia (which had

6020-822: The First Crusade , the western part came into Crusader hands as the County of Edessa , while the rest was ruled by a succession of semi-independent Turkish rulers until taken over by the Zengids , and eventually the Kurdish Ayyubids . Thereafter the northern and eastern portions were ruled initially by the Artuqids , laterly by the Kara Koyunlu and Akkoyunlu Turcomans and finally by the Safavids ; while

6192-768: The Greek and Roman eras. During the 6th century BCE, all of Anatolia was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire , the Persians having usurped the Medes as the dominant dynasty of Persia . In 499 BCE, the Ionian city-states on the west coast of Anatolia rebelled against Persian rule. The Ionian Revolt , as it became known, though quelled, initiated the Greco-Persian Wars , which ended in

6364-665: The Hellenic world . He has been called the greatest ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus. Further annexations by Rome, in particular of the Kingdom of Pontus by Pompey , brought all of Anatolia under Roman control , except for the southeastern frontier with the Parthian Empire , which remained unstable for centuries, causing a series of military conflicts that culminated in the Roman–Parthian Wars (54 BCE – 217 CE). After

6536-659: The Later Roman Empire . Anatolia's wealth grew during the 4th and 5th centuries thanks, in part, to the Pilgrim's Road that ran through the peninsula. Literary evidence about the rural landscape stems from the Christian hagiographies of the 6th-century Nicholas of Sion and 7th-century Theodore of Sykeon . Large and prosperous urban centers of Byzantine Anatolia included Assos , Ephesus , Miletus , Nicaea , Pergamum , Priene , Sardis , and Aphrodisias . From

6708-482: The Middle Ages and since then it has been studied and adopted by numerous groups. Stonehenge was produced by a culture that left no written records. Many aspects of Stonehenge, such as how it was built and for what purposes it was used, remain subject to debate. A number of myths surround the stones. The site, specifically the great trilithon, the encompassing horseshoe arrangement of the five central trilithons,

6880-522: The Paleolithic . Neolithic settlements include Çatalhöyük , Çayönü , Nevali Cori , Aşıklı Höyük , Boncuklu Höyük , Hacilar , Göbekli Tepe , Norşuntepe , Köşk Höyük , and Yumuktepe . Çatalhöyük (7.000 BCE) is considered the most advanced of these. Recent advances in archaeogenetics have confirmed that the spread of agriculture from the Middle East to Europe was strongly correlated with

7052-404: The River Avon . The timber circle was orientated towards the rising Sun on the midwinter solstice , opposing the solar alignments at Stonehenge. The avenue was aligned with the setting Sun on the summer solstice and led from the river to the timber circle. Evidence of huge fires on the banks of the Avon between the two avenues also suggests that both circles were linked. They were perhaps used as

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7224-540: The Roman Republic ; western and central Anatolia came under Roman control , but Hellenistic culture remained predominant. Mithridates VI Eupator , ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus in northern Anatolia, waged war against the Roman Republic in the year 88 BCE in order to halt the advance of Roman hegemony in the Aegean Sea region. Mithridates VI sought to dominate Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, waging several hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful wars (the Mithridatic Wars ) to break Roman dominion over Asia and

7396-409: The Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia. The Uruk period ( c.  4000 to 3100 BC) existed from the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in Mesopotamia, including a section of the upper region. The political history of Upper Mesopotamia and Syria during the Early Dynastic Period is well known from the royal archives recovered at Ebla . Ebla, Mari , and Nagar were

7568-479: The Senni Beds , perhaps from 50 miles (80 kilometres) east of the Preseli Hills in the Brecon Beacons. Work announced in 2024 by a team from Curtin University , who analysed the chemical composition of fragments of rock that had fallen off the Altar Stone, and dated them, found that the best match was with rocks in the Orcadian Basin (which includes Caithness , Orkney , and the Moray Firth regions of north-eastern Scotland). The researchers stated that this implies

7740-444: The Stonehenge Archer , discovered in the outer ditch of the monument in 1978, and the two sets of burials, known as the Amesbury Archer and the Boscombe Bowmen , discovered three miles (5 km) to the west. Analysis of animal teeth found two miles (3 km) away at Durrington Walls , thought by Parker Pearson to be the 'builders camp', suggests that, during some period between 2600 and 2400 BC, as many as 4,000 people gathered at

7912-436: The Vallahades from Greek Macedonia ), were resettled in various parts of Anatolia, mostly in formerly Christian villages throughout Anatolia. A continuous reverse migration occurred since the early 19th century, when Greeks from Anatolia, Constantinople and Pontus area migrated toward the newly independent Kingdom of Greece , and also towards the United States , the southern part of the Russian Empire , Latin America, and

8084-460: The Wiltshire Museum . In 1877, Charles Darwin dabbled in archaeology at the stones, experimenting with the rate at which remains sink into the earth, for his book The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms . Stone 22 fell during a fierce storm on 31 December 1900. William Gowland oversaw the first major restoration of the monument in 1901, which involved the straightening and concrete setting of sarsen stone number 56 which

8256-437: The first division of the Roman Empire , Anatolia became part of the Eastern Roman Empire , otherwise known as the Byzantine Empire or Byzantium . In the 1st century CE, Anatolia became one of the first places where Christianity spread , so that by the 4th century CE, western and central Anatolia were overwhelmingly Christian and Greek-speaking. Byzantine Anatolia was one of the wealthiest and most densely populated places in

8428-430: The migration of early farmers from Anatolia about 9,000 years ago, and was not just a cultural exchange. Anatolian Neolithic farmers derived most of their ancestry from local Anatolian hunter-gatherers , suggesting that agriculture was adopted in site by these hunter-gatherers and not spread by demic diffusion into the region. Anatolian derived Neolithic Farmers would subsequently spread across Europe, as far west as

8600-410: The paternal (Y-DNA) lineages of Neolithic farmers in Britain were almost exclusively of Western Hunter-Gatherer origin. This was also the case among other megalithic-building populations in northwest Europe, meaning that these populations were descended from a mixture of hunter-gatherer males and farmer females. The dominance of Western Hunter-Gatherer male lineages in Britain and northwest Europe

8772-492: The stanenges or Stanheng "not far from Salisbury " recorded by 11th-century writers are "stones supported in the air". In 1740, William Stukeley notes: "Pendulous rocks are now called henges in Yorkshire ... I doubt not, Stonehenge in Saxon signifies the hanging stones." Christopher Chippindale 's Stonehenge Complete gives the derivation of the name Stonehenge as coming from the Old English words stān ' stone ' , and either hencg ' hinge ' (because

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8944-438: The surrounding land is owned by the National Trust . Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. Deposits containing human bone date from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug, and continued for at least another 500 years. The Oxford English Dictionary cites Ælfric 's 10th-century glossary, in which henge-cliff is given the meaning ' precipice ' , or stone; thus,

9116-421: The " Amesbury Archer " grew up near the Alpine foothills of Germany; and the " Boscombe Bowmen " probably arrived from Wales or Brittany, France. On the other hand, Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University has suggested that Stonehenge was part of a ritual landscape and was joined to Durrington Walls by their corresponding avenues and the River Avon. He suggests that the area around Durrington Walls henge

9288-462: The "sunrise" or possibly echoing the name of the Assuwa league in western Anatolia. The Romans used it as the name of their province , comprising the west of the peninsula plus the nearby Aegean Islands . As the name "Asia" broadened its scope to apply to the vaster region east of the Mediterranean, some Greeks in Late Antiquity came to use the name Asia Minor (Μικρὰ Ἀσία, Mikrà Asía ), meaning "Lesser Asia" to refer to present-day Anatolia, whereas

9460-399: The 'Blick Mead' camp 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from Stonehenge (near the Vespasian's Camp site) has been dated to 4000 BC. The University of Buckingham 's Humanities Research Institute believes that the community who built Stonehenge lived here for several millennia, making it potentially "one of the pivotal places in the history of the Stonehenge landscape." The first monument consisted of

9632-427: The 18th century. According to the team, these acoustic properties could explain why certain bluestones were hauled such a long distance, a major technical accomplishment at the time. In certain ancient cultures, rocks that ring out, known as lithophonic rocks , were believed to contain mystic or healing powers, and Stonehenge has a history of association with rituals. The presence of these "ringing rocks" seems to support

9804-447: The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey . Of the remainder, most have left Turkey since then, leaving fewer than 5,000 Greeks in Anatolia today. According to Morris and Ze'evi, 4 million christians were ethnically cleansed from Asia minor by the Turks from 1894 to 1924. Anatolia's terrain is structurally complex. A central massif composed of uplifted blocks and downfolded troughs , covered by recent deposits and giving

9976-462: The 6th century BCE. The earliest historically attested populations of Anatolia were the Hattians in central Anatolia, and Hurrians further to the east. The Hattians were an indigenous people, whose main center was the city of Hattush . Affiliation of Hattian language remains unclear, while Hurrian language belongs to a distinctive family of Hurro-Urartian languages . All of those languages are extinct; relationships with indigenous languages of

10148-438: The 7th century AD by Islamic sources to refer to the northern section of Mesopotamia, while the Lower Mesopotamia, also known as Sawād , is the southern part of Mesopotamia. The name means "island", and at one time referred to the land between the two rivers, which in Syriac is Beth Nahrain (ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ) . Historically, the name could be restricted to the Sinjar plain coming down from the Sinjar Mountains , or expanded to embrace

10320-416: The Aegean Sea through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles , and separates Anatolia from Thrace in Southeast Europe . During the Neolithic , Anatolia was an early centre for the development of farming after it originated in the adjacent Fertile Crescent . Beginning around 9,000 years ago, there was a major migration of Anatolian Neolithic Farmers into Europe , with their descendants coming to dominate

10492-508: The Amuda massacre of August 9, 1937. This massacre, carried out by the Kurd Saeed Agha, emptied the city of its Assyrian population. In 1941, the Assyrian community of al-Malikiyah were subjected to a vicious assault. Even though the assault failed, the Assyrians were terrorized and left in large numbers, and the immigration of Kurds from Turkey to the area have converted al-Malikiya, al-Darbasiyah and Amuda to completely Kurdish cities. The historically-important Christian city of Nusaybin had

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10664-850: The Armenian Highlands to the South Caucasus and the Upper Euphrates Valley. Along with the Çoruh , these rivers are the longest in the Eastern Anatolia Region. The English-language name Anatolia derives from the Greek Ἀνατολή ( Anatolḗ ) meaning "the East" and designating (from a Greek point of view) eastern regions in general. The Greek word refers to the direction where the sun rises, coming from ἀνατέλλω anatello '(Ι) rise up', comparable to terms in other languages such as " levant " from Latin levo 'to rise', " orient " from Latin orior 'to arise, to originate', Hebrew מִזְרָח mizraḥ 'east' from זָרַח zaraḥ 'to rise, to shine', Aramaic מִדְנָח midnaḥ from דְּנַח denaḥ 'to rise, to shine'. The use of Anatolian designations has varied over time, perhaps originally referring to

10836-544: The Assyrian colony of Kanesh , use an advanced system of trading computations and credit lines. Unlike the Akkadians and Assyrians, whose Anatolian trading posts were peripheral to their core lands in Mesopotamia , the Hittites were centered at Hattusa (modern Boğazkale) in north-central Anatolia by the 17th century BCE. They were speakers of an Indo-European language, the Hittite language , or nesili (the language of Nesa) in Hittite. The Hittites originated from local ancient cultures that grew in Anatolia, in addition to

11008-421: The Aubrey holes, but were exhumed in 1920 during an excavation by William Hawley , who considered them unimportant and in 1935 re-buried them together in one hole, Aubrey Hole 7. Physical and chemical analysis of the remains has shown that the cremated were almost equally men and women, and included some children. There is evidence that the underlying chalk beneath the graves was crushed by substantial weight, so

11180-411: The Babylonians and Scythians briefly appropriating some territory. From the late 8th century BCE, a new wave of Indo-European-speaking raiders entered northern and northeast Anatolia: the Cimmerians and Scythians . The Cimmerians overran Phrygia and the Scythians threatened to do the same to Urartu and Lydia , before both were finally checked by the Assyrians. The north-western coast of Anatolia

11352-527: The Caucasus have been proposed, but are not generally accepted. The region became famous for exporting raw materials. Organized trade between Anatolia and Mesopotamia started to emerge during the period of the Akkadian Empire , and was continued and intensified during the period of the Old Assyrian Empire , between the 21st and the 18th centuries BCE. Assyrian traders were bringing tin and textiles in exchange for copper, silver or gold. Cuneiform records, dated c.  20th century BCE , found in Anatolia at

11524-550: The Eastern Mediterranean, travelling west from there, and 25% ancestry coming from Western Hunter-Gatherers from western Europe. These farmers moved to Iberia before heading north, reaching Britain in about 4,000 BC. Most of the ancestry of British Neolithic farmers came from the people who followed this route, with a minor contribution from groups who followed the Danube into Central and Western Europe. Their agricultural techniques seem to have come originally from Anatolia , and their mixture appears to have happened primarily on

11696-399: The Egyptians, annexing much Hittite (and Hurrian) territory in these regions. After 1180 BCE, during the Late Bronze Age collapse , the Hittite Empire disintegrated into several independent Syro-Hittite states , subsequent to losing much territory to the Middle Assyrian Empire and being finally overrun by the Phrygians , another Indo-European people who are believed to have migrated from

11868-505: The Euphrates. The major settlements are Mosul , Deir ez-Zor , Raqqa , al-Hasakah , Diyarbakır and Qamishli . The western, Syrian part, is essentially contiguous with the Syrian al-Hasakah Governorate and is described as "Syria's breadbasket ". The eastern, Iraqi part, includes and extends slightly beyond the Iraqi Nineveh Governorate . In the north it includes the Turkish provinces of Şanlıurfa , Mardin , and parts of Diyarbakır Province . The name al-Jazira has been used since

12040-411: The Hamdanid power put the region back under the nominal rule of the Caliphs of Baghdad, while actual control was in the hands of the Buyid brothers who had conquered Baghdad itself. At the turn of the 11th century, the area came under the rule of a number of local dynasties, the Numayrids , the Mirdasids , and the Uqaylids , who persisted until the conquest by the Seljuq Empire . With the arrival of

12212-400: The Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles, as well as to the Maghreb . Most modern Europeans derive a significant part of their ancestry from these Neolithic Anatolian farmers. Neolithic Anatolia has been 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

12384-534: The Parthian/Persian provinces of Asōristān, Arbayestan , Nisibis , and Mosul . The conquest of the region took place under the early Caliphate that left the general administration of the region intact, with the exception of levying the jizya tax on the population. At the time of Mu‘awiyah , governor of Syria and the later of the Umayyad Caliphate ), the administration of al-Jazira

12556-400: The Q and R holes purposefully backfilled. The Heel Stone , a Tertiary sandstone, may also have been erected outside the north-eastern entrance during this period. It cannot be accurately dated and may have been installed at any time during phase 3. At first, it was accompanied by a second stone, which is no longer visible. Two, or possibly three, large portal stones were set up just inside

12728-584: The Seha River Land (to be identified with the Hermos and/or Kaikos valley), and the kingdom of Mira-Kuwaliya with its core territory of the Maeander valley. From the 9th century BCE, Luwian regions coalesced into a number of states such as Lydia , Caria , and Lycia , all of which had Hellenic influence. Arameans encroached over the borders of south-central Anatolia in the century or so after

12900-513: The absolute oldest known megalithic structures anywhere. As far as current knowledge goes, there were no firmly established farming societies during that time period. Farming appeared to be in an experimental stage, serving primarily as a supplement to ongoing hunting and gathering practices. This raises questions about whether (semi)sedentary hunter-gatherer communities were sufficiently affluent and numerous to coordinate and carry out large-scale communal construction projects. Alternatively, it suggests

13072-653: The administration of the Empire preferred the description Ἀνατολή ( Anatolḗ ; lit.   ' the East ' ). The endonym Ῥωμανία ( Rōmanía "the land of the Romans, i.e. the Eastern Roman Empire") was understood as another name for the province by the invading Seljuq Turks , who founded a Sultanate of Rûm in 1077. Thus (land of the) Rûm became another name for Anatolia. By the 12th century Europeans had started referring to Anatolia as Turchia . During

13244-578: The ancient Mesopotamians . Demographics saw huge shifts during the first half of the 20th century. Thousands of Assyrian refugees entered into Syrian Jazira province from Turkey following the Assyrian genocide of World War I. Additionally, in 1933 a further 24,000 Assyrian Christians fled into the area, following the Simele massacre in the Mosul region of northern Iraq. Violence against Christians changed

13416-407: The antler picks used to dig the ditch, and the people who buried them had looked after them for some time prior to burial. The ditch was continuous but had been dug in sections, like the ditches of the earlier causewayed enclosures in the area. The chalk dug from the ditch was piled up to form the bank. This first stage is dated to around 3100 BC, after which the ditch began to silt up naturally. Within

13588-572: The appearance of a plateau with rough terrain, is wedged between two folded mountain ranges that converge in the east. True lowland is confined to a few narrow coastal strips along the Aegean, Mediterranean, and the Black Sea coasts. Flat or gently sloping land is rare and largely confined to the deltas of the Kızıl River , the coastal plains of Çukurova and the valley floors of the Gediz River and

13760-648: The arrival of Indo-European languages. Attested for the first time in the Assyrian tablets of Nesa around 2000 BCE, they conquered Hattusa in the 18th century BCE, imposing themselves over Hattian- and Hurrian-speaking populations. According to the widely accepted Kurgan theory on the Proto-Indo-European homeland , however, the Hittites (along with the other Indo-European ancient Anatolians ) were themselves relatively recent immigrants to Anatolia from

13932-504: The arrival of the Bell Beaker people, who had approximately 50% WSH ancestry. Throughout recorded history, Stonehenge and its surrounding monuments have attracted attention from antiquarians and archaeologists . John Aubrey was one of the first to examine the site with a scientific eye in 1666, and, in his plan of the monument, he recorded the pits that now bear his name, the Aubrey holes . William Stukeley continued Aubrey's work in

14104-612: The assumption that agriculture was a prerequisite to a sedentary lifestyle, but excavations in Israel and Lebanon surprised science by showing that a sedentary lifestyle actually came before agriculture (see the Natufian culture ). Further surprises followed in the 1990s with the spectacular finds of the megalithic structures at Göbekli Tepe in south-eastern Turkey. The earliest of these apparently ritual buildings are from before 9000 BC—over five thousand years older than Stonehenge —and thus

14276-540: The base of six stones and the outer ditch. He also located a bottle of port in the Slaughter Stone socket left by Cunnington, helped to rediscover Aubrey's pits inside the bank and located the concentric circular holes outside the Sarsen Circle called the Y and Z Holes . Richard Atkinson , Stuart Piggott and John F. S. Stone re-excavated much of Hawley's work in the 1940s and 1950s, and discovered

14448-628: The bluestone in Wales and had not extensively lived in the area of Stonehenge before death. Between 2017 and 2021, studies by Professor Parker Pearson (UCL) and his team suggested that the bluestones used in Stonehenge had been moved there following dismantling of a stone circle of identical size to the first known Stonehenge circle (110m) at the Welsh site of Waun Mawn in the Preseli Hills . It had contained bluestones, one of which showed evidence of having been reused in Stonehenge. The stone

14620-422: The builders abandoned timber in favour of stone and dug two concentric arrays of holes (the Q and R Holes ) in the centre of the site. These stone sockets are only partly known (hence on present evidence are sometimes described as forming 'crescents'); however, they could be the remains of a double ring. Again, there is little firm dating evidence for this phase. The holes held up to 80 standing stones (shown blue on

14792-399: The builders' belief system. The excavated remains of culled animal bones suggest that people may have gathered at the site for the winter rather than the summer. There is little or no direct evidence revealing the construction techniques used by the Stonehenge builders. Over the years, various authors have suggested that supernatural or anachronistic methods were used, usually asserting that

14964-465: The bulk of the area of modern-day Turkey. Nonetheless, a variety of non- Turkic languages continue to be spoken by ethnic minorities in Anatolia today, including Arabic , Kurdish , Neo-Aramaic , Armenian , the North Caucasian languages , Laz , Georgian , and Greek. Traditionally, Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to an indefinite line running from the Gulf of Alexandretta to

15136-477: The carved axes and daggers on the Sarsen Stones. Atkinson's work was instrumental in furthering the understanding of the three major phases of the monument's construction. In 1958, the stones were restored again, when three of the standing sarsens were re-erected and set in concrete bases. The last restoration was carried out in 1963 after stone 23 of the Sarsen Circle fell over. It was again re-erected, and

15308-474: The chalk downs of southern England). The bluestones are composed of dolerite, tuff, rhyolite, or sandstone. The igneous bluestones appear to have originated in the Preseli hills of southwestern Wales, about 140 miles (230 km) from the monument. The sandstone Altar Stone may have originated in east Wales. Analysis published in 2020 indicates the sarsens came from West Woods , about 16 miles (26 km) from

15480-436: The circle (60 stones) and the trilithon horseshoe (15 stones). It was thought the ring might have been left incomplete, but an exceptionally dry summer in 2013 revealed patches of parched grass which may correspond to the location of missing sarsens. The lintel stones are each around 10 feet (3.2 m) long, 3.3 feet (1 m) wide and 2.6 feet (0.8 m) thick. The tops of the lintels are 16 feet (4.9 m) above

15652-462: The coasts of Anatolia. Greeks started Western philosophy on the western coast of Anatolia ( Pre-Socratic philosophy ). In Classical antiquity , Anatolia was described by the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus and later historians as divided into regions that were diverse in culture, language, and religious practices. The northern regions included Bithynia , Paphlagonia , and Pontus ; to

15824-651: The continent as far west as the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles . The earliest recorded inhabitants of Anatolia , who were neither Indo-European nor Semitic , were gradually absorbed by the incoming Indo-European Anatolian peoples , who spoke the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The major Anatolian languages included Hittite , Luwian , and Lydian ; other local languages, albeit poorly attested, included Phrygian and Mysian . The Hurro-Urartian languages were spoken throughout Mitanni in

15996-524: The continent before the Neolithic farmers migrated to Britain. At the time of their arrival, Britain was inhabited by groups of hunter-gatherers who were the first inhabitants of the island after the last Ice Age ended about 11,700 years ago. The farmers replaced most of the hunter-gatherer population in the British Isles without mixing much with them. Despite their mostly Aegean ancestry,

16168-525: The control of the Mongols, at least nominally, through declining Seljuk sultans. The Beyliks did not mint coins in the names of their own leaders while they remained under the suzerainty of the Mongol Ilkhanids . The Osmanli ruler Osman I was the first Turkish ruler who minted coins in his own name in 1320s; they bear the legend "Minted by Osman son of Ertugrul". Since the minting of coins

16340-617: The death of Alexander the Great and the subsequent breakup of the Macedonian Empire , Anatolia was ruled by a series of Hellenistic kingdoms, such as the Attalids of Pergamum and the Seleucids , the latter controlling most of Anatolia. A period of peaceful Hellenization followed, such that the local Anatolian languages had been supplanted by Greek by the 1st century BCE. In 133 BCE the last Attalid king bequeathed his kingdom to

16512-596: The decline of the Ilkhanate from 1335 to 1353, the Mongol Empire 's legacy in the region was the Uyghur Eretna Dynasty that was overthrown by Kadi Burhan al-Din in 1381. By the end of the 14th century, most of Anatolia was controlled by various Anatolian beyliks . Smyrna fell in 1330, and the last Byzantine stronghold in Anatolia, Philadelphia, fell in 1390. The Turkmen Beyliks were under

16684-609: The defeat of the Assuwa league in western Anatolia. The empire reached its height in the 13th century BCE, controlling much of Asia Minor, northwestern Syria , and northwest upper Mesopotamia. However, the Hittite advance toward the Black Sea coast was halted by the semi-nomadic pastoralist and tribal Kaskians , a non-Indo-European people who had earlier displaced the Palaic-speaking Indo-Europeans. Much of

16856-769: The demographics of Upper Mesopotamia. Some Kurdish and Persian tribes cooperated with Ottoman authorities in the Armenian and Assyrian genocides . In the middle of the 19th century, and due to the wars between the Kurdish Buhti amirs and the Turks, many Christians in the Siirt area were killed by the Kurds. In Syria's Jazira province, the French official reports show the existence of 45 Kurdish villages in Jazira prior to 1927. After

17028-646: The direct rule of the government in Baghdad. At this time, al-Jazira was one of the highest tax-yielding provinces of the Abbasid Empire. During the early history of Islam, al-Jazira became a center for the Kharijite movement and had to be constantly subdued by various caliphs. In the 920s, the local Hamdanid dynasty established an autonomous state with two branches in al-Jazira (under Nasir al-Dawla ) and Northern Syria (under Sayf al-Dawla ). The demise of

17200-574: The dominant states for this period. The earliest texts indicate that Ebla paid tribute to Mari but was able to reduce it after it won a military victory. Cities like Emar on the Upper Euphrates and Abarsal (location unknown) were vassals of Ebla. Ebla exchanged gifts with Nagar, and a royal marriage was concluded between the daughter of a king of Ebla and the son of his counterpart at Nagar. The archives also contain letters from more distant kingdoms, such as Kish and possibly Hamazi, although it

17372-576: The early 20th century (see the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire ). During World War I, the Armenian genocide , the Greek genocide (especially in Pontus ), and the Assyrian genocide almost entirely removed the ancient indigenous communities of Armenian , Greek , and Assyrian populations in Anatolia and surrounding regions. Following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922 , most remaining ethnic Anatolian Greeks were forced out during

17544-528: The early conquering Arab armies. Various conquerors tried, in vain, to bind various cities of the former Sassanian provinces, as well as the newly conquered Byzantine provinces of Mesopotamia, into a coherent unit under their own rule. The control of the region, however, was essential to any power centered in Baghdad . Consequently, the establishment of the Abbasid Caliphate brought al-Jazira under

17716-603: The early eighteenth century, but took an interest in the surrounding monuments as well, identifying (somewhat incorrectly) the Cursus and the Avenue. He also began the excavation of many of the barrows in the area, and it was his interpretation of the landscape that associated it with the Druids . Stukeley was so fascinated with Druids that he originally named Disc Barrows as Druids' Barrows. The most accurate early plan of Stonehenge

17888-410: The early third millennium BC suggests that some form of timber structure was built within the enclosure during this period. Further standing timbers were placed at the northeast entrance, and a parallel alignment of posts ran inwards from the southern entrance. The postholes are smaller than the Aubrey Holes, being only around 16 inches (0.4 m) in diameter, and are much less regularly spaced. The bank

18060-508: The end of 1930. Under the French Mandate of Syria, newly-arriving Kurds were granted citizenship by French Mandate authorities and enjoyed considerable rights as the French Mandate authority encouraged minority autonomy as part of a divide and rule strategy and recruited heavily from the Kurds and other minority groups, such as Alawite and Druze , for its local armed forces. Assyrian Christians began to emigrate from Syria after

18232-521: The entire plateau east of the coastal ranges. In pre- Abbasid times the western and eastern boundaries seem to have fluctuated, sometimes including what is now northern Syria to the west and Adiabene in the east. Al-Jazira is characterised as an outwash or alluvial plain , quite distinct from the Syrian Desert and lower-lying central Mesopotamia ; however, the area includes eroded hills and incised streams. The region has several parts to it. In

18404-526: The era of classical antiquity (see Classical Anatolia ), the Anatolian languages were largely replaced by the Greek language , which came to further dominate the region during the Hellenistic period and the Roman period . The Byzantine period saw the decline of Greek influence throughout the peninsula as the Byzantine–Seljuk wars enabled the incoming Seljuk Turks to establish a foothold in

18576-639: The era of the Ottoman Empire , many mapmakers referred to the mountainous plateau in eastern Anatolia as Armenia . Other contemporary sources called the same area Kurdistan . Geographers have used East Anatolian plateau , Armenian plateau and the Iranian plateau to refer to the region; the former two largely overlap. While a standard definition of Anatolia refers to the entire Asian side of Turkey, according to archaeologist Lori Khatchadourian, this difference in terminology "primarily result[s] from

18748-758: The expansionist policies of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus , many Muslim nations and groups in that region, mainly Circassians , Tatars , Azeris , Lezgis , Chechens and several Turkic groups left their homelands and settled in Anatolia. As the Ottoman Empire further shrank in the Balkan regions and then fragmented during the Balkan Wars , much of the non-Christian populations of its former possessions, mainly Balkan Muslims ( Bosniaks , Albanians , Turks , Muslim Bulgarians and Greek Muslims such as

18920-616: The failed Kurdish rebellions in Kemalist Turkey in the mid 1920s, there was a large influx of Kurds to Syrian Jazira province , that fell under the occupation of French Mandate authorities to escape the subsequent Turkish onslaught. It is estimated that 25,000 Kurds fled at this time to northern Syria, under French Mandate authorities , who encouraged their immigration, and granted them Syrian citizenship. A new wave of refugees arrived in 1929. The mandatory authorities continued to encourage Kurdish immigration into Syria, and by 1939,

19092-727: The fall of the Hittite empire, and some of the Syro-Hittite states in this region became an amalgam of Hittites and Arameans. These became known as Syro-Hittite states . From the 10th to late 7th centuries BCE, much of Anatolia (particularly the southeastern regions) fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire , including all of the Syro-Hittite states , Tabal , Commagene , the Cimmerians and Scythians , and swathes of Cappadocia . The Neo-Assyrian empire collapsed due to

19264-722: The following century, the Byzantines managed to reassert their control in western and northern Anatolia. Control of Anatolia was then split between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm , with the Byzantine holdings gradually being reduced. In 1255, the Mongols swept through eastern and central Anatolia, and would remain until 1335. The Ilkhanate garrison was stationed near Ankara . After

19436-403: The ground. Within this circle stood five trilithons of dressed sarsen stone arranged in a horseshoe shape 45 feet (13.7 m) across, with its open end facing northeast. These huge stones, ten uprights and five lintels, weigh up to 50 tons each. They were linked using complex jointing. They are arranged symmetrically. The smallest pair of trilithons were around 20 feet (6 m) tall,

19608-445: The heel stone, and the embanked avenue, are aligned to the sunset of the winter solstice and the opposing sunrise of the summer solstice. A natural landform at the monument's location followed this line, and may have inspired its construction. It has been conjectured that the design of the monument included a celestial observatory function, which might allow prediction of eclipse, solstice, equinox and other celestial events important to

19780-564: The henge-structures into their belief-system. The earliest British individuals associated with the Beaker culture, most likely speakers of Indo-European languages whose ancestors migrated from the Pontic–Caspian steppe, were similar to those from the Rhine. Eventually, there was again a large population replacement in Britain. More than 90% of Britain's Neolithic gene pool was replaced with

19952-483: The high number of burials in the area and for the evidence of trauma deformity in some of the graves. However, they do concede that the site was probably multifunctional and used for ancestor worship as well. Isotope analysis indicates that some of the buried individuals were from other regions. A teenage boy buried approximately 1550 BC was raised near the Mediterranean Sea; a metal worker from 2300 BC dubbed

20124-719: The history of the Hittite Empire concerned war with the rival empires of Egypt , Assyria and the Mitanni . The Ancient Egyptians eventually withdrew from the region after failing to gain the upper hand over the Hittites and becoming wary of the power of Assyria, which had destroyed the Mitanni Empire. The Assyrians and Hittites were then left to battle over control of eastern and southern Anatolia and colonial territories in Syria . The Assyrians had better success than

20296-441: The hypothesis that Stonehenge was a "place for healing" put forward by Darvill, who consulted with the researchers. There is evidence to suggest that despite the introduction of farming in the British Isles, the practice of cereal cultivation fell out of favor between 3300 and 1500 BC, with much of the population reverting to a pastoralist subsistence pattern focused on hazelnut gathering and pig and cattle rearing. A majority of

20468-460: The latter to the northern part of the Mesopotamian plain. According to Richard Hovannisian , this changing of toponyms was "necessary to obscure all evidence" of the Armenian presence as part of the policy of Armenian genocide denial embarked upon by the newly established Turkish government and what Hovannisian calls its "foreign collaborators". Human habitation in Anatolia dates back to

20640-600: The major phases of Stonehenge's construction took place during such a period where evidence of large-scale agriculture is equivocal. Similar associations between non-cereal farming subsistence patterns and monumental construction are also seen at Poverty Point and Sannai Maruyama . Researchers studying DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains across Britain determined that the people who built Stonehenge I and II were closely related to Iberian and Central European Early and Middle Neolithic populations, modelled as having about 75% ancestry from Early European Farmers who came from

20812-586: The mid-5th century onwards, urbanism was affected negatively and began to decline, while the rural areas reached unprecedented levels of prosperity in the region. Historians and scholars continue to debate the cause of the urban decline in Byzantine Anatolia between the 6th and 7th centuries, variously attributing it to the Plague of Justinian (541), the Byzantine–Sasanian War (602–628), and

20984-422: The monument but it is unknown if the monument was in continuous use throughout British prehistory and beyond, or exactly how it would have been used. Notable is the massive Iron Age hillfort known as Vespasian's Camp (despite its name, not a Roman site) built alongside the Avenue near the Avon. A decapitated seventh-century Saxon man was excavated from Stonehenge in 1923. The site was known to scholars during

21156-480: The monument, mostly in the eastern half. Stonehenge is therefore interpreted as functioning as an enclosed cremation cemetery at this time, the earliest known cremation cemetery in the British Isles. Fragments of unburnt human bone have also been found in the ditch-fill. Dating evidence is provided by the late Neolithic grooved ware pottery that has been found in connection with the features from this phase. Archaeological excavation has indicated that around 2600 BC,

21328-649: The monument. Researchers from the Royal College of Art in London have discovered that the monument's igneous bluestones possess "unusual acoustic properties" – when struck they respond with a "loud clanging noise". Rocks with such acoustic properties are frequent in the Carn Melyn ridge of Presili; the Presili village of Maenclochog (Welsh for bell or ringing stones) used local bluestones as church bells until

21500-419: The natural chalk by periglacial effects and animal burrowing, poor quality early excavation records, and a lack of accurate, scientifically verified dates. The modern phasing most generally agreed to by archaeologists is detailed below. Features mentioned in the text are numbered and shown on the plan, right. Archaeologists have found four, or possibly five, large Mesolithic postholes (one may have been

21672-506: The next pair a little higher, and the largest, single trilithon in the south-west corner would have been 24 feet (7.3 m) tall. Only one upright from the Great Trilithon still stands, of which 22 feet (6.7 m) is visible and a further 7.9 feet (2.4 m) is below ground. The images of a 'dagger' and 14 'axeheads' have been carved on one of the sarsens, known as stone 53; further carvings of axeheads have been seen on

21844-464: The north-eastern entrance, of which only one, the fallen Slaughter Stone, 16 feet (4.9 m) long, now remains. Other features, loosely dated to phase 3, include the four Station Stones , two of which stood atop mounds. The mounds are known as " barrows " although they do not contain burials. Stonehenge Avenue , a parallel pair of ditches and banks leading two miles (3 km) to the River Avon ,

22016-475: The north. However, they did not necessarily displace the population genetically; they assimilated into the former peoples' culture, preserving the Hittite language. The Hittites adopted the Mesopotamian cuneiform script . In the Late Bronze Age, Hittite New Kingdom ( c.  1650 BCE ) was founded, becoming an empire in the 14th century BCE after the conquest of Kizzuwatna in the south-east and

22188-712: The northeastern section of the Phase 3 IV bluestone circle was removed, creating a horseshoe-shaped setting (the Bluestone Horseshoe) which mirrored the shape of the central sarsen Trilithons. This phase is contemporary with the Seahenge site in Norfolk. The Y and Z Holes are the last known construction at Stonehenge, built about 1600 BC, and the last usage of it was probably during the Iron Age . Roman coins and medieval artefacts have all been found in or around

22360-434: The northwest is one of the largest salt flats in the world, Sabkhat al-Jabbul . Further south, extending from Mosul to near Basra is a sandy desert not unlike the Empty Quarter . In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the region has been plagued by drought. Al-Jazirah is extremely important archeologically. This is the area where the earliest signs of agriculture and domestication of animals have been found, and thus

22532-473: The northwest, the Galatian variant of Gaulish in Galatia until the 6th century CE, Cappadocian in the homonymous region, Armenian in the east, and Kartvelian languages in the northeast. Anatolia is known as the birthplace of minted coinage (as opposed to unminted coinage, which first appears in Mesopotamia at a much earlier date) as a medium of exchange, some time in the 7th century BCE in Lydia. The use of minted coins continued to flourish during

22704-461: The only remaining part of the Byzantine East , and thus commonly referred to (in Greek) as the Eastern part of the Empire. At the same time, the Anatolic Theme ( Ἀνατολικὸν θέμα / "the Eastern theme") was created, as a province ( theme ) covering the western and central parts of Turkey's present-day Central Anatolia Region , centered around Iconium , but ruled from the city of Amorium . The Latinized form " Anatolia ", with its -ia ending,

22876-403: The outer edge of the enclosed area is a circle of 56 pits, each about 3.3 feet (1 m) in diameter, known as the Aubrey holes after John Aubrey , the 17th-century antiquarian who was thought to have first identified them. These pits and the bank and ditch together are known as the Palisade or Gate Ditch. The pits may have contained standing timbers creating a timber circle , although there

23048-532: The outer faces of stones 3, 4, and 5. The carvings are difficult to date but are morphologically similar to late Bronze Age weapons. Early 21st century laser scanning of the carvings supports this interpretation. The pair of trilithons in the north east are smallest, measuring around 20 feet (6 m) in height; the largest, which is in the south-west of the horseshoe, is almost 25 feet (7.5 m) tall. This ambitious phase has been radiocarbon dated to between 2600 and 2400 BC, slightly earlier than

23220-475: The outer sarsen circle and may have been trimmed in some way. Like the sarsens, a few have timber-working style cuts in them suggesting that, during this phase, they may have been linked with lintels and were part of a larger structure. This phase saw further rearrangement of the bluestones. They were arranged in a circle between the two rings of sarsens and in an oval at the centre of the inner ring. Some archaeologists argue that some of these bluestones were from

23392-410: The plan), only 43 of which can be traced today. It is generally accepted that the bluestones (some of which are made of dolerite , an igneous rock), were transported by the builders from the Preseli Hills , 150 miles (240 km) away in modern-day Pembrokeshire in Wales. Another theory is that they were brought much nearer to the site as glacial erratics by the Irish Sea Glacier although there

23564-436: The possibility that well-established agricultural societies may have existed much earlier than previously recognized. Notably, Göbekli Tepe is located just 32 km from Karaca Dağ. The questions raised by Göbekli Tepe have led to intense and creative discussions among archeologists of the Middle East. Excavations at Göbekli Tepe continues, only about 5 percent has been revealed so far. Sumerians are theorized to have evolved from

23736-437: The ranges that separate it from the Orontes valley in Syria and the Mesopotamian plain. Following the Armenian genocide , Western Armenia was renamed the Eastern Anatolia Region by the newly established Turkish government. In 1941, with the First Geography Congress which divided Turkey into seven geographical regions based on differences in climate and landscape, the eastern provinces of Turkey were placed into

23908-433: The rebellion of Saeed Ali Naqshbandi against the Turkish authorities. Djezirah is one of the four dioceses of the Syriac Orthodox Church . The others are in Aleppo , Homs – Hama and Damascus . Anatolia Anatolia ( Turkish : Anadolu ), also known as Asia Minor , is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey . It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and

24080-402: The region. Thus, the process of Anatolia's Turkification began under the Seljuk Empire in the late 11th century and continued under the Ottoman Empire until the early 20th century, when the Ottoman dynasty collapsed in the aftermath of World War I . Between 1894 and 1924, millions of non- Turkic peoples and Christians were suppressed and removed by the Ottoman Turkish authorities from

24252-405: The reign of Roman Emperor Constantine I (306–337), who created the Praetorian prefecture of the East , known in Greek as the Eastern Prefecture, encompassing all eastern regions of the Late Roman Empire and spanning from Thrace to Egypt . Only after the loss of other eastern regions during the 7th century and the reduction of Byzantine eastern domains to Asia Minor, that region became

24424-428: The rest of Europe. Following the Russo-Persian Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828) and the incorporation of Eastern Armenia into the Russian Empire, another migration involved the large Armenian population of Anatolia, which recorded significant migration rates from Western Armenia (Eastern Anatolia) toward the Russian Empire, especially toward its newly established Armenian provinces. Anatolia remained multi-ethnic until

24596-399: The shifting political fortunes and cultural trajectories of the region since the nineteenth century". Turkey's First Geography Congress in 1941 created two geographical regions of Turkey to the east of the Gulf of Iskenderun-Black Sea line, the Eastern Anatolia Region and the Southeastern Anatolia Region , the former largely corresponding to the western part of the Armenian Highlands,

24768-441: The site as early as 3000 BC. One of the most famous landmarks in the United Kingdom, Stonehenge is regarded as a British cultural icon. It has been a legally protected scheduled monument since 1882, when the Ancient Monuments Protection Act was passed in the UK. The site and its surroundings were added to UNESCO 's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986. Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage ;

24940-444: The site for the mid-winter and mid-summer festivals; the evidence showed that the animals had been slaughtered around nine months or 15 months after their spring birth. Strontium isotope analysis of the animal teeth showed that some had been brought from as far afield as the Scottish Highlands for the celebrations. At about the same time, a large timber circle and a second avenue were constructed at Durrington Walls overlooking

25112-416: The southeast, while Galatian , a Celtic language , was spoken throughout Galatia in the central peninsula. Among the other peoples who established a significant presence in ancient Anatolia were the Galatians , the Hurrians , the Assyrians , the Armenians , the Hattians , and the Cimmerians , as well as some of the ancient Greek tribes , including the Ionians , the Dorians , and the Aeolians . In

25284-558: The starting point leading to civilization and the modern world. Al-Jazirah includes the mountain Karaca Dağ in southern Turkey, where the closest relative to modern wheat still grows wild. At several sites (e.g. Hallan Çemi, Abu Hureyra , Mureybet ) we can see a continuous occupation from a hunter-gathering lifestyle (based on hunting, and gathering and grinding of wild grains) to an economy based mainly on growing (still wild varieties of) wheat, barley and legumes from around 9000 BC (see PPNA ). Domestication of goats and sheep followed within

25456-476: The stone lintels hinge on the upright stones) or hen(c)en ' to hang ' or ' gallows ' or ' instrument of torture ' (though elsewhere in his book, Chippindale cites the ' suspended stones ' etymology). The "henge" portion has given its name to a class of monuments known as henges . Archaeologists define henges as earthworks consisting of a circular banked enclosure with an internal ditch. As often happens in archaeological terminology, this

25628-429: The stone was transported some 430 miles (690 km), and thus demonstrates cultural links between Southern England and Northern Scotland. The north-eastern entrance was widened at this time, with the result that it precisely matched the direction of the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset of the period. This phase of the monument was abandoned unfinished, however; the small standing stones were apparently removed and

25800-499: The stones and discovered charred wood, animal bones, pottery and urns. He also identified the hole in which the Slaughter Stone once stood. Richard Colt Hoare supported Cunnington's work and excavated some 379 barrows on Salisbury Plain including on some 200 in the area around the Stones, some excavated in conjunction with William Coxe . To alert future diggers to their work, they were careful to leave initialled metal tokens in each barrow they opened. Cunnington's finds are displayed at

25972-401: The stones in Stonehenge, has been found, including a hole from a rock that matches the unusual cross-section of a Stonehenge bluestone "like a key in a lock". Each monolith measures around 6.6 feet (2 m) in height, between 3.3 and 4.9 ft (1 and 1.5 m) wide and around 2.6 feet (0.8 m) thick. What was to become known as the Altar Stone was believed to have been derived from

26144-425: The stones were impossible to move otherwise due to their massive size. However, conventional techniques, using Neolithic technology as basic as shear legs , have been demonstrably effective at moving and placing stones of a similar size. The most common theory of how prehistoric people moved megaliths has them creating a track of logs which the large stones were rolled along. Another megalith transport theory involves

26316-408: The team concluded that the first bluestones brought from Wales were probably used as grave markers. Radiocarbon dating of the remains has put the date of the site 500 years earlier than previously estimated, to around 3000 BC. A 2018 study of the strontium content of the bones found that many of the individuals buried there around the time of construction had probably come from near the source of

26488-474: The top in order that their perspective remains constant when viewed from the ground, while the lintel stones curve slightly to continue the circular appearance of the earlier monument. The inward-facing surfaces of the stones are smoother and more finely worked than the outer surfaces. The average thickness of the stones is 3.6 feet (1.1 m) and the average distance between them is 3.3 feet (1 m). A total of 75 stones would have been needed to complete

26660-405: The use of a type of sleigh running on a track greased with animal fat. An experiment with a sleigh carrying a 40-ton slab of stone was successfully conducted near Stonehenge in 1995; a team of more than 100 workers managed to push and pull the slab along the 18-mile (29 km) journey from the Marlborough Downs . Proposed functions for the site include usage as an astronomical observatory or as

26832-456: The villages numbered between 700 and 800. Sperl's estimation also contradicts the estimates of the French geographers Fevret and Gibert, who estimated that in 1953 out of the total 146,000 inhabitants of Jazira, agriculturalist Kurds made up 60,000 (41%), nomad Arabs 50,000 (34%), and a quarter of the population were Christians. Another account by Sir John Hope Simpson estimated the number of Kurds in Jazira province at 20,000 out of 100,000 people at

27004-417: The west were Mysia , Lydia , and Caria; and Lycia , Pamphylia , and Cilicia belonged to the southern shore. There were also several inland regions: Phrygia , Cappadocia , Pisidia , and Galatia . Languages spoken included the late surviving Anatolic languages , Isaurian , and Pisidian , Greek in western and coastal regions, Phrygian spoken until the 7th century CE, local variants of Thracian in

27176-423: The western parts came under the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt until the Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–17) , when it was taken by the Ottoman Empire . Remainder of this region was in Ottoman hands after Battle of Chaldiran and Ottoman–Safavid War (1532–1555) . Although the region is ethnically diverse, it is considered to be the traditional Assyrian homeland in addition to Aramaic-speaking Christian descendants of

27348-416: Was a place of the living, whilst Stonehenge was a domain of the dead. A journey along the Avon to reach Stonehenge was part of a ritual passage from life to death, to celebrate past ancestors and the recently deceased. Both explanations were first mooted in the twelfth century by Geoffrey of Monmouth , who extolled the curative properties of the stones and was also the first to advance the idea that Stonehenge

27520-403: Was a prerogative accorded in Islamic practice only to a sovereign , it can be considered that the Osmanli, or Ottoman Turks, had become formally independent from the Mongol Khans. Among the Turkish leaders, the Ottomans emerged as great power under Osman I and his son Orhan . The Anatolian beyliks were successively absorbed into the rising Ottoman Empire during the 15th century. It

27692-458: Was also added. During the next major phase of activity, 30 enormous Oligocene – Miocene sarsen stones (shown grey on the plan) were brought to the site. They came from a quarry around 16 miles (26 km) north of Stonehenge, in West Woods , Wiltshire . The stones were dressed and fashioned with mortise and tenon joints before 30 sarsens were erected in a circle of standing stones approximately 98 feet (30 m) in diameter, with

27864-523: Was constructed as a funerary monument. There are other hypotheses and theories. According to a team of British researchers led by Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, Stonehenge may have been built as a symbol of "peace and unity", indicated in part by the fact that at the time of its construction, Britain's Neolithic people were experiencing a period of cultural unification. Stonehenge megaliths include smaller bluestones and larger sarsens (a term for silicified sandstone boulders found in

28036-459: Was constructed in several phases beginning about 3100 BC and continuing until about 1600 BC. The famous circle of large sarsen stones were placed between 2600 BC and 2400 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the bluestones were given their current positions between 2400 and 2200 BC, although they may have been at

28208-569: Was identified by its unusual pentagonal shape and by luminescence soil dating from the filled-in sockets which showed the circle had been erected around 3400–3200 BC, and dismantled around 300–400 years later, consistent with the dates attributed to the creation of Stonehenge. The cessation of human activity in that area at the same time suggested migration as a reason, but it is believed that other stones may have come from other sources. The second phase of construction occurred approximately between 2900 and 2600 BC. The number of postholes dating to

28380-413: Was in danger of falling. In straightening the stone he moved it about half a metre from its original position. Gowland also took the opportunity to further excavate the monument in what was the most scientific dig to date, revealing more about the erection of the stones than the previous 100 years of work had done. During the 1920 restoration, William Hawley , who had excavated nearby Old Sarum , excavated

28552-399: Was included in the administration of Syria. During the early Umayyad Caliphate, the administration of al-Jazira was often shared with that of Arminiya , a vast province encompassing most of Transcaucasia , Eastern Anatolia and what is now Iranian Azerbaijan . The prosperity of the region and its high agricultural and manufacturing output made it an object of contest between the leaders of

28724-435: Was inhabited by Greeks of the Achaean / Mycenaean culture from the 20th century BCE, related to the Greeks of southeastern Europe and the Aegean . Beginning with the Bronze Age collapse at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE, the west coast of Anatolia was settled by Ionian Greeks , usurping the area of the related but earlier Mycenaean Greeks . Over several centuries, numerous Ancient Greek city-states were established on

28896-426: Was part of the Akkadian Empire , then is separated into three eras: Old Assyrian Empire (circa 2050–1750 BC), Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC), Median Empire (678-549 BC) and Neo Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC). The region fell to the Assyrians' southern brethren, the Babylonians in 605 BC, and from 539 BC it became part of the Achaemenid Empire ; Achaemenid Assyria was known as Athura . From 323 BC, it

29068-430: Was purposely reduced in height and the ditch continued to silt up. At least twenty-five of the Aubrey Holes are known to have contained later, intrusive, cremation burials dating to the two centuries after the monument's inception. It seems that whatever the holes' initial function, it changed to become a funerary one during Phase two. Thirty further cremations were placed in the enclosure's ditch and at other points within

29240-498: Was ruled by the Greek Seleucid Empire , the Greeks corrupting the name to Syria , which they also applied to Aram . It then fell to the Parthians and Romans and was renamed Assyria by both. The area was still known as Asōristān under the Sasanian Empire until the Muslim conquest of Persia , when it was renamed al-Jazira. Since pre-Arab and pre-Islamic times, al-Jazira has been an economically prosperous region with various agricultural (fruit and cereal) products, as well as

29412-403: Was that made by Bath architect John Wood in 1740. His original annotated survey has now been computer-redrawn and published. Importantly Wood's plan was made before the collapse of the southwest trilithon, which fell in 1797 and was restored in 1958. William Cunnington was the next to tackle the area in the early nineteenth century. He excavated some 24 barrows before digging in and around

29584-482: Was then still wooded, but, 4,000 years later, during the earlier Neolithic, people built a causewayed enclosure at Robin Hood's Ball , and long barrow tombs in the surrounding landscape. In approximately 3500 BC, a Stonehenge Cursus was built 2,300 feet (700 m) north of the site as the first farmers began to clear the trees and develop the area. Other previously overlooked stone or wooden structures and burial mounds may date as far back as 4000 BC. Charcoal from

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