NIGDE

The ancident name for Nigde was “NAHITA”.The artifacts fount at the Kaletepe Obsidian Workshops date back to 600,000 B.C. There are ongoing excavations at: the Kaletepe Obsidian Workshops,Bahçeli Köþk Mound, ÇiftlikTepecik Mound, the Tin Mine Quarry discovered at Çamardi Kestel and the Göltepe of Madenci Köyü.

These projects demonstrate that Nigde was first settled 10,000 years ago and that there have been civilisations in Nigde continuosly since then to the present day.From Assyrian and Hittite writen documents and from the work going on at the Porsuk Mound excavation we learn that Hittite rule began in 1,800 B.C. the region passed eventually from Hittite to Assyrian sovereignty and after th Assyrians it passed to the Phrygians.In the period up to becoming Roman in 17 B.C. the ragion was home to the Medines, the Persians, the Hellenistic Cappadocian Kingdom of Pergamum.When in 395 A.D. the Roman Empire split into two Niðde became part of East Roman (Byzantine) lands.

The Turks began arriving in Anatolia in 1071as the Seljuk Dynasty and continued to expand until1308. In 1470 the region was definitively under the rolo of the Ottoman Empire and remained so until the emergence of the Turkish Republic.