Asia Minor is a peninsula of western Asia between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. Some people call it Anatolia. The Aegean Sea separates Asia Minor from Greece on the west. On the east, the peninsula extends to the upper Euphrates River. Asia Minor is the geographical name for the region. Turkey occupies all the land on the peninsula.
Asia Minor was one of the first places in the world to become civilized. It may have been here that people first learned the use of iron over 3,500 years ago. Archaeologists have found evidence of an advanced society that lived in the south-central area before 7000 B.C. The Hittite kingdom developed on the peninsula in 1900 B.C., and the Aegean peoples settled there in about 1200 B.C. The civilization of classical Greece had its beginnings among the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor. The Romans took over the western part of Asia Minor in 133 B.C. They gained the rest of the peninsula around 50 B.C.
People from central Asia invaded Asia Minor in the A.D. 200’s. Arabs attacked the cities of Asia Minor in the 600’s, when the peninsula was part of the Byzantine Empire. The long period of Turkish control began in 1071. The Crusades and Mongol invasions of the 1200’s and 1300’s caused the breakup of the government set up by the Seljuk Turks and prepared the way for the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The area’s resources were developed after the Turkish Republic was formed in 1923 (see Turkey (The republic of Turkey)).
