A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes shows how kings, emperors and sultans have been fighting over the city for millennia.
Eight thousand years ago, the Black Sea was a lake and the land on which Istanbul now sits was not where Europe ended and Asia began. In its place was a ribbon of land, fed by springs and dotted with Neolithic settlements that may have farmed as well as hunted. Around 5500BC, however, a rapid melting of the ice sheets led to a rise in sea level of up to 238 feet. The waters surging in ran …read more
Source: New Statesman
