Turkey Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world. Various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period. Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family. In fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since at least forty thousand years ago, and is known to have been in the
Northern Thrace Northern Thrace Northern Thrace or North Thrace (, ) (as opposed to Western Thrace and East Thrace to the south) constitutes the northern and the largest part of the historical region of Thrace. Bulgarian Thrace is located in Southern Bulgaria and refers to the whole territory south of the Balkan Mountains and east of the Mesta River; to the Greek and Turkish borders in south and to the Black Sea in east. It encompasses Sredna Gora, the Upper Thracian Plain and 90% of the Rhodopes. The climate differs from continental to transitional continental and mountainous. The highest temperature recorded in