Looking towards Africa from Akrotiri Bay
Probably when you think about Cyprus all you see are the amazing beaches crowded with germans came in vacation with their families, endless bushes of oleander flowers and white rocks, but this island it's actually a treasure both from geological and archaeological point of view.
Cyprus was colonized later then the aegean islands or Crete, its first inhabitants coming from the Near East, just across the sea. These people took the bull by the horns in a time period called the Younger Dryas, when the planet got cold again for a short period (~1000 years: 12.900-11.700 BP) lowering the sea level due to ice buildup. Younger Dryas is the very last glacial event in the northern hemisphere and it had as consequence a major draught period (when ice sheets or glaciers buildup they accumulate not only the moisture in seas and oceans but also in the atmosphere, thus the climate gets dryer).
This period is extremely important since it marks the end of the Pleistocene epoch (known also as the ice age period) in geological terms and the end of Paleolithic in historical terms. From now on, the world as we know it starts to get shape and human societies to evolve.
Taking this into consideration, some people adventured ~12.000 years ago from the eastern coast of Mediterranean (from today's Syria, Lebanon or Turkey?) and succeeded to get to Cyprus through south. The oldest settlement is Aetokremnos (near Limassol), a small village that dates from~12.000 BC. In the next millennia other settlements flourished in the area like Khirokitia or Kalavasos-Tenta.
Possible migrating route from Middle East to Cyprus Island
Khirokitia (Choirocoitia) with its round buildings
Kalavasos-Tenta, same type of structures. The distance in between Tenta and Khirokitia is ~4km.
The new land must of been incredibly strange for its new inhabitants because Cyprus, as other Mediterranean islands, still supported the pleistocene fauna. Pleistocene is characterized by a beautiful megafauna with elements like mammoths, cervids, rhinoceros, bovinae, hipos, etc. If the continental fauna was pretty diversified, the insular fauna was a bit more scarce and the Mediterranean islands were inhabited mainly by hippos and elephants, all dwarves. The insular dwarfism is a natural proces that happens in restricted environments where animals are shrinking in order to accommodate to the low food resources and restricted territories. This happened quite often in geological time (like the dwarf dinosaurs at the end of Cretaceous, the dwarf hominines in east Asia, etc. ) and it continues in modern times. If we look at modern day Cypriots they are quite short in comparison with continental Europeans facing the same process. Just don't tell them, please... :P
Coming back to our human beings, when they arrived to Cyprus they encountered this 'alien' fauna and mixed remains (human, dwarf hypos and elephants) are found abundantly at Aetokremnos. What happened in the next thousands years, we don't know exactly, but what is certain is the fact that they faced extinction prior to human apparition. Some scientists believe that humans hunted them down to extinction, but we have to take in consideration the fact that after Pleistocene the planet started to warm up quite fast and animals adapted for glacial environments could not adapt to this new world that fast. Bottom line it might be both cases, but we don't know for sure.
Dwarf hippo and elephant bones from Agia Irini (8000 BC); (biodiversitycyprus.blogspot.com)
These people lived as hunter-gatherers for the next thousands of years and built new settlements along the coast. At about 6000 years ago they've discovered the cooper in Troodos Mountains and learn how to mine it which led the island to a new phase-Bronze age. Later on, the greeks discovered it and it's ores and the name they have given to it reffered to its reachness-Kúpros (literally the word for cooper) which in time became Kypros (greek) or Kibris (turkish).
Cyprus is my second home supporting a small part of my family. I've seen almost every corner of it but I always strive for more. I just can't have enough of it and I am incredibly excited every time I go there. Amazing people, perfect weather, breathtaking landscapes and history lurking at every corner...
Thanks to the awesome Socratous gang for being part of my life and for all great moments until now!! Hope to see you soon at Veranda Club...