Indo-European is a large group of languages that have apparently evolved from a common root. It includes most of the languages of modern Europe (Germanic, Slavic, Greek); modern Indo-Iranian (e.g. Hindu, Persian) and other tongues (Armenian); and also dead languages (Hittite, Phrygian). Attempts have been made to explain this pattern of languages as a result of migrations or invasions in prehistoric or early historic times. A widely accepted view places the proto-Indo-European homeland in the southern Russian steppes during the fifth millennium BC, but it remains a controversy.
At least from the Akkadian period (c.2270-c.2083 BC) central Anatolia was known as the ‘Land of the Hatti’; and evidence of a ‘Hattic’ civilization has been found in later Hittite archives. It is thus commonly considered that the predominant population of the region during the third millennium BC were an indigenous people called the Hattians. Before the end of the third millennium BC there were three known groups of people in Anatolia speaking Indo-European languages: Luwians in the west; Palaians in the north; and the speakers of a language called Nesite in central or eastern Anatolia. Nesite later became the official language of the Hittite Empire
By the middle of the third millennium BC there were a number of important centres in various parts of Anatolia: Troy (=Hissarlik) and Poliochni (on Lemnos) in the northwest; Beycesultan (Phrygia) in the southwest; and Tarsus (Cilicia) in the southeast. In central Anatolia many prosperous settlements developed in a region stretching from just below the southern bend of the Kizilirmak northwards towards the Pontic zone along the southern shore of the Black Sea. Prominent among these was Alaca Hoyuk (northeast of Boghazkoy); Hattusa (=Boghazkoy); Alisar Hoyuk (southeast of Boghazkoy); Zalpa (north of Boghazkoy); and Kanesh (=Kultepe; northeast of Kayseri). According to a later tradition (c.1400 BC) Naram-Sin of Akkad (r.c.2190-c.2154 BC) dealt with a rebellion of seventeen local rulers, including Zipani of Kanesh and Pamba of Hatti.Kanesh is the best documented site of the Old Assyrian Karum (‘harbour’), an independent merchant colony just outside the city walls. Erishum-I of Assyria (r.c.1846-c.1807 BC) opened trade relations with the major Near Eastern cities of the time. Karum-Kanesh became part of this commercial network in which metals, stoneware, ivory, wheat and wool were traded widely. Local rulers levied taxes on the caravans, and in return they secured trade routes. Karum-Kanesh remained a hub of trade for almost a hundred years.
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