Leon is a people magnet

If you consider Jim, Mark, Beth and I friendly, you haven’t seen cousin Leon in action! Before we left Hotel Bella, Jim and I started conversations with several other residents, but Leon knew everyone there.

As Jim, Leon and I were eating supper together our last night in Selcuk, Leon said, “Just a minute.” Shortly thereafter James joined our table. “I hate to see someone eating alone,” Leon explained.

There’s an old Buddhist saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” In our case, Jim, Leon, and I had visited Ephesus that day – an ancient site with ruins from the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine eras. We were realizing that we had forgotten what little we knew about the early periods of Turkey (Asia Minor). Voila. It turned out that James was a Master’s student in archeology from Canada.

Here’s some of the knowledge we gleaned over our spicy meatballs and fish: Since Turkey is at the junction of two continents, it has been home to many cultures and peoples. In fact, it may be the home of the first city ever in 6500BC! James “specializes” in the 550-490 B.C. period, so before and after that is “not his time.” But here are a few tidbits from our conversation that I found especially interesting.

• The Hittites were here from as early as 2000 B.C. Their influence waned after the destruction of Troy around 1200 B.C.

• James says that 1200-700 B.C. is considered a 500 year Dark Period. Mysterious “sea people” came and destroyed towns and dispersed the people. Most settlements were abandoned, with the exception of mountaintop villages. He said that no one has concluded who these “sea people” were. (I joked that they were probably pirates from off the coast of Somalia. Jim surmised that they were Swedish Vikings. Neither of us knew what we were talking about.)

• 700-400 B.C. are Ioanian and Persian periods. James said that this is his personal favorite because it is so “interesting yet frustrating.” Why frustrating? - because no primary written sources exist, and the secondary sources conflict. Why interesting? – “ It’s all a puzzle yet to be put together.” (Homer is believed to have been born in Smyrna, Turkey during this period.)

• 333 B.C. Alexander the Great conquers the area, and the Greek period begins.

• 120 B.C. The area becomes part of the Roman Empire. By 50 A.D. St. Paul (who also was born within the boundaries of present-day Turkey) was back preaching “the good news.” A sizable Christian community developed here with apostle John staying on. When the Catholic church split into the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox arms, Turkey was Eastern Orthodox, and the Byzantine era began.

* By 1450 A.D. Constantinople falls to the Ottomans. I’ve already written about Ataturk – and the end of the Ottoman sultanate in 1923 – so our history lesson ends with dessert.

I lay in bed after that dinner and think about how YOUNG our country is.