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The first foundation of the City
CULTUREL
DETAILS OF ISTANBUL
The first foundation
of the City
The oldest signs
of habitation in the İstanbul area have been found on the banks of the Kurbağalıdere
Creek in Kadıköy, in the Fikirtepe locality; it is considered that these finds
date from the end of the 4th century or the beginning of the 3rd
century BC. Research carried out in recent times in a natural cave in a rocky
hillside overlooking the north side of the Büyükçekmece lake 20 km west of İstanbul
has proved that people lived here in prehistoric times. An interesting point
is that this cave was regarded as a sacred place by the Byzantines after the
advent of Christianity and they set to work to give its spacious entrance form
and turned it into a church. The cave extends down into the depths of the earth
over a distance of 1 km and the height of some of its corridors reaches 15m
in some places. At the bottom of an extremely thick layer of earth and manure
a large number of fossils, stone-age tools, flint spear-heads and pieces of
bone have been found. These all go to prove that the area around İstanbul has
been inhabited since the dawn of history.
There is no reason
at all why there should not have been another centre of habitation on the site
of present-day
İstanbul. However,
the increase in the depth of the soil layer previously mentioned has rendered
a search for these very early signs of habitation impossible. It would however,
seem more within the bounds of possibility that the very first city was ounded
on Silivritepe, the high promontory between the Alibey and Kâğıthane creeks
at the upper end of the Golden Horn. If we accept the idea that prehistoric
man preferred to settle at the head of running water, as evidenced by the finds
at Fikirtepe and Küçüçekmece it would be entirely convincing to suppose the
existence of a settlement at the top end of the Golden Horn on Silivritepe,
a place which provided a safe refuge for small boats, a plentiful supply of
fish in all seasons, the banks of which were fertile and suitable for agriculture
and which in addition was supplied with fresh water by these two creeks. In
all probablility the best place to search for the first signs of habitation
in İstanbul would be at the upper end of the Golden Horn. Apart from this there
was also a centre of habitation at the tip of the triangular piece of land enclosed
by the city walls now known as Sarayburnu. The Roman writer Plinius, who lived
in the lst century AD, states that first of all there was a village called Lygos
in this triangle. Fragments of pottery found during excavations carried out
in 1937 in the second courtyard of the Topkapı Palace are extremely inadequate
evidence of İstanbul's habitation in the 7th century BC because the
soil in which they were found had been brought there from another place.
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