EARLY PEOPLES OF ANATOLIA - Current Archaeology Issue 64

This issue in your hands tells a scientific and realistic, evidence-based past instead of a fictional past perception. It shows with archaeological evidence that Indo-Europeans did not come to Anatolia by migration, but in fact the language that sprouted in Anatolia spread to the West. What we know about the past is only a small part of the picture. There are many layers that we do not yet know. Who are the Hittites in reality? Who are the Hattians? Who are the migrants? What happened in the 2nd millennium?

The past that has not been comforted
Archaeology is perhaps the most damaged branch of science among all social sciences. Because the past is passive for the future and has become an object of the future. The future can easily pass between archaeological layers for its own fiction.

When archaeology suddenly fell into the middle of the perception of the past that had not yet become systematic in the 18th and 19th centuries, the ruins that had been waiting underground for thousands of years were looted by being detached from all the knowledge they possessed and turned into mere "art" objects. Perhaps irreparable wounds were opened on the way to understanding the history of civilization. This destruction was not limited to the ruins alone. The greatest destruction occurred when the past was constructed not with experiences but with expectations. Because while the West was trying to understand and construct its own past, archaeology was used as a tool. Today, archaeology is much braver and more exciting than before. In the West, all that past fiction that has been established at the desk for the last 250 years is slowly starting to collapse. Although knowledge changes, perception does not change immediately.

This issue in your hands tells a scientific, realistic, evidence-based past instead of a fictional past perception. It shows with archaeological evidence that Indo-Europeans did not come to Anatolia through migration, but in fact the language that sprouted in Anatolia spread to the West. What we know about the past is only a small part of the picture. There are many layers that we do not yet know. Who are the Hittites in reality? Who are the Hattians? Who came through migration? What happened in the 2nd millennium? How did the Assyrians change Anatolia? Did the migration of tribes really happen? How did Troy collapse? Where is Ahhiyawa? And most importantly, the Luwians! Who are these Luwians and why are they nowhere to be seen despite appearing everywhere? Where are the traces of the Hittite Empire that ruled Anatolia for 600 years? How did this great empire collapse?

There is another dimension to this. Why are all the ancient philosophers, writers and historians born and lived in Anatolia not considered to be from here, but shown on the opposite shore to lay the foundations of Western civilization? How can we keep Homer away from Karabel, Zeus away from the Storm God? Even if the names change, the essence of the myths does not change, they always take us back to the original. Isn't Ephesus/Apasa, Miletus/Millawanda? Aren't the Gediz River and the Menderes River, the Yeşilırmak and the Kızılırmak River the same as the Euphrates and the Tigris? Didn't the Euphrates and the Tigris sprout the Neolithic, the Yeşilırmak and the Kızılırmak the Bronze Age, and the Gediz and the Menderes the Iron Age? Aren't the rivers the creators of civilization in Anatolia?

Archaeology today is not what it used to be. It is harder, sharper. The past that was built at desks is ready to be destroyed by a new discovery at any moment. Just like Yenikapı emerged from the mud in defiance of those who tried to establish the first history of Istanbul with colonization. The past changes in an instant. The remains of Neolithic Istanbulites who left their seeds and footprints behind push all those fictional stories aside. The deceptive understanding of history is ready to be destroyed by a new discovery every day. The Neolithic border that Mellaart destroyed with Çatalhöyük left the past limitless with Klaus' legendary discovery. There is no limit to the past anymore. Göbeklitepe has fallen before humanity as a new manifesto. Our horizons and eyes have also opened, and for the first time we have been able to feel the past so close to ourselves.