ANATOLIA
Map
of proto-Anatolian migration c.3000-2000 BC :
This
map attempts to illustrate in basic terms the separate paths taken
by the Luwians, Hittites, and Pala during their westwards migration
and their progress from proto-Anatolians to kingdom-builders.
![](Map3000BC_max.jpg)
Map of Anatolia and environs 2000 BC :
![](Map1800BC_max.jpg)
The
start of the second millennium BC saw the ancient Near East undergoing
a period of collapse. Due to a mixture of failing harvests, population
decline, and invasion, the Third Dynasty of Ur in southern Mesopotamia
had been swept away, and the repercussions also seem to have hit
Syria.
While
Amorite states fought over the scraps of Sumer, in northern Syria
the number of settlements underwent a reduction, probably caused
by an economic downturn, and it took two centuries for the region
to recover. Once that recovery was underway, from about 1800 BC,
many new states appeared in Syria and northern Mesopotamia as Amorites
and newly arrived Hurrians made their presence felt. The Kingdom
'of Upper Mesopotamia' briefly unified much of the region in a foretaste
of the Mitanni domination of the same territories which would take
place by about 1500 BC. After its fall, the state of Yamkhad dominated
Syria until about 1595 BC.
Further
north, in Anatolia, a series of small city states which had existed
for perhaps a millennium now began to emerge from obscurity. A new
people, the Hittites, were arriving, probably from the Caucuses,
and they began carving out a space for themselves. In southern and
western Anatolia, Luwians had dominated since about the twenty-third
century BC, and by around 1600 BC two Luwian states began to emerge
as they encountered the Hittites and Mitanni.
In
the far west, although the city of Troy had been in existence for
over 1400 years, that too only began to appear in records from around
1600 BC onwards. Previous to that it had been home to a relatively
basic civilisation, with little writing of its own. The limited
levels of knowledge regarding all of these states reveals a lack
of records, even from the Hittites to an extent, especially when
compared to Syria and Mesopotamia.