Archaeologists studied ancient sites in Western Anatolia to see how important they were based on their interactions with the surrounding areas. They looked at how the sites changed over time and found that some became important because of their natural location, while others became important because people made them that way. When people stopped putting effort into making a site important, it lost its significance. The study shows that a combination of natural, social, and human factors is needed to understand why some places were more central than others in the past.