Erzurum is one of the oldest inhabited places in Anatolia, and the reasons are practical: a favourable position, workable natural conditions and proximity to the great centres of civilisation. Stone tools found in the area take its past back to the Palaeolithic. The finds from Karaz, Pulur, Güzelova and Sos show that in the Early Bronze Age Erzurum was the centre of the Karaz culture, which spread across a wide territory.
Sitting on the frontier of the Hittite state left the region exposed, and it saw a great many wars and invasions. After 3000 BC the Hurrians, Hayasa, Urartians, Assyrians, Cimmerians, Scythians, Medes and Persians held it in turn; Alexander of Macedon took it in the 4th century BC. The Seleucids followed his death, then Rome — and under Rome the region became the ground for bloody fighting between Romans and Parthians.
