Posted on 02/07/2003 9:52:05 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Friday, 7 February, 2003, 11:42 GMT
Homer's description of the Trojan battlefield in his classic poem the Iliad is accurate, say scientists.
The subject of the story - the Greeks' 10-year siege of Troy and the wooden horse they used to bring it to an end - may have been a myth, but its geography was not.
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 It was right in front of Troy that we were drilling a hole and seashells came out
Chris Kraft
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The researchers drilled sediments in northwest Turkey to map how the coastline would have looked around the city more than 2,000 years ago when Homer wrote his epic account of the war.
When they compared their findings with his descriptions of the Trojan plain, they found a match.
Speaking to BBC World Service programme Science In Action, John Luce from Trinity College Dublin, explained the study's significance.
"It has to be taken seriously that the Homeric picture of the fighting at Troy is in close accord with the geological findings," he said.
River deposits
The whereabouts of Troy had long puzzled scholars. In ancient Greek times, Troy was said to be very close to the sea.
Then in the 1870s, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered what were believed to be the remains of an ancient city well inland from the coast of what is now Turkey.
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CITY OF TROY
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Ancient settlement on the Aegean coast, also called Ilium
Remains discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1870
Archaeological digs suggest a settlement on the site destroyed by fire 1200 BC
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Homer's tale relates to a time when a large inlet of the Aegean Sea reached towards Troy.
Scientists now believe that, over the centuries, this inlet became silted up with the deposits from rivers, pushing the coastline back to its present-day position.
Classics expert Dr John Luce said: "At Schliemann's excavation, he took the site of the camp mentioned by Homer to be on the beach which one sees today, but in the course of 3,000 years the great rivers of [Scamander and Simois] have brought down enormous quantities of silt which have advanced the coastline by miles."
Seashell clue
Since 1977, Dr Luce has been involved with an international group of researchers who have taken part in a systematic drilling programme in an attempt to document the landscape changes.
Dr John Kraft, from the University of Delaware in the US, carried out the geological investigations, together with Turkish colleagues, drilling out samples of sediment from well below the surface.
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HOMER'S ILIAD
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Poet was believed to have lived in the 8th Century BC
Scholars suspect his works were authored by many individuals
The Iliad is set in the final year of the Trojan War
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"We drilled for 70 metres below the flood-plain surface and we found 70 metres of marine material," he explained.
Further drilling south on the plain revealed what the researchers believe to have been a major marine area, leading them to conclude that the sea had been pushed back to its present location by a build up of silt deposits in the delta.
"It was right in front of Troy that we were drilling a hole and seashells came out," Dr Kraft enthused.
Back in Dublin, Dr Luce compared Schliemann's original claims with the researchers' findings and tested Homer's phrases in the Iliad.
Axis of attack
Homer wrote of the Greek ships that sailed to the coastal town of Troy, starting a war that would rage for 10 years. But when Dr Luce tried to apply the account of the battle with Schliemann's notion of Troy, he saw "that great difficulties had been raised".
"One of the problems was that you wouldn't cross from Troy," he explained. "But Homer repeatedly refers to the action as swinging backwards and forwards, crossing the river in the process."
Reinterpreting the written material led Dr Luce to "swing the axis of fighting round to a different viewpoint west of Troy".
In so doing, Dr Luce and colleagues have shown that Schliemann's location for Troy does agree with Homer's accounts of the battle.
This research is described in the journal Geology.
You are right that the guy who wore it was likely a relative of Agamemnon.
Yes, it is quite a story. He was very young and not a soldier, yet led 10,000 through very dangerous land under the nose of the enemy to safety when they had pretty much given themselves up as lost.
The unidentified fellow in shaft grave V was about 300 years too early to be Agamemnon, but there's no sign of the fortress changing hands, so they probably were related.
And he wrote the oldest surviving work on horsemanship! Good guy!
Geologists investigate Trojan battlefield - condoms everywhere!
That's right. How to avoid getting a bad deal on a horse. That's the kind of philosophy we like. Do all horse owners read Xenophon?
BTW, most of his advice is still extremely current! We're still doing it his way, by and large (but I like the innovation of stirrups very much).
Interesting, thanks for the post.
I am sure this will be spun as more Global Warming.
Most, maybe all, of the old Cinque Ports in England are miles from the sea now, for the same reason. And they began to silt up in the 14th century, so aerosol cans and automobiles were NOT implicated. (Bet some eco-nut will blame it on sea-coal fires, though.)
I will never forget him correcting me in class. I described Alcibiades as not having a lot of "character". Dr. Agnew said "Oh no, he had lots of character, just perhaps not good character."
I belonged to the Geography club and we invited him to a meeting. He showed a slide show of kodachromes he had taken all over Greece, the Greek Islands, Asia Minor, and Crete.
He was a good photographer and the slides were fascinating as was his talk. He showed one of the throne of King Minos at Knossos. He mentioned that so many tourists had a seat on it that it was wearing.
Someone asked if he sat on it. He said "I am ashamed to say I did".
(It's o.k., I don't think it's original, I think it was cast in con"crete" by Sir Arthur Evans.)
My Archaeology prof had a bunch of cool slides too. He was head of the American School in Athens while they were excavating the Agora. Really neat stuff!
The man was either incredibly lucky or perhaps a much better archeologist than most of the professionals give him credit for.
As someone who owned a Geo and wears Trojans, I fully endorse this thread.
Geologists Show Homer Got It Right
Nature | 1-29-2003 | Philip Ball
Posted on 01/29/2003 7:58:53 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/832119/posts
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