Karabük lies inside the region the ancients called Paphlagonia, and settlement here began in the Early Bronze Age. After the Hittites fell with the migrations of 1200 BC the district came under Phrygian influence; it was Persian between the 5th and 4th centuries BC, and from 64 BC it was Roman.
The Turkish presence here began before the conquest. In the 10th century, seeing Anatolia emptying of population through the migrations caused by social and economic crisis, the Byzantine administration was obliged to settle peoples of European origin — Germanic groups, Slavs, Catalans — and also warrior Turkic peoples who had accepted Christianity, such as the Pechenegs, the Oghuz and the Cumans. Because Byzantium made this settlement a matter of state policy, Eskipazar and Eflani became Turkish before a great many other places.
