Dilek Peninsula-Büyük Menderes Delta National Park Aegean Region in general. The peninsula was shaped into its current form over several geological eras with the tectonic merging of Paleozoic schist formations, Mesozoic limestone and marble deposits, and finally the accretion of large clays and other sediments during the Neogene period. This is partly because of Turkey's unstable fault block terrain, and because of the close proximity of the Anatolian-Aegean plate boundary, which generates massifs of mountains all across western Turkey. This includes the peninsula and the mountains surrounding the Büyük Menderes River, known collectively as the Menderes Massif. The peninsula is highly mountainous, with most of its
Anatolian peoples Anatolian peoples Anatolians were Indo-European peoples of the Near East identified by their use of the Anatolian languages. These peoples were among the oldest Indo-European ethnolinguistic groups, one of the most archaic, because Anatolians were the first or among the first branches of Indo-European peoples to separate from the initial Proto-Indo-European community that gave origin to the individual Indo-European peoples. Together with the Proto-Tocharians, who migrated eastward, the Anatolian peoples constituted the first known waves of Indo-European emigrants out of the Eurasian steppe. It is likely that they reached the Near East from the north, via the Balkans or the