ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Prehistory of Anatolia

Anatolia is a place that now sits in modern-day Turkey, but a long, long time ago before anyone wrote things down, it was home to lots of different groups of people. This time before there were written records is called prehistory.

This prehistory can be split into different time periods based on things like what tools people were using and how they lived. The earliest period is called the Paleolithic, and during this time, people were living as hunters and gatherers. This means that they moved around a lot and hunted animals and gathered food like wild fruits and berries. They used tools made out of stone, bone, and wood, like stone axes to chop things and sharp stones for hunting.

As time went on, people started to settle down and live in one place more permanently. They also began to make pottery and use metals like copper and bronze to make tools and weapons. This is known as the Neolithic period and it lasted from around 8,000 to 5,000 BCE.

Later, Anatolia became an important place for a lot of different civilizations to live and grow, like the Hittites, who were famous for their chariots and their ironworking skills.

So, even though we don't have any written records from this time period, we can learn a lot about the prehistory of Anatolia from the tools and artifacts that have been found by archaeologists.