The region was settled at least as of the beginning of the third millennium BCE, or perhaps earlier, as the recent finds in Yeşilova Höyük suggests.

It could have been a city of the autochthonous Leleges before the Greek colonists started to settle along the coast of Asia Minor as of the beginning of the first millennium BCE.

The early Aeolian Greek settlers of Lesbos and Cyme, expanding eastwards, occupy the valley of Smyrna.

It is one of the confederacy of Aeolian city-states, marking the Aeolian frontier with the Ionian colonies.