FUN WITH MAPS – ISSUE 2023-164 DAILY FEATURE:

By Steve Kovacs (Introduction by Chuck Gibson)

LOVELAND, OH (October 13, 2023) – Today’s edition of Fun with Maps takes us back a couple thousand years – yes, a couple thousand years in history to visit the capital of Turkey. Read on…

Ancient

Where are the earliest known human made structures?  Not in Egypt, China or Italy.  Turkey is the answer, dating to about 9600 BC — Gobekli Tepe temple in southeastern Anatolia. 

But this post is about a more contemporary location in Anatolia, the city of Ankara in central Anatolia, whose origins date to only 250 BC.

With the fall of the Ottoman Empire post World War I, Turkey was looking to relocate its capital from Constantinople, now called Istanbul. So, on October 13, 1923 – 100 years ago today – it was agreed to relocate the Turkish capital to Ankara.

Ankara has nearly 6 million inhabitants and is a rather modern city.

Much of today’s Turkey lies on the peninsula historically named Asia Minor.  The older name for this area is Anatolia.   The Italian Maggini created this map of the area in 1670 using the Ptolemaic projection, which was attempting to capture a portion of the curved surface of the earth, as it is a globe, on two dimensional paper.   

Steve Kovacs and his wife Theresa reside in Loveland, Ohio where they raised their two children. He is a passionate collector of antique maps.

Visit his antique map boutique world-on-paper online. Watch for his daily feature Steve Kovacs: Fun with Maps here on Loveland Beacon.