Media Calls 2,400-Year-Old Wrestler ‘Turkish’ – But Turks Had Yet to Arrive…

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The Independent has drawn unwanted attention with a headline describing a 2,400-year-old man from ancient Aspendos as a “Turkish wrestler” — despite the fact that the Turks would not arrive in Anatolia for more than a millennium.

The Independent published a report by Vishwam Sankaran about the discovery of a 2,400-year-old grave near the ancient city of Aspendos in modern-day Turkey. The headline describes the burial as a grave that “likely belonged to Turkish wrestler”.

That wording creates a striking historical problem.

The man buried in the grave lived sometime between approximately 475 and 300 BC. At that time, there was no Turkish nation, no Turkish state and no Turkish population in Anatolia in the historical sense in which the term “Turkish” is used today.

The Turks arrived in Anatolia more than a thousand years later.

Aspendos was an ancient city — not a Turkish city

Aspendos stands in what is now southern Turkey, but its modern geographical location does not determine the ethnic or national identity of someone who lived there 2,400 years ago.

The ancient city belonged to the region of Pamphylia and developed within the Greek world of antiquity. Modern archaeological accounts describe Aspendos as an ancient city with a long and complex history extending through the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Seljuk periods. The distinction matters.

Calling an ancient inhabitant “Turkish” simply because his grave lies inside the borders of the modern Republic of Türkiye would be comparable to describing an ancient Roman living in Britain as “British” because his remains were discovered within the borders of modern Britain.

Modern geography and ancient identity are not interchangeable.

When did the Turks actually arrive in Anatolia?

The Turkish presence in Anatolia emerged roughly 1,000 years after the Aspendos wrestler lived.

Turkic expansion into Anatolia accelerated during the 11th century AD. The Battle of Manzikert in 1071 AD, when the Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantine army, became a major turning point in the gradual Turkic settlement and political transformation of Anatolia. UNESCO documentation on Anatolian archaeological sites identifies the period following Manzikert as the beginning of a major new phase of Turkic political and cultural development in the region.

Aspendos itself eventually came under Seljuk control centuries after the grave was created. UNESCO notes the Seljuk restoration of the famous Aspendos theatre in the 13th century, when the building was reused as a palace under Sultan Alaeddin Keykubat.

That is an important historical layer of Aspendos — but it came long after the wrestler’s burial.

The headline changes the history

This is why the headline matters. Calling the man a “Turkish wrestler” does not merely simplify the story for a modern audience. It effectively projects a modern national identity backwards into the Classical period.

The more historically accurate description would be something along the lines of “ancient wrestler from Aspendos”, “possible Greek wrestler”, or simply “ancient athlete buried at Aspendos.”

Indeed, other coverage has taken precisely that approach. Gizmodo described the discovery as potentially belonging to an ancient Greek wrestler, while Live Science referred to a possible ancient pro wrestler and explicitly explained that Aspendos was founded by Greek colonists.

The Independent’s choice of “Turkish”, therefore, stands out.

Modern Turkey and ancient Anatolia are not the same thing

None of this diminishes the importance of the archaeological discovery or the modern Turkish stewardship of Aspendos.

Turkey is the modern country in which the ancient city survives, and Turkish archaeologists are excavating, researching and preserving the site. UNESCO itself recognises the remarkable succession of historical layers at Aspendos, including its later Seljuk phase.

But preserving an ancient Greek city does not retroactively turn its Classical inhabitants into Turks. The man in this grave lived approximately 1,400–1,500 years before the Battle of Manzikert and more than a millennium before Seljuk Turks established themselves in Anatolia. That chronology should make the problem with the headline fairly obvious.

The archaeological discovery is remarkable. The suggestion that the man was a wrestler is intriguing but unproven. Calling him “Turkish”, however, is a modern label applied to a person who lived in a completely different historical world.

And that is perhaps the strangest part of the story.

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