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Under the overlordship of the Achaemenids Lycia consisted of several tribal units led by different dynastic clans. The population was dispersed over a great many isolated valley systems, but shared a number of distinct cultural traditions as, for example, a common language and writing system. When coinage was introduced to the area at the beginning of the 5th century BC it soon evolved from an instrument of interregional trade to a means of self-assertion and the propagation of hegemonial claims by rivalling dynastic families and their respective tribes. By the middle of the 4th century BC the dynast Perikle succeeded in uniting the entire peninsula under his control, but was soon deposed and replaced by the Hekatomnids of Caria, who changed the dynastic organization of the Lycian society introducing civic bodies of self-administration within individual settlements, precipitating thereby the process of the gradual Hellenization in Lycia.
