Do you want to get to a much older place and feel the breath of civilizations? Then we need to go urgently… No, not to Greece, and not to Italy, and not even to Ukraine, which claims to be the ancestor of all times and peoples. You just need to go to a remote Turkish village called Palatia.
The locals, in any case, those who have lived here for a long time, know what kind of land they walk on. The very first inhabitants appeared here in the fourth millennium BC. This is proved by the finds of archaeologists: frescoes in the style of Menoi, texts. Archaeologists also found Mycenaean ceramics in the ruins here. By the way, Miletus is mentioned in Greek myths as well, so this is quite a land! It is hard to imagine now, but Miletus was a major trading sea city, merchants from Asia and Greece traded through it. And after all, there was something to trade. The land was too fertile for the city, and therefore gardening and agriculture were in honor. But it does not matter, it was here that there were magnificent vineyards, and the wine was not inferior in taste and quality to Greek wines.
The majority of the city’s population were Greeks, which will also be difficult to imagine now, given that it is now Turkey. Of course, in this area it could not do without wars and great battles – the city was a tasty morsel for everyone. But besides the commercial glory, the city was also famous for the glory of philosophers. Miletus has been a center of exact and philosophical sciences for quite a long time. Many philosophers of ancient times came here and even lived here. But it was the struggle for independence, and then dependence on neighbors that ruined Milet. The Persians captured the city in 494 BC and practically leveled it to the ground.
Now only ruins remain of ancient Miletus, but they also give us the opportunity to understand how beautiful the city was. The ancient theater, which easily accommodated more than fifteen thousand spectators, clearly shows how beautiful and how educated the people of Miletus were. However, in addition to antiquity, another monument of antiquity has been preserved on this land – the Byzantine castle of the eighth century. An ancient mosque with unusually beautiful stone carvings has also been preserved. And the baths of Faustina have also been preserved. It is these terms that tell us that they loved to invent the best here. At least, archaeologists claim that the baths in Miletus were much more mechanized than the Athenian baths. Think about it, even then they were coming up with some mechanisms! By the way, the village still uses a water supply system, which was invented by ancient ancestors. So much for the connection of times!
