Turkey is the home of the first coins. More or less. Similar claims are made for China. There was writing in both places at the time that the coins emerged, but not much of that writing has come to us, and what was written about was not necessarily relevant to the establishment of historical facts about the usage of what we call “coins.”
And then there is also the obvious inference that those things that we now call “coins,” were preceded by metallic commodities, in convenient sizes and shapes, that were traded by weight. We have examples of those commodities in both Turkey and China, and we argue about whether they were, in some way, coins.
Turkey today is a little bit, relatively speaking, of European territory, and a much larger bit in Asia, though Asian Turkey is actually small compared with other Asian countries. Three percent of the national territory is in Europe.
The country currently refers to itself as Turkiye, rather than Turkey. The reason given is that Turkiye is a Turkish word, and Turkey is English. They are Turks, it’s their country, so there it is.
I’m writing in English. We’ll continue using the English word: Turkey. Asian Turkey is called Anatolia (in English). The area of Anatolia is about 10 percent larger than Texas, a bit larger than Myanmar, about half the size of Iran.
We’ll be talking about Anatolia, mostly, when we discuss Turkey. That’s where most of the national business of Turkey has, and still does, take place.
Anatolia is a large peninsula jutting
