Anatolian peoples

Last updated November 07, 2023

The Anatolians were Indo-European-speaking peoples of the Anatolian Peninsula in present-day Turkey, identified by their use of the Anatolian languages.^[1] These peoples were among the oldest Indo-European ethnolinguistic groups and one of the most archaic, because Anatolians were among the first Indo-European peoples to separate from the Proto-Indo-European community that gave origin to the individual Indo-European peoples.^[2]^[1]

History

Origins

Together with the Proto-Tocharians, who migrated eastward, the Anatolian peoples constituted the first known waves of Indo-European emigrants out of the Eurasian steppe.^[3] They likely reached Anatolia from the north, via the Balkans or the Caucasus, in the 3rd millennium BC.^[1]^[4]^[5] This movement has yet to be documented archaeologically.^[5]^[6] Although they had wagons, they probably emigrated before Indo-Europeans had learned to use chariots for war.^[3]^[7] Comparison of Hittite agricultural terms with those of other Indo-European subgroups indicates that the Anatolian peoples seceded from the other Indo-Europeans before the establishment of a common agricultural nomenclature, which suggests that they entered the Near East as a cohesive people through a common route.^[5]

The Anatolian peoples were intruders in an area in which the local population had already founded cities, established literate bureaucracies and established kingdoms and palace cults.^[2] Once they entered the region, the cultures of the local populations, in particular the Hattians, significantly influenced them linguistically, politically and religiously.^[5] Christopher I. Beckwith suggests that the Anatolian peoples initially gained a foothold in Anatolia after being hired by the Hattians to fight other invading Indo-European groups.^[6]

Bronze Age

The earliest linguistic and historical attestation of the Anatolian peoples are names mentioned in Assyrian mercantile texts from the 19th Century BC at Kanesh.^[6]^[8] Kanesh was at the time the center of a network of Assyrian merchants overseeing trade between Assyria and the warring states of Anatolia. This certainly increased the power of the Anatolian peoples who inhabited the city.^[2]

The Hittites are by far the best known of the Anatolian peoples. Originally referring to themselves as the Neshites after their capital at Kanesh, which they had at one point captured from the Hatti, the Hittites then seized the Hattic capital of Hattusa. The Hittite language thereafter gradually supplanted Hattic as the predominant language in Anatolia.^[1] Uniting several independent Hattic kingdoms in Anatolia the Hittites began establishing a Middle Eastern empire in the 17th-century BC.^[2] They sacked Babylon, seized Assyrian cities and fought the Egyptian Empire to a standstill at the Battle of Kadesh, the greatest chariot battle of the ancient world.^[2] Their empire disappeared with the Late Bronze Age collapse in the 12th-century BC. As Hittite was a language of the elite, the language disappeared with the empire.^[2]

Another Anatolian group was the Luwians, who migrated to south-west Anatolia in the early Bronze Age.^[9] Unlike Hittite, the Luwian language does not contain loanwords from Hattic, indicating that it was initially spoken in western Anatolia.^[2] The Luwians inhabited a large area and their language was spoken after the collapse of the Hittite Empire.^[2]

The least known Anatolian group were the Palaic peoples, who inhabited the region of Pala in northern Anatolia.^[9] This area had probably also previously been inhabited by the Hatti. It is likely that Palaic peoples disappeared with the invasion of the Kaskians in the 15th-century BC.^[10]

Iron Age

Following the Bronze Age collapse, a number of Neo-Hittite petty kingdoms survived until about the 8th century BC. Later in the Iron Age, Anatolian languages were spoken by the Lycians, Lydians, Carians, Pisidians and others. These languages were mostly extinct in the Hellenistic period, by the 3rd century BC, although late survival of some remnants is possible, the Isaurian language may have survived into the Late Antiquity, with funerary inscriptions recorded for as late as the 5th century AD.

Culture

Law

The better known laws of the Anatolian peoples were the Hittite laws that were formulated as case laws. These laws were organized in groups according to their subject (in eight main groups). Hittite laws show an aversion to the death penalty, the usual penalty for serious offenses being enslavement to forced labour, however in some cases of serious offenses death penalty was applied.

Related Research Articles

Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in West Asia and is the western-most extension of continental Asia. The land mass of Anatolia constitutes most of the territory of contemporary Turkey. Geographically, the Anatolian region is bounded by the Turkish Straits to the north-west, the Black Sea to the north, the Armenian Highlands to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west. Topographically, the Sea of Marmara connects the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea through the Bosporus strait and the Dardanelles strait, and separates Anatolia from Thrace in the Balkan peninsula of Southeastern Europe.

The Hittites were an Anatolian Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of Bronze Age West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea, they settled in modern day Turkey in the early 2nd millennium BC. The Hittites formed a series of polities in north-central Anatolia, including the kingdom of Kussara, the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom, and an empire centered on Hattusa. Known in modern times as the Hittite Empire, it reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Šuppiluliuma I, when it encompassed most of Anatolia and parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kültepe</span> Human settlement

Kültepe, also known as Kanesh or Nesha, is an archaeological site in Kayseri Province, Turkey, inhabited from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, in the Early Bronze Age. The nearest modern city to Kültepe is Kayseri, about 20km southwest. It consisted of an Upper city, and a lower city, where an Assyrian kārum, trading colony, was found. Its ancient names are recorded in Assyrian and Hittite sources. In cuneiform inscriptions from the 20th and the 19th century BC, the city was mentioned as Kaneš (Kanesh); in later Hittite inscriptions, the city was mentioned as Neša, or occasionally as Aniša (Anisha). In 2014, the archaeological site was inscribed in the Tentative list of World Heritage Sites in Turkey. It is the place where the earliest record of a definitively Indo-European language has been found, Hittite, dated to the 20th century BC.

The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia, part of present-day Turkey. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language.

Hittite, also known as Nesite, is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people of Bronze Age Anatolia who created an empire centred on Hattusa, as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. The language, now long extinct, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 17th to the 13th centuries BC, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BC, making it the earliest attested use of the Indo-European languages.

Hattic, or Hattian, was a non-Indo-European agglutinative language spoken by the Hattians in Asia Minor in the 2nd millennium BC. Scholars call the language "Hattic" to distinguish it from Hittite, the Indo-European language of the Hittite Empire. The Hittites referred to the language as "hattili". The name is doubtlessly related to the Assyrian and Egyptian designation of an area west of the Euphrates as "Land of the Hatti" (Khatti).

The Hattians were an ancient Bronze Age people that inhabited the land of Hatti, in central Anatolia. They spoke a distinctive Hattian language, which was neither Semitic nor Indo-European. Hattians are attested by archeological records from the Early Bronze Age and by historical references in later Hittite and other sources. Their main centre was the city of Hattush. Faced with Hittite expansion, Hattians were gradually absorbed into the new political and social order, imposed by the Hittites, who were one of the Indo-European-speaking Anatolian peoples. The Hittites kept the country name unchanged, which also became the main designation for the Hittite state.

Palaic is an extinct Indo-European language, attested in cuneiform tablets in Bronze Age Hattusa, the capital of the Hittites. Palaic, which was apparently spoken mainly in northern Anatolia, is generally considered to be one of four primary sub-divisions of the Anatolian languages, alongside Hittite, Luwic and Lydian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anitta (king)</span>

Anitta, son of Pitḫana, reigned ca. 1740–1725 BC, and was a king of Kuššara, a city that has yet to be identified. He is the earliest known ruler to compose a text in the Hittite language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hittite mythology and religion</span> Religious beliefs and practices of the Hittites

Hittite mythology and Hittite religion were the religious beliefs and practices of the Hittites, who created an empire centered in what is now Turkey from c. 1600–1180 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kussara</span> Bronze Age kingdom in Anatolia

Kussara (Kuššar) was a Middle Bronze Age kingdom in Anatolia. The kingdom, though apparently important at one time, is mostly remembered today as the origin of the dynasty that would form the Old Hittite Kingdom.

The Kaska were a loosely affiliated Bronze Age non-Indo-European tribal people, who spoke the unclassified Kaskian language and lived in mountainous East Pontic Anatolia, known from Hittite sources. They lived in the mountainous region between the core Hittite region in eastern Anatolia and the Black Sea, and are cited as the reason that the later Hittite Empire never extended northward to that area. They are sometimes identified with the Caucones known from Greek records.

The Luwians were an ancient people in Anatolia who spoke the Luwian language. During the Bronze Age, Luwians formed part of the population of the Hittite Empire and adjoining states such as Kizzuwatna. During the Hittite New Kingdom, Luwian replaced Hittite as the empire's dominant language. In the early Iron Age, a number of Luwian-speaking Neo-Hittite states arose in northern Syria. The Luwians are known largely from their language, and it is unclear to what extent they formed a unified cultural or political group.

The following is a list of regions of Ancient Anatolia, also known as "Asia Minor," in the present day Anatolia region of Turkey in Western Asia.

Purushanda was an Anatolian kingdom of the early second millennium prior to the common era. It was conquered by the Hittites sometime between 1650 and 1556 BCE.

The prehistory of Anatolia stretches from the Paleolithic era through to the appearance of classical civilisation in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. It is generally regarded as being divided into three ages reflecting the dominant materials used for the making of domestic implements and weapons: Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. The term Copper Age (Chalcolithic) is used to denote the period straddling the stone and Bronze Ages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pala (Anatolia)</span> Country from Bronze Age Anatolia

Pala was a Bronze Age country in Northern Anatolia. Little is known of Pala except its native Palaic language and its native religion. Their language shared common innovations with Luwian not present in the Hittite language suggesting a prior Luwian-Palaic linguistic complex.

Ziparwa, originally known as Zaparwa, was the head of the pantheon of the Palaians, inhabitants of a region of northern Anatolia known as Pala in the Bronze Age. It is often assumed that he was a weather god in origin, though he was also associated with vegetation. Information about the worship of Ziparwa comes exclusively from Hittite texts, though some of them indicate that formulas in Palaic were used during festivals dedicated to him held in Hittite cities such as Hattusa.

Taru was a weather god worshiped in ancient Anatolia by Hattians. He was associated with the bull, and could be depicted in the form of this animal. It is presumed that the names of the Hittite and Luwian weather gods, Tarḫunna and Tarḫunz, while etymologically Indo-European, were meant to resemble Taru's as a result of Hattian cultural influence on other cultures of the region.

References

Citations

1 2 3 4 Mallory 1997 , pp. 12–16
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Anthony 2007 , pp. 43–48
1 2 Beckwith 2009 , p. 32
↑ Hock & Joseph 1996 , pp. 520–521
1 2 3 4 "Anatolian languages". Encyclopædia Britannica Online . Retrieved July 2, 2018.
1 2 3 Beckwith 2009 , pp. 37–39
↑ Anthony 2007 , pp. 64–65
↑ Fortson, IV 2011 , p. 48
1 2 "Anatolia: The rise and fall of the Hittites". Encyclopædia Britannica Online . Retrieved July 3, 2018.
↑ Ramat, Anna Giacalone; Ramat, Paolo (2015). The Indo-European Languages. Routledge. p. 172. ISBN 978-1134921874. The Palaic peoples were very quickly overwhelmed by the invasions of the Kaskas, a non-IE people from the East, who swept them away and for centuries kept attacking the Hittite kingdom

Sources

Anthony, David (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World . Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-05887-0.
Beckwith, Christopher I. (2009). Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-2994-1 . Retrieved 30 October 2012.
Fortson, IV, Benjamin W. (2011). Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-5968-8 . Retrieved 30 October 2012.
Hock, Hans Heinrich; Joseph, Brian Daniel (1996). Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship: An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-1101-4784-X . Retrieved 30 October 2012.
Mallory, J. P. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Douglas Q. Adams. ISBN 1884964982 . Retrieved 23 March 2013.
Melchert, H. Craig (2012). "The Position of Anatolian" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-07-09.
Sharon R. Steadman; Gregory McMahon (15 September 2011). The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia: (10,000–323 BCE). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-537614-2 . Retrieved 23 March 2013.