KARS IN THE PRE - HISTORIC PERIOD

While scientists commonly agree on the remarkable cultural richness of Northeastern Anatolia, it remains a real terra incognita. The earliest findings in the region date back to the Bronze Age. Obsidian tools found in Kars are now on display at the Moscow Archeology Museum.

Earthenware pots made from red earth found in the region dating from the Neolithic to late Calcolithic ages show a resemblance to those found in the Caucasus, which scientists claim shows evidence of interaction between the two cultures.

Excavations carried out in the Sos Hoyuk (Hoyuk is a Turkish word meaning hill or mound and refers to an archeological site in the form of an earthen mound) region have led to Kars and Erzurum being defined as part of the ‘Kura-Araxes’ culture, which takes its name from the Kura and Aras rivers in the region and flourished around 3500 BC, between the early Bronze Age and the Calcolithic Age.

The Kura-Araxes region, like the rest of Caucasus, was inhabited by farming and stockbreeding groups. According to archaeologist Antonio Sagona, the Ardahan region was home to groups that looked after animals, and the slopes of Sarikamis, Kagizman and Surmeli were used for agriculture.

The discovery of stone houses, portable cooking units, ornamented earthenware pots, bronze axes, hoes, sickles, hand mills and wooden kitchen tools dating back to 4000 BC shows that the residents of Kars at the time possessed a rich domestic culture.

Living conditions for the stockbreeding nomadic groups were quite advantageous due to the vast fertile grasslands of the region. They were also warriors, and occasionally attacked the settled agricultural groups and occupied their land.

This kind of threat led agriculturalists throughout Anatolia and Mesopotamia to fortify their settlements in order to protect their land, and thus to lay the foundations of cities surrounded by high walls. Some of these city establishments date back to 4000–3000 BC, but in Kars such defensive fortifications were not adopted until much later, and therefore the nomads often drove out the settled groups, who used the land collectively.

There was no noteworthy settlement in Kars until the mass tribal immigration.