The earliest settlement known in the province goes back to the 7th century BC, and in the city itself it is Bozukkale — ancient Kotyora — beside the Kirazlimanı cemetery. Kotyora was a small colony. The Greek commander Xenophon called in here in the 4th century BC on his way back from the war in Persia and wrote that they found a settled people, stayed forty-five days and went on. In the 2nd century BC, under the Pontic king Pharnakes I, the town was emptied and its people moved to Giresun.
From about 675 BC the central and eastern Black Sea region that Ordu belongs to was ruled in turn by Cimmerians, Milesians, Persians, and Alexander and his commanders. After them came the Pontic state, which lasted roughly three and a half centuries, from 280 BC to AD 63, until Rome destroyed it.
