Walking through ancient cities with my books and notes in hand has given me some of the most rewarding moments of my life. Anatolia offers an extraordinary opportunity to observe the many cultural layers of history. To contemplate the Hittites, Carians, Lycians, Phrygians, Ionians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks, and Ottomans within the same geography is to witness that history advances not in a linear fashion but through accumulation. The fact that Anatolia has been h

The First Scientist-Explorer Pytheas of Massalia (fl. late 4th century BCE) stands as one of antiquity’s most enigmatic figures, an explorer, astronomer, and geographer whose reach extended far beyond the intellectual and geographic boundaries of his time. At a moment when most Greek thinkers conceived of the Earth as a narrow, temperate band of civilization surrounded by impassable extremes, Pytheas undertook a voyage that radically expanded the Greek worldview. Sailing f