Who Were the Lycians?

History has not left us with as clear a picture of the Lycians as it has with some other ancient civilizations, such as the Greeks.  However, some questions and facts regarding the Lycians can be answered or at least speculated upon..

The Lycians were an ancient people who inhabited the area of present day Turkey between the bays of Antalya and Fethiye, a compact, mountainous territory. The ancient Greeks knew and admired the Lycians, for the Lycians had solved a problem which baffled the ancient world: how to reconcile free government in the city-state with the needs of a larger political unity. The Lycians had a fierce desire for freedom and independence and this found its expression in their sense of unity and federation.  The institutions of the democratic Lycian Federation (the first democratic union known) were studied and envied by most classical writers.  While Greek city-states were constantly at war with each other, the Lycian cities enjoyed peace amongst themselves.

The Lycians were an important part of the Greek and Near Eastern worlds since they lived at the point where the two cultures intermingled at an important strategic juncture. The Lycians came under the twin influences of their neighbours. As a result they developed a very different style of art.

The Lycians were also one of the few non-Hellenistic nations of antiquity which could not be called ‘barbarians’. In fact, their image in antiquity was much like that of today's Swiss: a hard-working and wealthy people, neutral in world affairs but fierce in the defense of their freedom and conservative in their attachment to ancestral tradition. Lycia was the last region on the entire Mediterranean coast to be incorporated as a province in the Roman Empire and even then the Lycian Union continued to function independently. The Lycians spoke a language of their own, with their own unique alphabet, before adopting Greek around the 3^rd century BC. Their many monuments, especially their beautiful tombs which embody their ancestor cult, still dot the entire landscape of the southwest coast of Turkey between the Gulf of Fethiye and Phaselis.

Besides their unique form of government, the Lycians may have had one unusual custom that the Greeks found very unfamilliar. Herodotos noted: "They have customs that resemble no one else’s. They use their mother’s name instead of their father’s. If one Lycian asks another from whom he is descended, he gives the name of his mother. And if a citizen woman should cohabit with a slave, the children are considered of free birth; but if a citizen man, even the foremost of them, has a foreign wife or mistress, the children are have been speaking of an older Lycian custom, for in Lycian and Greek inscriptions alike a man is described as the son of his father.  But it may be that in private life the Lycians followed a matriarchal order while adhering to contemporary customs in public expression, such as inscriptions on tombs.  So far, no one has been able to solve the question. It is noteworthy, however, that a woman was allowed to preside over the national assembly held each year at the national shrine of Lycia, Letoon.  This is a reminder of the ancient matriarchal customs in Anatolia.

Lycian Way (Turkish: Likya Yolu) is a 540-km, way-marked hiking trail in southwestern Turkey, connecting Fethiye in the west with southwest of Antalya (the village and climbing centre of Geyikbayırı up on the mountains, to be more precisely) in the east along the Lycian coast.

The maintains and supports the route and sells the official guide The guide book's fourth edition was published in June 2014. Substantial changes were made to the trail in 2014, and are continuing, so check these sites for information. The CRS is developing an iPhone application for the trail, which will have the accommodate and transport on it as well as the best known map. It was expected to be available for the 2015 spring trekking season. are available for each route section and each community, showing accommodation, attractions, services, waypoints, and other useful locations in an online wiki for the Lycian Way. Trekopedia has developed an iPhone application designed to assist travelers on the Lycian Way. book from its web site. The Lycian Way is a great way to get a sense of true Mediterranean Turkey, away from crowded beaches, expensive resorts, and non-native palm trees.