In Antiquity, the Carians were famous mercenaries. Early history Caria and the Carians are mentioned for the first time in the cuneiform texts of the Old Assyrian and Hethite Empires, i.e., between c.1800 and c.1200. They are absent from the Egyptian texts of this period. In the so-called Catalogue of ships, he tells that they lived in Miletus, on the Mycale peninsula, and along the river Meander. In the fifth century, the Greeks thought that the Carians had arrived in Caria from the islands of the Ionian Sea, whereas the Carians claimed to be indigenous.
Homer confirms their story.
It is related to Lycian and Lydian, the languages spoken to the southeast and north of Caria. Had the Carians arrived in their country from the west, their language would have been closer to Greek. It seems that the Greeks settled on the coast in the dark ages between c.1200 and c.800, where they and the Carians mixed. Because of his descent and birth place, Herodotus is one of our most important sources. Caria is, like Greece, a country of mountains and valleys, poor in agricultural and other resources - in comparison with Egypt and Babylonia a backward country.