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The Carians (Greek: Κάρες; Kares) were the inhabitants of Caria.

According to tradition, the Carians were named after eponymous Car, one of their legendary early kings (Herodotus, 1.171). Classical Greeks would often claim that Caria was originally colonized by Ionian Greeks, but it seems rather that the Carians were settled in the region before the Greeks. Homer records that Miletus (later an Ionian city) was a Carian city at the time of the Trojan War (Iliad 2.865). Homer further records that the Carians joined the Trojans against the Achaeans under the leadership of Nastes (Iliad 2.865).

Herodotus (1.171) recorded that Carians believed themselves to be aborigines of Caria. In his time, the Phoenicians were calling them "KRK" in their alphabetic script. This corresponds to the Karkiya or Karkisa mentioned in the Hittite records. Modern lingustics supports that the Carian language was a descendant of the Luwian language, a member of the Anatolian family of languages. Other Luwian offshoots include Lycian and Lydian. Carian inscriptions were deciphered in 1960s by Vitaly Shevoroshkin. Bronze Age Karkiya aided the confederacy of Assuwa against Tudhaliya I. But later, in 1323 BC, Arnuwandas II was able to write to Karkiya for them to provide asylum for the deposed Manapa-Tarhunta of Seha River. The Karkiyans did so, and allowed Manapa-Tarhunta to take back his kingdom. Unlike the Luwiyans in the Near East, the Karkiyans did not retain their literacy through the Dark Age. They next appear in records of the 8th century BC. The Carians are clearly mentioned at 2 Kings 11:4 and possibly at Samuel 8:18, 15:18, and 20:23. Carians are also named as mercenaries in inscriptions found in ancient Egypt and Nubia, dated to the reigns of Psammetichus I and II. They are sometimes referred to as the Cari or Khari. Carian remnants have been found in the ancient city of Persepolis or modern Takht-e-Jamshid in Iran.

The Carians were often linked to the Leleges, but the exact nature of the relationship between Carians and Leleges remains mysterious. The two groups seem to have been distinct, but later intermingled with each other. Strabo (7.321; 13.611) wrote that they were so intermingled that they were often confounded with each other. However, Athenaeus (6.271) stated that the Leleges stood in relation to the Carians as the Helots stood to the Lacedaemonians. This confusion of the two peoples is found also in Herodotus (1.171), who wrote that the Carians, when they were allegedly living amid the Cyclades, were known as Leleges.

One of the Carian ritual centers was Mylasa, where they worshipped their supreme god, called 'the Carian Zeus' by Herodotus. Unlike Zeus, this was an army god. One of the Carian goddesses was Hecate, which was later adopted by the Greeks in the 6th century BCE. She was the patron of road crossings. Herodotus calls her Athena and says that her priestess would grow a beard when disaster pended (Histories 8.104). On mount Latmos near Miletus, the Carians worshipped Endymion, who was the lover of the Moon and fathered 365 children. Endymion, like the Greek Kronos, slept eternally.

• Mysians
• Lydians
• Lycians
• Alphabets of Asia Minor

• Caria