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People of Lycia

Lycians (Λύκιοι) is the name of various peoples who lived, at different times, in Lycia, a geopolitical area in Anatolia (also known as Asia Minor).

According to Herodotus, the culture and customs of the Lycians resembled a hybrid of Cretan culture (like that of the Termilae) and that of the neighboring Carians (the Carians spoke an Anatolian language and one might infer from this that they were closely connected culturally to the Milyae). For instance, Herodotus mentioned a unique custom, whereby Lycian males named "themselves after their mothers" and emphasized their "mother's female ascendants". This passage has normally been understood as meaning that the Lycians were a matrilineal society. In Greek culture, Lycia (like Delos and Delphi) was sacred to Apollo, who was also known as Lycian, Delian and Pythian (Delphi). In the Homeric Hymns, Apollo is mentioned as the lord of Lycia: "O Lord, Lycia is yours and lovely Maeonia and Miletus, charming city by the sea, but over wave girt Delos you greatly reign your own self". Bacchylides in his Epinician Odes, called Apollo "lord of the Lycians'. Pindar in his Pythian Odes, called Apollo the "lord of Lycia and Delos, you who love the Castalian spring of Parnassus". In the Aristophanes work The Knights, at some point Cleon called Apollo the god of Lycia. Semos the Delian wrote: "Some say the birth of Apollo took place in Lycia, others Delos, others Zoster in Attica, others Tegyra in Boeotia." The 2nd century CE geographer Pausanias wrote that the Lycians in Patara showed a bronze bowl in their temple of Apollo, saying that Telephus dedicated it and Hephaestus made it. In addition, Pausanias also wrote that the Lycian poet Olen composed some of the oldest Greek hymns. Clement of Alexandria wrote that the statues of Zeus and Apollo, along with the lions that were dedicated to them, were created by Phidias. Solinus wrote that the Lycians dedicated a city to Hephaestus and called it Hephaestia.

Throughout the 1950s, P. Demargne and H. Metzger meticulously explored the site of Xanthos in Lycia, which included an acropolis. Metzger reported the discovery of Geometric pottery dating the occupation of the citadel to the 8th century BCE. J. M. Cook concluded that these discoveries constituted the earliest form of material culture in Lycia since the region may have been uninhabited throughout prehistoric times. The Lycians may ultimately have been nomadic settlers who descended into the southwestern areas of Asia Minor during the 8th century BCE.