Anthropogenic Geosite Concept within Geological Heritage and Turkey’s Anthropogenic Geosites

The focus of this article is on the 10th grade of the geosite classification by ProGEO-98. Group (J) is the proposed “ Historic, for development of geological sciences ” group. Since this group, which we propose to define as the “ Anthropogenic Geosite Group ”, contains a very wide content, we focused on the subgroups of this group and tried to give examples from Turkey for each subgroup. The main subject of this article is the civilization traces left by human beings, starting from their shelters in the hunter-gatherer period, before moving to settled life, to the periods when they created advanced architectural works such as the Zeus Altar in Pergamum, Hierapolis, the Ancient city of Ephesus, underground cities/castles of Cappadoccia and the Alexander Sarcophagus, and their geological counterparts. This geosite class has been defined in detail for the first time in this article by dividing it into subclasses, and all cultural geology remains within this 10th Group are collectively called “Anthropogenic Geosite”. These locations, which are concrete evidence and “legacies” of human/nature interaction, are of great importance in terms of geological culture/cultural geology as well as the archaeological and anthropological values they carry. Anthropogenic Geosites prove that “Cultural Heritage” sites can also be “Geological Heritage” sites and serve “Cultural Geology”.