History of Ancient Lycia
Lycia was a geopolitical region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Muğla on the southern coast of Turkey, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and Burdur Province inland. Known to history since the records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age.

it was populated by speakers of the Luwian language group. Written records began to be inscribed in stone in the Lycian language (a later form of Luwian) after Lycia's involuntary incorporation into the Achaemenid Empire, also called the First Persian Empire. in the Iron Age the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity.

Lycia fought for the Persians in the Persian Wars, a conflict between the Achaemenid Empire and Greek city-states that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. but Achaemenid Empire by the Greeks. it became intermittently a free agent. After a brief membership in the Athenian Empire, it seceded and became independent (its treaty with Athens had omitted the usual non-secession clause), was under the Persians again, revolted again, was conquered by Mausolus of Caria. a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia (Mycale) south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states.

and finally fell under Macedonian hegemony upon the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great. Due to the influx of Greek speakers and the sparsity of the remaining Lycian speakers, Lycia was rapidly Hellenized. Hellenized is the adoption of Greek culture, religion, language and identity by non-Greeks. In the ancient period, colonization often led to the Hellenization of indigenous peoples; in the Hellenistic period, many of the territories which were conquered by Alexander the Great were Hellenized; under the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, much of its territory was Hellenized, and in modern times, Greek culture has prevailed over minority cultures in Modern Greece.

After defeating Antiochus III the Great in 188 BC, the Roman Republic gave Lycia to Rhodes the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is also the island group's historical capital. for 20 years, taking it back in 168 BC. In these latter stages of the Roman Republic, Lycia came to enjoy freedom as a Roman protectorate. The Romans validated home rule officially under the Lycian League in 168 BC.

The eponymous inhabitants of Lycia,
the Lycians, spoke Lycian, a member
of the Luwian branch of the Anatolian languages
. an extinct branch of Indo-European languages
that were spoken in Anatolia, part of present-day Turkey.
The best-known Anatolian language is Hittite. about 535 BC,
before the first appearance of attested Lycian,
the Achaemenid Empire overran Lycia.
Despite its resistance, because of which the population