When we talk about the Xanthos valley we're talking about Lycia, an ancient maritime district of southwestern Anatolia. Lycia lay along the Mediterranean coast between Caria and Pamphylia, and extended inland to the ridge of the Taurus Mountains. The Lycians crop up as far back as the 14th Century BC when they appear in records of the Egyptian, Hittite, and Ugaritic peoples. Their territory was then described as wedged between the Hittites on the north and the Achaean Greeks on the coast. Known as Luka, they participated in the Sea Peoples' attempt to invade Egypt in the late 13th century but after that brief flourish of activity they fade out for about 500 years. They then surface again as a thriving maritime people organised into a League of cities. Neither Phrygia nor Lydia were able to bring Lycia under its control, but the country eventually fell to Cyrus' general Harpagus after a heroic resistance (see Xanthos). Under Achaemenian Persia and later under the rule of the Romans, Lycia enjoyed relative freedom and was able to preserve its federal institutions until the time of Augustus. It was annexed to Roman Pamphylia in AD 43 and became a separate Roman province after the 4th century. From a touristy point of view the nice thing about the Lycians is that the they built there cities on top of things. This makes them easier to find and means that when you get there the view is usually pretty good. It's easy to recognise dead Lycians because of the characteristic funerary architecture they implied. The 'house' tombs carved into cliff faces have become an icon of this part of Turkey and the sarcophagi that surround the city sites are equally distinctive.