The largest habitation is found in Lisvori, dating back to 2800–1900 BC, part of which is submerged in shallow coastal waters.

Lesbos is mentioned in two Hittite texts from the Late Bronze Age, a period during which the island appears to have been a dependent of the Seha River Land.

It is believed that emigrants from mainland Greece, mainly from Thessaly, entered the island in the Late Bronze Age and bequeathed it with the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, whose written form survives in the poems of Sappho, amongst others.

In classical times, the cities of the island formed a pentapolis, comprising Mytilene, Methymna, Antissa, Eresos, and Pyrrha.

The seminal artistic creativity of those times brings to mind the myth of Orpheus to whom Apollo gave a lyre and the Muses taught to play and sing.

When Orpheus incurred the wrath of the god Dionysus he was dismembered by the Maenads and of his body parts his head and his lyre found their way to Lesbos where they have "remained" ever since.

In classical times, Hellanicus advanced historiography and Theophrastus, the father of botany, succeeded Aristotle as the head of the Lyceum.

The abundant grey pottery ware found on the island and the worship of Cybele, the great mother-goddess of Anatolia, suggest the cultural continuity of the population from Neolithic times.

Around this time, Arion developed the type of poem called dithyramb, the progenitor of tragedy, and Terpander invented the seven-note musical scale for the lyre.

For a short period it was a member of the Athenian confederacy, its apostasy from which is recounted by Thucydides in the Mytilenian Debate, in Book III of his History of the Peloponnesian War.

[20] In c. 1089–1093, the island was briefly occupied by the Seljuk Turkish emir Tzachas, ruler of Smyrna, but he was unable to capture Methymna, which resisted throughout.

[17] After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Gattilusi continued to rule Lesbos as tributary vassals to the Ottoman Empire, until the island was conquered by Sultan Mehmed II in September 1462.

[20][21] After the capture of Lesbos, the richer inhabitants were moved to Constantinople in order to repopulate the city, some boys and girls were taken away into imperial service, but the rest of the population remained.

Mehmed II brought in Muslim settlers from Rumelia and Anatolia, and encouraged his Janissaries to settle there and take local wives.

[17] In 1464, as part of the First Ottoman–Venetian War, the Venetians under Orsato Giustiniani occupied the fort of Agios Theodoros, but failed to capture the rest of the island, and destroyed the castle upon their withdrawal.

[17] The large majority of the island's population remained Greek Christian, although there was a sizeable Muslim community, formed from both immigrants and converts; from 7.4% of households in 1488, it rose to a peak of 19.45% in 1831 before starting to decline in relative terms, reaching 14% in 1892.

[17] Molyvos, which was the island's second city for most of the Ottoman period, also experienced growth, doubling in size; unlike Mytilene, the Muslim element came to predominate, and comprised over half the population by 1874.

[17] During the second half of the 19th century, this prosperity became evident in the construction of large and ornamented mansions and churches; the Muslims followed suit, employing the fashionable Neo-Classical and Neo-Gothic styles in their own renovations of their mosques, especially after the destructive 1867 earthquake.

[17] In 1905, four European powers seized the customs and telegraph offices in the island to pressure the Ottoman government to accept their plan for an international commission that would supervise the provinces of Macedonia.

[24] Syrmakezis led 3,175 troops towards an Ottoman camp in Filia, reaching the outskirts of the city on 19 December, with an attack planned for the following morning.

[26] The following year, the Ottoman Empire denied their previous agreement to cede Lesbos to Greece, until the Treaty of London.

[28] Twenty years later, during World War II, Nazi Germany conducted an invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia, with both being defeated in 1941 and subsequently divided between the Axis Powers.

[38] In English and most other European languages, including Greek, the term lesbian is commonly used to refer to homosexual women.

This use of the term derives from the poems of Sappho, who was born in Lesbos and who wrote with powerful emotional content directed toward other women.

[41] The shape of the island is roughly triangular, but it is deeply intruded by the gulfs of Kalloni, with an entry on the southern coast, and of Gera, in the southeast.

Forests of Mediterranean pines, chestnut trees and some oaks occupy 20%, and the remainder is scrub, grassland or urban.

The fossilized plants are silicified remnants of a sub-tropical forest that existed on the northwest part of the island 20–15 million years ago.

Tourism in Mytilene, encouraged by its international airport and the coastal towns of Petra, Plomari, Molyvos and Eresos, contributes substantially to the island's economy.

Due to its proximity to the Turkish mainland, Lesbos is one of the Greek islands most affected by the European migrant crisis that started in 2015.

[58] The Greek government announced in November 2020 that a new closed reception centre will be built in the Vastria area near Nees Kydonies, on the border between Mytilene and Western Lesbos, and will be completed by late 2021.