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Hershel Shanks

Throughout the millennia, conquering peoples— Phoenicians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders and Ottoman Turks—have been attracted by Cyprus’s timber and copper resources, as well as by its strategic location in the eastern Mediterranean. The island’s first, Neolithic occupants probably arrived around 7,000 B.C. from north Syria. They have left behind remains of their curvilinear mudbrick homes (shown here) at such sites as Kalavasos-Tenta.