Archaeologica.org

The Trojan War: Another Look

The Trojan War was not fought in Turkey.

So says Iman Wilkens in his wonderfully entertaining historical expose Where Troy Once Stood. Wilkens says that Troy was in England and that Mycenae was in France. In his book, Wilkens offers convincing proof of a second viable interpretation of Homer's Iliad. And in his argument, Wilkens has two main points of focus:

1) The geography and archaeology of Homer do not allow for a Troy in Asia Minor or anywhere near the Mediterranean.

2) Most of the place-names that we assume are Greek and Turkish in origin are, in fact, Celtic.

Let us examine the first point. Troy is said to have had a population of 50,000. The walls of Schliemann's "Troy VII" are not large enough to encompass a city that large. Homer makes great mention of the ocean, not the sea. The tradition of calling an ocean and ocean and a sea a sea is long and historically documented. Add to this Homer's descriptions of tides and oceanic trees and plants and animals and other features of geography that do NOT describe Asia Minor or Greece or even the Mediterranean area, and you have evidence for Wilkens' argument. He goes on to talk about inland water, specifically rivers and dykes, which are far more common in Europe than in Asia Minor.

It is probably clear to the reader by now that Wilkens is taking Homer almost literally, as if Homer were an eyewitness to the events or, at the very least, writing from an eyewitness account. Skeptics may claim that Homer is not to be taken literally; but this claim would serve to undercut those skeptics' own case. Wilkens also names two other sources, Dares and Dictys, both of whom were contemporaries of Homer. The accounts of these two, one of whom was a Trojan, almost exactly match Homer, who is supposedly Greek. Their descriptions do not match the Turkish landscape, either.

On to the place-names. Of the 14 rivers Homer names [...]

kbs2244 wrote:Intresting theory, and worth of some research.

But...
"as if Homer were an eyewitness to the events"

Wasn't Homer supposed to be blind?

dannan14 wrote:i'm pretty sure Homer didn't write anything. The epic poem was a medium designed to be recited from memory, wasn't it?