520 replies to this topic

[The Puzzler]

The extent of the historical basis of the Iliad has been debated for some time. Educated Greeks of the fifth century continued to accept the truth of human events depicted in the Iliad, even as philosophical scepticism was undermining faith in divine intervention in human affairs. In the time of Strabo topological disquisitions discussed the identity of sites mentioned by Homer. There was no break when Greco-Roman culture was Christianised: Eusebius of Caesarea offered universal history reduced to a timeline, in which Troy received the same historical weight as Abraham, with whom Eusebius' Chronologia began, ranking the Argives and Mycenaeans among the kingdoms ranged in vertical columns, offering biblical history on the left (verso), and secular history of the kingdoms on the right (recto).[1] Jerome's Chronicon followed Eusebius, and all the medieval chroniclers began with summaries of the universal history of Jerome.

With such authorities behind it, the historic nature of Troy and the events of the Trojan War continued to be accepted at face value by post-Roman Europeans. Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-genealogy traced a Trojan origin for royal Briton descents in Historia Regum Britanniae.[2] Merovingian descent from a Trojan ancestor was embodied in a literary myth first set forth in Fredegar's chronicle (2.4, 3.2.9), to the effect that the Franks were of Trojan stock and took their name from King Francio, who had erected a new Troy on the banks of the Rhine.[3] Even before the rational Age of Enlightenment these "facts" underlying the medieval view of history were doubted by Blaise Pascal: "Homer wrote a romance, for nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides. He had no intention to write history, but only to amuse us."[4] After the Enlightenment the stories of Troy were devalued as fables by George Grote.[5]

The discoveries made by Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik reopened the question in modern terms, and recent discoveries have fueled more discussion across several disciplines.[6] The events described in Homer's Iliad, even if based on historical events that preceded its composition by some 450 years, will never be completely identifiable with historical or archaeological facts, even if there was a Bronze Age city on the site now called Troy, and even if that city was destroyed by fire or war at about the same time as the time postulated for the Trojan War.

No text or artifact has been found on site itself which clearly identifies the Bronze Age site by name. This is probably due to the planification of the former hillfort during the construction of Hellenistic Ilium (Troy IX), destroying the parts that most likely contained the city archives. A single seal of a Luwian scribe has been found in one of the houses, proving the presence of written correspondence in the city, but not a single text. Our emerging understanding of the geography of the Hittite Empire makes it very likely that the site corresponds to the city of Wilusa. But even if that is accepted, it is of course no positive proof of identity with Homeric (W)ilios.

http://en.wikipedia....ty_of_the_Iliad

From Wiki page Historicity Of The Iliad.

Was it real and somewhere else maybe? England, Europe?

TROJAN BATTLEFIELD

Troy and the Trojan War location has been found and the battlefield completely reconstructed from the scattered but very detailed information given in Homer's Iliad.

Troy in England, however unbelievable, is fully explained in this amazing work which provides in depth information and evidence of all kinds including geographic and linguistic evidence as well as countless archaeological finds.

The war was not waged by Greeks and not caused by the abduction of Helen. The real reason was access to tin in Britain, a precious metal which was essential for the production of bronze, a key war material of the time.

During the second millennium BC, it was the custom of illiterate Sea Peoples migrating from western Europe to verbally pass on history, that's how the tales of the greatest war of prehistory, the Trojan War was first recorded.

Previously, Hissarlik in Turkey was thought to be the location of Troy, but no traces of the Trojan war have been found near there.

You will discover this work clearly demonstrates that the Iliad, however poetic, is based on real historical events in Bronze Age Western Europe.

Where Troy Once Stood
http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/



What is your opinion?

Edited by The Puzzler, 30 August 2010 - 06:52 AM.

[Colonel Rhuairidh]

I think as regards the second theory, some people have more imagination that is perhaps altogether healthy for them. I think the traditional site of Troy makes perfect sense to me; a strategic position beside the Dardanelles, able to control traffic in and out of the Black Sea and have a monopoly on trade into and out of Asia, would seem to be a perfectly logical target for someone as aggressive and expansionist as the Myceneans; and it even doesn't seem impossible that the abduction of Helen, or someone even if she wasn't necesarily called Helen, may have been a factor considering how much honour and loss of face was such an important thing for folk in those days.

[The Puzzler]

747400, on 30 August 2010 - 07:31 AM, said:

I think as regards the second theory, some people have more imagination that is perhaps altogether healthy for them. I think the traditional site of Troy makes perfect sense to me; a strategic position beside the Dardanelles, able to control traffic in and out of the Black Sea and have a monopoly on trade into and out of Asia, would seem to be a perfectly logical target for someone as aggressive and expansionist as the Myceneans; and it even doesn't seem impossible that the abduction of Helen, or someone even if she wasn't necesarily called Helen, may have been a factor considering how much honour and loss of face was such an important thing for folk in those days.

OK but there doesn't seem to be any mention in the Iliad of this being a mission to take land for trade nor do I see Mycenaeans utilising this idea.
They all seemed to sail back home.
If they took the area to control trade shouldn't we see some sign of this?

[Colonel Rhuairidh]

The Puzzler, on 30 August 2010 - 08:02 AM, said:

OK but there doesn't seem to be any mention in the Iliad of this being a mission to take land for trade nor do I see Mycenaeans utilising this idea.
They all seemed to sail back home.
If they took the area to control trade shouldn't we see some sign of this?

of course not, no, but the Iliad was, well, not written, but you know what I mean, made up, I susppose, to glorify a warrior culture, wasn't it, so naturally something as prosaic as domination of trade would be turned into something more heroic, like avenging an insult over the most beautiful woman in the world. Besides, the Iliad wasn't meant to be a history of the whole war, just about the closing stages of the war from the point of view of Achilles. From the point of view of Agamemnon or whoever his real life equivalent was, it was probably mostly about loot, and there was plenty of that to be had once Troy had been taken, and after he'd done that the Greeks* would have been able to dominate trade to and from Asia and the Black Sea with Troy out of the way. (or so they thought at the time, although of course it wasn't long until they found themslves under attack from the Invaders from the North).

*using the term to refer to the Mycenean-led coalition

[The Puzzler]

747400, on 30 August 2010 - 08:30 AM, said:

of course not, no, but the Iliad was, well, not written, but you know what I mean, made up, I susppose, to glorify a warrior culture, wasn't it, so naturally something as prosaic as domination of trade would be turned into something more heroic, like avenging an insult over the most beautiful woman in the world. Besides, the Iliad wasn't meant to be a history of the whole war, just about the closing stages of the war from the point of view of Achilles. From the point of view of Agamemnon or whoever his real life equivalent was, it was probably mostly about loot, and there was plenty of that to be had once Troy had been taken, and after he'd done that the Greeks* would have been able to dominate trade to and from Asia and the Black Sea with Troy out of the way. (or so they thought at the time, although of course it wasn't long until they found themslves under attack from the Invaders from the North).

*using the term to refer to the Mycenean-led coalition

OK, so do you think the Ionian settlements might have been a result of the Trojan War, the Greeks were able to settle in Asia Minor?

I'm not sure I see any trade domination though.

Edited by The Puzzler, 30 August 2010 - 09:25 AM.

[Colonel Rhuairidh]

could be. Probably not planned colonies; I think the whole expedition wasn't really thought through from the start and was all a bit ad hoc, but desendants of those who settled in the hinterland of Troy after raiding expediitons and the like, or perhaps who didn't return home after the end of the war. i don't think the whole expedition was really very much of a success for the Greeks despite their military success; after Troy fell they were content to load as much booty as they could onto their ships and return home, rather than really have a thought-through plan about how to consolidate their victory to their economic advantage. They weren't organised enough for that, I don't think, even if that may have been in the minds of some of the more thoughtful leaders (such as Nestor) when they agreed to it.

[SlimJim22]

I've mentioned previously how I see similarities between the Iliad and the Ramayana. First, both wars come about because a women is abducted. Secondly, both tales describe a difficulty in entering/cross the boundaries. In the Ramayana, Rama's bridge is built to cross the sea and in the Iliad, the Trojan horse is used to gain access. That is as far as I got with it at the time.

On seeing the names like this Yavana, Shaka etc., some hold the view that Ramayana was written more lately to Greek's invasion on India. Max Muller in his 'What Can India Teach Us?' says: 'If I call the invasion which is generally called the invasion of the Shakas, or the Scythians, or the Indo-Scythians, or Turushkas, the Turanian invasion... who took possession of India, from about first century BCE to the third century BCE. Again classifying Sanskrit literature he says, 'we divide the whole of the Sanskrit literature into there two periods, one anterior to the great Turanian invasion, the other posterior to it, we may call the former period as ancient and natural, that of the later modern and artificial.' Thus, Ramayana belonged to the modern and artificial literary period and Veda-s to ancient. According to Indians the Turushkas are not the Scythians but Turkish, and the Yavanas, are clearly the Greek. Michelson in his 'Linguistic Archaisms of the Ramayana...'adds another phase called Epical period. Thus, there are three, Vedic, Epical, and the rest of it is modern and artificial.

I don't actually like a lot else of what the site has to say but here it is. Could Turanian correspond to Troy I wonder.

http://www.ramayanar...es/mapping.html

The other slightly contrversial issue is the origins of the Ionians. Do they correspond with the Yavana or does the name stem from Yoni (womb). Like I said this was about as far as I got with it.

http://controversial...greek-myth.html

From the first link it does cast doubt on the indian epics because they could have been altered at later dates.

According to Homer, the philosophy of the ancient world was that there was a third element that linked opposing elements. Between the body and the soul, there is the spirit. Between life and death there is the transformation that is possible to the individual, between father and mother there is the child who takes the characteristics of both father and mother, and between good and evil there is the SPECIFIC SITUATION that determines which is which and what ought to be done.

In other words, there are three simultaneous determinants in any situation that make it impossible to say that any list of things is "good" or "evil" intrinsically, and that the true determinant is the situation.

The symbol of this philosophy is the triskele, representing three waves joined together. The word "Triskele" evokes the name "Troy" and leads us to also consider the maze, called since ancient times "Troytowns."

http://laura-knight-...-of-homers.html

Good links.

http://academic.reed...Tech/Iliad.html

http://www.basarchiv...sue=1&GroupID=1

http://www.mlahanas....ks/LX/Troy.html

http://www.saudiaram...e.real.troy.htm

http://www.barrystra...roy_excerpt.htm

Fascinating stuff.

[The_Spartan]

Quote

Without lingering on these carbon-testing for the verses of Ramayana that contain Yavana and Shaka named provinces, if the astronomical data available in Ramayana itself is believed, it throws some light on dating. If anybody would care to see the book Vastav Ramayan, by Dr.P.V.Vartak, in Marathi, Vedvidnyana Mandal, Pune, and a web site is available about this, Astronomical Dating of the Ramayana where another approach can be seen, which just does not revolve around one or two names of places. It is said there; 'Therefore, Ramayana 'must have' occurred 9600 years ago, which is 7600 B.C. approximately...' which again is disputable because this is going against the Yuga and Kalpa Theory of Puraana-s, as Ramayana is said to be the legend of Treta Yuga.

The provinces Shuurasena, Bharata, Kuru are the downlands of Himalayas. The Kaambhoja is the province northwest to India, where the Russia touches India, as mapped by 'An Historical Atlas of the Indian Peninsula' of Oxford University. Then the Yavana and Shaka should be around there, prior to their migration to the presently known Greece, because Greeks originated from so called 'South-Central-Asia' as called by the historians, and perhaps the historians might be hesitating to call it as 'Himalayan region of India'. They were originally called Ionians, a corrupt or generic name from Indian naming of Yavana or Javana. The word Æoni can be cleaved as a + yoni; [ayogya ] yonim gata 'unbefitting, uterus, obtained birth...' 'one who is born to an unbefitting mother... say, a b******...' That is what Œdepus Rex proved later. The ethics of these Yavana and Shaka cultures are clearly explained in Karna-Shalya samvaada 'the debate of Karna and Shalya...' in Karna parva, Maha Bharata.

Source-www.valmikiramayan.net
This is the original source slim, the link which you put copied line for line from this website.

Could be...Could be...
The Greeks/Yavanas and the Shakas/Scythians originating in North Western India??
an interesting point of view.

But the view is that the Yavanas and Shakas originated in North Western India only. It doesnt equate The Trojan war with The War with Ravana.

Hell, a woman is always the source of many disputes..be it King or Pauper.

Edited by The Spartan, 30 August 2010 - 05:59 PM.

[The Puzzler]

SlimJim22, on 30 August 2010 - 01:45 PM, said:

I've mentioned previously how I see similarities between the Iliad and the Ramayana. First, both wars come about because a women is abducted. Secondly, both tales describe a difficulty in entering/cross the boundaries. In the Ramayana, Rama's bridge is built to cross the sea and in the Iliad, the Trojan horse is used to gain access. That is as far as I got with it at the time.

On seeing the names like this Yavana, Shaka etc., some hold the view that Ramayana was written more lately to Greek's invasion on India. Max Muller in his 'What Can India Teach Us?' says: 'If I call the invasion which is generally called the invasion of the Shakas, or the Scythians, or the Indo-Scythians, or Turushkas, the Turanian invasion... who took possession of India, from about first century BCE to the third century BCE. Again classifying Sanskrit literature he says, 'we divide the whole of the Sanskrit literature into there two periods, one anterior to the great Turanian invasion, the other posterior to it, we may call the former period as ancient and natural, that of the later modern and artificial.' Thus, Ramayana belonged to the modern and artificial literary period and Veda-s to ancient. According to Indians the Turushkas are not the Scythians but Turkish, and the Yavanas, are clearly the Greek. Michelson in his 'Linguistic Archaisms of the Ramayana...'adds another phase called Epical period. Thus, there are three, Vedic, Epical, and the rest of it is modern and artificial.

I don't actually like a lot else of what the site has to say but here it is. Could Turanian correspond to Troy I wonder.

http://www.ramayanar...es/mapping.html

The other slightly contrversial issue is the origins of the Ionians. Do they correspond with the Yavana or does the name stem from Yoni (womb). Like I said this was about as far as I got with it.

http://controversial...greek-myth.html

From the first link it does cast doubt on the indian epics because they could have been altered at later dates.

According to Homer, the philosophy of the ancient world was that there was a third element that linked opposing elements. Between the body and the soul, there is the spirit. Between life and death there is the transformation that is possible to the individual, between father and mother there is the child who takes the characteristics of both father and mother, and between good and evil there is the SPECIFIC SITUATION that determines which is which and what ought to be done.

In other words, there are three simultaneous determinants in any situation that make it impossible to say that any list of things is "good" or "evil" intrinsically, and that the true determinant is the situation.

The symbol of this philosophy is the triskele, representing three waves joined together. The word "Triskele" evokes the name "Troy" and leads us to also consider the maze, called since ancient times "Troytowns."

http://laura-knight-...-of-homers.html

Good links.

http://academic.reed...Tech/Iliad.html

http://www.basarchiv...sue=1&GroupID=1

http://www.mlahanas....ks/LX/Troy.html

http://www.saudiaram...e.real.troy.htm

http://www.barrystra...roy_excerpt.htm

Fascinating stuff.

Hmmm, so maybe the Trojan war was an invasion of India?  Gosh Slim, that sounds plausible maybe.  Cause the weird thing is that story is ingrained in Greek myth with Dionysus and Heracles suppose to have got to (invaded?) India.  And Shiva/Rama and co certainly seem to evoke Apollo to me and the Armenian connection.

What about the Aryan invasion? That would put it in a good timeframe. Turanians too late???

They place this Aethiopia in Joppa but it always seems to be Susa to me and has a Trojan connection, Memnon comes up and he's meant to be the son of the brother of Priam. Memnon as a son of the dawn, East really corresponds better to Mesopotamia or even closer to India (East) than anywhere else.

Gee, you have me going now.

Lydia is known as Sparda by the Persians, Helen may have been a princess in Lydia, hey then the Etruscans might be Lydians..which now counteracts my other view it was in Europe but I think this might fit much better. Sparta might not have even been in Greece and I know that an area of ancient Lydia is Poseidonia and alsways thought it was here that the Mycenaeans entered Asia Minor, right near Rhodes, which has the same Poseidon connection and it's not Trojans who worship Poseidon, it's the sailing Achaeans.

PS: I have not read the links yet and I am not really familiar with the Turanian invasion because I have not been in this area much.

Edited by The Puzzler, 31 August 2010 - 01:54 AM.

[The Puzzler]

Hey Spartan, you look like the man to ask.....


Do you think the Spartans of Greece could have come over from the area called Sparda by the Persians, that is Lydia, since this is really how the myths have it, yknow, Pelops etc.

Sparda sorta gets to Spar DANs, with Danae and Perseus..and the story of the Danaans with the Achaeans could actually be a Spartan people..

Edited by The Puzzler, 31 August 2010 - 01:59 AM.

[kmt_sesh]

The Puzzler, on 31 August 2010 - 01:58 AM, said:

Hey Spartan, you look like the man to ask.....


Do you think the Spartans of Greece could have come over from the area called Sparda by the Persians, that is Lydia, since this is really how the myths have it, yknow, Pelops etc.

Sparda sorta gets to Spar DANs, with Danae and Perseus..and the story of the Danaans with the Achaeans could actually be a Spartan people..

I'll allow TheSpartan to speak for himself, but you know how Laconic those Spartans are so I don't expect him to say too much.

Ha ha! That's Spartan humor. I myself am far from Laconic in speech or writing, of which many at UM are no doubt painfully aware, so I'd also like to weigh in.

If you think back to the days leading up to the Ionian Revolt, representatives from Miletus ventured to Sparta to try to recruit them to come and help drive off the Persians. The Ionians weren't fond of being under the thumb of an Asian overlord. Ionians encouraged the Spartans not only to free them of Persian rule but to continue the battle all the way to Susa, and destroy the Persians for good. The Spartan king hearing the petition (I can't recall which Spartan king it was at the time) kind of liked the sound of the idea. I mean, a real Spartan was always up for a good fight. That is, until the Ionians told the king how far the Spartans would have to travel and how long it would take. The Spartan king sent the Miletus delegation packing then and there.

At this point in time Spartans weren't interested in venturing far from their homeland in the Peloponnese. Of all the Greek colonies sprouting up in Sicily and other Mediterranean sites, only one was founded by Sparta. In fact, Spartans had very few expansionist tendencies until after they had defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War and assumed control over all of the Aegean polities of the toppled Athenian thessalocracy. This was in 404 BCE.

The Indo-European migrations into Greece had nothing to do with the settling of India. Yes, Indo-Europeans were also migrating into India and environs, but the Greeks appear to be something apart. Their language (more specifically, dialects) was (and is) of course Indo-European, but not of the same variety of those peoples settling into eastern Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Iran, and the Hindu Kush.

As for the Trojan War, I think it's entirely possible the myth holds a kernel of truth, however tiny it might be. What Homer preserves in The Iliad is certainly far removed from fact, for the most part. No Bronze Age war lasted for a decade, nor could any state or polity even commit to or sustain the sort of expense such a long-lasting war would require. The Mycenaeans were certainly an aggressive and war-like people, so the reality is probably one of innumerable invasions of a city in Western Asia Minor. Whatever happened in this particular raid, and for whatever reason, it was remembered above and beyond other battles for many generations to come.

Mycenaeans were in fact starting to establish colonies in Western Asia Minor at this time. The Trojan War of Homer probably reflects this Bronze Age situation. People were not invading one another over a woman, of course; Greek myth tends to be built around the events and actions of particular individuals, but not around the wider socio-political events that actually drove societies to do what they did. Mycenaean expansion was driven by the same prosaic needs of all early societies: natural resources and raw materials. This is usually why civilizations came to blows in the Bronze Age.

[The Puzzler]

hello kmt, love the Spartan humour...no, I'm not of the Laconic type either, got an hour for something that should take me a minute to say?

But I'll keep it short this time.


That is why I sort of think it might fit better around 900BC because of the timeframe of these Ionians coming into Asia Minor, I mentioned that date once before but no one really went much on it.

1200BC seems just too early and those Spartans are just altogether different from Athenians.

Maybe the Spartans didn't want to help drive off the Persians because they were kin...a round about way back to the Persians wanting to team up with Spartans against Athens.

The Spartans seem Persian to me in some way, or vice versa especially with the old Andromeda/Perseus connection.

I'm sure this is the crux of Plato's Atlantis too and my belief from day one but I just don't know how it exactly fits...hence my thousand and one Atlantis topics.

Edited by The Puzzler, 31 August 2010 - 03:29 AM.

[The Puzzler]

OK, Im just going to add a couple of posts that are in the Oera Linda thread that really should be here to continue.

Talking about the Etruscans being Trojans and the line to the Franks they claim as ancestry from Trojans:

cormac gave info and said:

FRANKS, MEROVINGIAN KINGS

Rather puts a damper on the Franks descending from the Trojans, particularly as the ancestry of Chlodio is completely unknown, leaving around 1600 years of lost history. Someone must have had a good time "filling in the blanks".

cormac
----------------------------------------

I replied:


If anything, I don't think they migrated from Asia Minor, I think they developed from Etruscans who had been ousted out of Latium and through Umbria as the Romans came to the fore.

This explanation may record the migration out of Troy of the Etruscans to Italy or it might be just as assumption of how the Trojans got to the Rhine...
Like many Germanic peoples, the Franks developed an origin story to connect themselves with peoples of antiquity. In the case of the Franks, these peoples were the Sicambri and the Trojans. An anonymous work of 727 called Liber Historiae Francorum states that following the fall of Troy, 12,000 Trojans led by chiefs Priam and Antenor moved to the Tanais (Don) river, settled in Pannonia near the Sea of Azov and founded a city called "Sicambria". In just two generations (Priam and his son Marcomer) from the fall of Troy (by modern scholars dated in the late Bronze Age) they arrive in the late fourth century at the Rhine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks

Not 1200BC to 400AD but from Troy to Umbria c.1100BC then out of Umbria after the Romans take over c. 300BC, into the lower Rhine Valley where they are recorded by the Romans c 50AD and then into France.

Did you read the Wiki link.....hey Abe, maybe you actually speak Trojan...  

The cultural and linguistic descendants of the Franks, the modern Dutch-speakers of the Netherlands and Flanders, seem to have broken with this endonym around the 9th century as Frankish identity had gradually changed from an ethnic identity to a national identity and was now mostly used by, and refering to, Old Gallo-Romance-speaking inhabitants of the Frankish Empire; the future French

[The Puzzler]

Then this, my next post, so as to continue the gist of it here rather than in the other thread.

Because the question I ask is....what happened to the Etruscans when Rome took over?
Tarquinius was banished and quite 'frankly' I think many of them left the area.

The Tyrhennians are the Trojan refugees according to oldest reports (Herodotus) but then it's Romans who are Trojans through Aeneus, so if we cut out Aeneus as mythical we get left with the Latiums must have been Trojans, hence the Romans are Trojans.

I don't think the Romans were Trojans, I think Virgil made that up to as omniomancer said, to give themselves that Trojan link, but it wasn't the Romans who were Trojans, it was the Etruscans.

The ousted Etruscans would carry the Trojan line, not the Romans who supposedly derived from Aeneus, in Latium. ie; the Romulus line.

[The Puzzler]

747400, on 30 August 2010 - 09:46 AM, said:

could be. Probably not planned colonies; I think the whole expedition wasn't really thought through from the start and was all a bit ad hoc, but desendants of those who settled in the hinterland of Troy after raiding expediitons and the like, or perhaps who didn't return home after the end of the war. i don't think the whole expedition was really very much of a success for the Greeks despite their military success; after Troy fell they were content to load as much booty as they could onto their ships and return home, rather than really have a thought-through plan about how to consolidate their victory to their economic advantage. They weren't organised enough for that, I don't think, even if that may have been in the minds of some of the more thoughtful leaders (such as Nestor) when they agreed to it.

I hear what you are saying.
If the area was a strategic enough area to be taken to control the Black Sea you would think they would immediately utilise that so the area doesn't seem to really have any original idea of taking it for trade.

See, I hear that alot, they took it for trade and to control the Black Sea....but like, what trade, where? I never see them doing this.

If they used it for trade afterwards, all well and good but it seems to contradict the idea they actually TOOK it for trade.

I agree it seems no plan was made in advance so that is why I doubt that it might even be in that area as it was not really the original idea.