The islands of Chios, Lésbos, Lemnos, Samothrace and Thásos, scattered in the northern and eastern Aegean, do not form a group in any real sense.
Each has an individuality of its own.
The history of this region reaches far back into the past. The site of Thermí on Lésbos was occupied about 2700 B.C., and Poliókhni on Lemnos is older than its neighbor Troy. During the Greek colonising movement Aeolians came to Lésbos about 1100 B.C., Ionians to Chios about 1000 and to Lemnos about 800. Around 700 B.C. colonies were established on Thásos (from Páros) and Samothrace. The islands enjoyed a period of prosperity in the seventh and sixth centuries, when Lésbos produced the singers Terpandros and Arion and the poets Sappho and Alkaios, and Chios a fine school of sculptors. After a period of Persian rule (546-479 B.C.) the islands became members of the first Attic maritime league; then from the fourth century onwards they came successively under Macedonian, Ptolemaic and Roman influence.
After the fourth Crusade (1204) the islands belonged to Venice and later to Genoa. Then came the Turkish period, which lasted until 1912. In 1922-23 Lésbos and Chios took in many refugees from Asia Minor, and after the Second World War many Greeks from Egypt settled on Lemnos.
In recent years Turkey has put forward claims to the Anatolian continental shelf, of which Chios and Lésbos form part.
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