History of Turkey

See History of the Republic of Turkey for the history of the modern state. The history of Turkey, understood as the history of the region now forming the territory of the Republic of Turkey, includes the history of both Anatolia (the Asian part of Turkey) and Eastern Thrace (the European part of Turkey). These two previously politically distinct regions came under control of the Roman Empire in the second century BC, eventually becoming the core of the Roman Byzantine Empire. For times predating the Ottoman period, a distinction should also be made between the history of the Turkic peoples, and the history of the territories now forming the Republic of Turkey From the time when parts of what is now Turkey were conquered by the Seljuq dynasty, the history of Turkey spans the medieval history of the Seljuk Empire, the medieval to modern history of the Ottoman Empire, and the history of the Republic of Turkey since the 1920s. Prehistory of Anatolia Human habitation in Anatolia dates back to the Paleolithic. The earliest representations of culture in Anatolia were Stone Age artifacts. Artifacts from the Paleolithic era have been found scattered through Anatolia, and many are currently housed in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, in the Archaeological Museum in Antalya, and in other Turkish institutions. Göbekli Tepe is the site of the oldest known man-made structure, a temple dating to circa 10,000 BC, while Çatalhöyük is a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date. Nevalı Çori was an early Neolithic settlement on the middle Euphrates, in Şanlıurfa. The Urfa Man statue is dated c. 9000 BC, to the period of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, and is defined as "the oldest known naturalistic life-sized sculpture of a human". It is considered to be contemporaneous with Göbekli Tepe. The settlement of Troy started in the Neolithic Age and continued into the Iron Age.