Episode 3: Prehistoric Thrace & Anatolia

Long before Byzantion rose on its rocky promontory, the Thracian Peninsula and the adjacent coasts of northwest Anatolia were carved and recarved by shifting seas and ice-age climates. As early as the Lower Paleolithic, hunter-gatherers left flint tools and butchery marks in caves around the Sea of Marmara, hinting at intermittent human presence driven south by expanding glaciers. With the last glacial retreat, Mesolithic bands expanded into the flooded coasts, mastering fishing in newly forming estuaries at the Bosphorus mouth. Over millennia, mobile foragers exploited rich woodlands and wetlands, their seasonal camps evolving into semi-permanent encampments as they tracked wild boar, deer, and migratory fish through an ever-changing landscape.

By the seventh millennium BC, these groups quietly ushered in the Neolithic revolution: they cleared oak groves, domesticated sheep and goats, and fashioned the first locally fired pottery on the peninsula’s sheltered bays. Obsidian from the nearby Anatolian highlands and copper ingots from the early Chalcolithic workshops testify to growing trade networks along Marmara’s shores. By the Bronze Age, tell sites atop low hills reveal walled settlements where metallurgy advanced alongside weaving and grain surplus. These early communities, forged in the crucible of climate change, resource exchange, and maritime corridors, set the stage for the great Greek migrations that would soon transform this crossroads into Byzantion.