Everything between Anatolia, the Near East and Europe — migration, invasion, trade, cultural exchange — has passed through Thrace, and that is still the region's defining feature. In Tekirdağ, settlements of the upper Palaeolithic have been found in the caves of the Güneşkaya and Güngörmez valleys in Saray district, dated between 40000 and 10000 BC.
Production sites for stone axes from the first period of settled farming, the Neolithic between 8000 and 5000 BC, have been found in Şarköy district. The provincial museum directorate has identified Chalcolithic settlements at river mouths along the Sea of Marmara — Toptepe is dated to 4300 BC — and, along the same coast, settlements contemporary with the first and second levels of Troy, in the Early Bronze Age between 3000 and 2400 BC.
