This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
You are actually radioactive, then everything alive is...
Unexpected elements from the BBC World Service.
Search for unexpected elements wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
In the remote mountain range in northern Turkey,
200 kilometres east of the capital Ankara, lie the ruins of an ancient city.
Built on a slope overlooking the valley below,
it stretches across 450 acres and is thought to have been home to up to 50,000 people.
There in the ruins are the remains of temples, palaces and sophisticated rock art.
Archeologists have also found thousands of clay tablets there,
containing state archives, literature,
legal codes and examples of international diplomacy, like this one,
the world's earliest surviving peace treaty between two mighty powers.
Ramses, the Great King, the King of the country of Egypt,
has established this bound by treaty on a silver tablet with hotusini.
The Great King, the King of the country of Hati,
is brother starting from this day to settle forever among them a good peace and a good fraternity.
The Hittites and their imposing mountain capital Hattusa, the ancient city I was referring to,
formed one of the most powerful empires in the Mediterranean around 3,000 years ago.
And it was just one of a number of civilisations that thrived at this time,