A Little History

The first use of the term Anatolia was in clay tablets written 4300 years ago in the cuneiform letters of Mesopotamia, so that suggested a timespan for this book. (We could have taken you back 11,000 years, because the world’s first human settlement has been discovered at Göbekli Tepe, near the town of Şanlıurfa in southeastern Anatolia, but information on the cuisine of that period is scarce.)

The Hittites may not have been the first organised civilisation on earth (that title should probably go to the Sumerians), but they do seem to have been the first to use iron weapons; the first to make wine and cultivate olives, almonds and apricots; and were the speakers of a language that turned into most of the dialects of modern Europe.