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Anatolia
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Anatolia is the Asiatic portion of contemporary Turkey, extending from the Bosporus and Aegean coast eastward to the borders of the Soviet Union, Iran, and Iraq. The Greeks and Romans called western Anatolia "Asia." Later the name "Asia Minor," or "Little Asia," was used to distinguish Anatolia from the land mass of the greater Asian continent.
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Anatolia was the homeland of a large complex of civilizations -- the earliest of which extended back thousands of years before the beginning of the Bronze Age. The Bronze age covered some 2000 years of history and civilization in the Near East -- roughly from the late fourth to the late second millennium BC. It was a period characterized by many great achievements in the development of human society and civilization within the region. Yet there was no sharp or sudden break with what had gone before: in their earliest phase many Bronze Age sites reflect no more than a gradual and sometimes almost imperceptible cultural development out of the preceding Chalcolithic Age. There was (1) no major cultural revolution (2) no evident intrusion of newcomers into Anatolia -- except in the Cilician Plain and (3) very few signs of destruction of existing communities.
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The plateau-like, arid highlands of Anatolia are considered the heartland of the country. Akin to the steppes of the Soviet Union, the region varies in altitude from 600 to 1,200 meters west to east, averaging 500 meters in elevation. The two largest basins on the plateau are the Konya Ovasi and the basin occupied by Tuz Gölü (Salt Lake). Both are characterized by inland drainage. Wooded areas are confined to the northwest and northeast, and cultivation is restricted to the areas surrounding the neighboring rivers where the valleys are sufficiently wide. Irrigation is practiced wherever water is available; the deeply entrenched river courses make it difficult to raise water to the surrounding agricultural land....
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Anatolia is now the portion of Turkey that is in Asia. Asia Minor is the Latin name for Anatolia. The Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea are on its borders. Colchis, where the mythical Medea came from, was east of the Black Sea near this region. Important legendary and historic figures from the area include the goddess Cybele, the kings Tantalus, Midas, Gordius, Croesus, Cyrus, and Mithridates, and the literary figures Homer and Aesop.
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The Aegean coast of Anatolia was an integral part of a Minoan-Mycenean civilization (ca. 2600-1200 B.C.) that drew its cultural impulses from Crete. During the Aegean region's so-called Dark Age (ca. 1050-800 B.C.), Ionian Greek refugees fled across the sea to Anatolia, then under Lydian rule, to escape the onslaught of the Dorians. Many more cities were founded along the Anatolian coast during the great period of Greek expansion after the eighth century B.C. One among them was Byzantium, a distant colony established on the Bosporus by the city-state of Megara. Despite endemic political unrest, the cities founded by the Ionians and subsequent Greek settlers prospered from commerce with Phrygia and Lydia, grew in size and number, and generated a renaissance that put Ionia in the cultural vanguard of the Hellenic world.
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St. Anatolia, Virgin and Martyr in the time of Decius, was put to death in the city of Thyrum, or Thurium, or Thora. About the identity of the place there is considerable discussion among the critics. She was living in retirement with her sister when the persecution was raging, and was sought in marriage by a youth named Aurelius. That she was actually espoused, the Bollandists doubt. On the point of yielding because of the solicitations of her sister Victoria, she was strengthened by the vision of an angel. Banished to Thora she was denounced as a Christian.
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Anatolia