Based on archaeological evidence, some scholars (e.g., Nicholas Hammond, Eugene N. Borza et al.) argue that the Bryges/Phrygians were members of the Lusatian culture that migrated into the southern Balkans during the Late Bronze Age.
Geoffrey Summers initially identified the site with the city of Pteria of the Medes, mentioned by Herodotus, who describes the place as being captured by the Lydian king Croesus around the year 547 B.C. The Median identification has been rejected by various scholars, including Summers himself; instead the site is being regarded as a local Phrygian dynastic center, very possibly Pteria.
He led a force of Phrygians against the Amazons alongside his comrades Otreus (another Phrygian leader) and King Priam of Troy, one generation before the Trojan War.
However, most scholars reject such a recent Phrygian migration and accept as factual the Iliad's account that the Phrygians were established on the Sakarya River before the Trojan War, and thus must have been there during the later stages of the Hittite Empire, and likely earlier.
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The Iliad describes the homeland of the Phrygians on the Sangarius River, which would remain the center of Phrygia throughout its history.