...It's why we love the Hittites! Or specifically, why one of the girls on the program, an Anthropology major who used to study Archeology, thinks the ancient civilization is just too adorable. I was skeptical of her characterization at first, but I think she managed to win me over a great deal on our trip to the Hittite capital of Hatusa yesterday afternoon.
Not very much is known about the Hittites, who ruled Anatolia about 4000 years ago, other than what can be learned from a vast collection of cuneiform tablets (describing the growth, power, and holdings of the empire) and the little other archeological remains that have been found. One of the major limitations on our understanding of the people is that, as a mentor of our lecturer on Friday once said, "the Hitites lived but they never died." Or rather, no Hittite burial site has ever been found.
We spent most of the day in the bus, driving out to the various sites. But our tour guide was very knowledgeable and the time looking at the ruins was well spent. We saw a few open air temples before eating lunch and heading out to the main site of the capital city. There isn't much left in the way of ruins beside rock foundations, but we were able to see a few city wall gates that were relatively intact (barring the absence of a few statues that can now be seen in various museums throughout Europe) as well as some well-preserved artifacts that were on display in the local museum.
On the three-something hour bus ride back to Ankara, one of our Turkish instructors led us in a game in which we had to name a Turkish fruit, vegetable, or animal. One person was to choose a word; the next person then had to find a word starting with the last letter of the previous word. And so on. Once we had exhausted our limited knowledge of household pets and foods, we decided to move on to verbs (or verb stems, rather, as all Turkish verbs end in k). Now, one of the great things about Turkish is that most nouns or adjectives can be changed into verbs through the simple addition of -la, -lan, or a similar suffix. Or you can ___ olmak (to be ___). Also, a lot of verbs (most of them borrowed) are simply formed by adding etmek (to do) to the original word. Like dans etmek, which means "to dance." As we started to run out of familiar words, the game of coming up with new verbs turned into a cyclical game of finding words that start with the t from etmek or the l from olmak and simply adding etmek, olmak, or another suffix (often meaning "to become") to invent new "verbs." Our instructor had to cut us off when we started to invent meaningless terms like nargilelenmek, which we decided must mean, "to become more and more like a hookah." We had become very tired at that point anyway, so we decided instead to practice one of the traditional Turkish songs we're all learning to perform at the TAA in a couple of weeks. We all know the chorus much better than the rest of the song, especially the few lines in Greek. We're working on it, though.
Update: I've just finished making an album of the trip, which you can see here. And if you're interested in a short piece I wrote about my time in Paris, check it out on onajunket.com, an independent travel writing site.
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