Asia Minor

Anatolia (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 is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Bosporus, the Propontis and Hellespont 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 the Aegean Sea through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and separates Anatolia from Thrace in Southeast Europe. During the Neolithic period, Anatolia was an early center 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 the continent as far west as the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles. The earliest recorded inhabitants of Anatolia, such as the Hattians, 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; othe

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