It now turns out that the assumption that the Trojan War was waged near Hisarlik dates back to the eight century BCE when the first Greeks settled on Turkey's west coast. They did not know that the Trojans who once lived in that area were migrants, as the collective memory of this fact was lost during Greece's `Dark Ages' (1200-800 BCE). From 1180 to 1100. Hisarlik was indeed inhabited by survivors of the Trojan War in England. Here Troy was situated on the Gog Magog Hills near Cambridge but no traces of the town subsist as it was so completely destroyed that in Ovid's words there are now fields where Troy once stood while eight years after the war not even a trace of the walls was to be seen according to Euripides. But two huge war-dykes and the ditch in front of the Achaean camp-wall are still extant while countless bronze arms have been found on the battlefield. See map of the battle field.
The cause of the greatest war of prehistory was not the beautiful Helen but tin as the west-European continent was dependent on tin from the British Isles for the production of bronze. In the Bronze Age tin was as important as crude oil today.
The great migrations of the 2nd millennium BCE brought also Troy's enemies, the Achaeans (Sea Peoples) from west Europe to the Mediterranean where they caused the collapse of many civilisations. Herodotus wrote that long before his time Pelasgians (Sea Peoples) had settled in Greece and founded Athens. With the Achaeans came their gods and their oral tradition, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, which were written down in Greece around 750 BCE. Meanwhile the newcomers had renamed towns, islands and mountains after familiar places in their former homelands. The transfer of place-names naturally led to the belief that the events described in the epics had taken place in Greece and the Mediterranean and that the Achaeans were Greeks.
No wonder that Homer's geography does not match the Greek setting as the Ancients themselves had noticed. They could not figure out the origin of the poet and his epics.
Most helpful for the identification of Troy and the region of origin of all Achaean and Trojan regiments in western Europe and England were the ancient river-names mentioned in the Iliad's list of regiments. The detailed `reconstruction' of the Trojan battlefield in Cambridgeshire enables readers of Homer henceforth to follow the military action in the field. As to the Odyssey, the epic is both a initiation story and an oral map for Celtic seafarers in the Atlantic Ocean which is characterized by its dark colour and huge waves and tides. Wilkens' discovery of the zodiacal signs hidden in Homer's text enabled him to retrace all ports of call of Odysseus.
It thus appears that the epics do not describe a Greek culture of the Iron Age but an older Celtic culture of the Bronze Age. In this way the origin of the Trojans and the Achaeans was forgotten while the reality behind the Iliad and the Odyssey was lost as well. The purpose of this book is simply to tell that lost story, the real story behind Homer's epics
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The 2012 edition of the work has been revised by the classicist mr.drs.Gerard W.J.Janssen
Price: € 44.- (Delivery costs not included; inside the Netherlands € 1,99)
432 p. with maps, pictures and notes; ISBN:9789051792089
This book can be ordered:
Gopher publishers. (choose EN at the head of page direct order).
The Dutch edition (2015) can be obtained through Uitgeverij CHAIRONEIA.
Wilkens work was continued by Gerard W.J.Janssen in: Homeros Odyssee, Odysseus' wanderings across the Atlantic , Leeuwarden 2018 (Dutch)
English translations of the mayor theoretic chapters of this book are online. |
