Turkey's eastern Black Sea coastal region, stretching from Trabzon east to the Soviet border and south to the lofty Pontic peaks, contains a cultural diversity and historic richness that few outsiders realize. For over a millenium, the area has been home to Laz, Greeks, Armenians, and Georgians. During that period, the area also attracted foreign conquerors, like the Romans, Russians, and Turks. Only the last have remained.
Because the Laz have lived here since pre-Christian times, one of the region's historic designations has been Lazia. When Rome ruled the area from A.D. 14-117, it was known as Lesser Armenia. Subsequently, it fell under Eastern Roman and then Byzantine control ruled from Constantinople. In 1205, a year after the Fourth Crusaders conquered Constantinople, Lazia became a part of the separate Byzantine Kingdom of Trebizond (now spelled "Trabzon"). This kingdom lasted until it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1461. Today, the region forms a small but fascinating corner of modern Turkey.
The area's lush beauty contradicts the starkness of the lands to its south. The Pontic Mountains, with peaks achieving 10,000-14,000 feet within only twenty to forty-five miles of the Black Sea, insulate the verdant coast from the arid Anatolian plateau. The mountains' seaward slopes host a virgin forest of beech, birch, maple, chestnut, oak, poplar, elm, willow, and fir at their lower elevations. Up about 3,500 feet, deciduous trees mingle for a short interval with pinewoods, which then climb in solitude to 6,300 feet. The forests provide habitats to deer, bears, wild pigs as well as to wolves, fox, marten, and a wide variety of birds. Short rivers descending to the sea have carved out deep ravines that stimulate the creativity of the eastern Black Sea peoples.
Responding to these environmental challenges, the inhabitants have constructed camel-back bridges over many of the rivers and spaciously beautiful wooden chalets that adorn valley ridges and high mountain slopes, accessible only by steep, narrow, winding paths that discourage all but local residents. The Laz and the Hemshin also build beautiful wooden seranders, small corn-storage buildings raised on poles. The stone bridges and the homes with their outbuildings, both fashioned by hand from selected woods, are works or art.
These peoples have also developed a form of steep-slope agriculture, growing cabbage, beans, squash, lettuce, corn, onions, hazelnuts, pears, plums, and tea. Some of the gardens incline so sharply that cultivators reportedly have to secure themselves with rope to trees above or risk slipping into the deep ravines. Corn, a significant staple used for making the area's special bread, entered the region in the seventeenth century. Tea, today's most important cash crop, became popular only in the last thirty years. Tea cultivation is enhanced by the mist and clouds that snuggle into the ravines and mingle with the forest, lending a mystical, Brigadoon quality to the entire scene. The region's building designs and agrarian technology contrast markedly with the square, adobe brick homes and the dry-plateau agriculture of Anatolia. The eastern Black Sea peoples historically have had greater cultural affinity with the Byzantine West and Caucasian East than with the Anatolian South. An appreciation of the region's recent transformation is enhanced by an understanding of its inhabitants' cultural legacies.
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