The pages of world history textbooks contain a litany of “lost” empires and civilizations, but usually, upon further review, it is revealed that these so called lost empires are often just lesser known cultures that had a less apparent impact on history than other more well-known civilizations. When one scours the pages of history for civilizations that seem inexplicably lost but had a great impact during its time, a number of places in Asia Minor pop up.

For example, Troy is unquestionably one of the most famous and legendary cities of antiquity, yet it is also the most mysterious. While ancient cities like Rome and Athens survived, and the destruction of others like Carthage and Pompeii were well-documented, the fame of Troy rested entirely on Homer’s epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey. The poems were so famous in the ancient world that Augustus had Virgil associate Rome’s foundation with the destruction of Troy and Aeneas’s own odyssey in the Aeneid. Augustus went so far as to have a new settlement, New Ilium, built in the region.

In 1595 BCE, a mysterious new army struck Babylon without warning, spreading terror throughout the city. These warriors would cross the ancient Near East, destroying anything in their way with ruthless efficiency. In a time of war and conquest, they were the mightiest military power of their age. They were the Hittites, a warlike civilization that rose in central Anatolia from the capital city of Hattusa. At its height from around 1400 to 1200 BCE, the Hittite empire extended over a wide area of modern day Turkey and northern Syria.

Western civilization is directly linked to the incredible things that happened in Miletus during the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. In the context of the dynamic political and mercantile interactions between different lands, philosophy and science were able to arise in Miletus because of the presence of a group of rich traders.