Odysseus's Return From the Trojan War Dated 160
srothroc writes "Scientists have used astronomical data from the Odyssey to attempt to pinpoint the time of Odysseus's return from his eponymous journey after the Trojan War. From the article: 'The scientists then searched for potential dates that satisfied all these astronomical references close to the fall of Troy, which has over the centuries been estimated to have occurred between roughly 1250 to 1115 B.C. From these 135 years, they found just one date that satisfied all the references — April 16, 1178 B.C., the same date as the proposed eclipse.""
Are they going to look for Atlantis next? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's another scientist's perspective on the historicity of the Odyssey:
-- Eratosthenes
Speaking as someone who works on ancient Greek literature for a living (no, there's not all that many of us), I look forward to this group's publication of their discoveries of exactly which island the Cyclops lived on, the chemical make-up of the drug in the lotus that kept the Lotus-Eaters somnolent, and details on the god Poseidon's dietary habits.
Myths do, occasionally, have a historical basis; rarely, and only ever in a very distorted fashion; but, very occasionally, it happens. For example, discoveries in Hittite textual archives over the last few decades now have a number of people seriously contemplating the possibility that some kind of "Trojan War" may, in some distorted sense, actually have actually happened. But for a story to have its roots in an event from which it is separated by several centuries in which there was no such thing as writing ... well, why not just announce that you've found Atlantis? That kind of announcement would have pretty much the same relationship between myth and historicity.
In addition, the "darkening of the sky" bit that they quote comes in the middle of an episode where a seer is having a vision of blood running down the walls. If you're going to look for historically verifiable events, why not look at events that the poem describes as actually happening? -- a hallucination isn't really a very convincing candidate.
Plutarch also thought that Odysseus visited a goddess named Calypso who lived on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, in the middle of a sea enclosed by a horseshoe-shaped continent. It's just not easy to have much confidence in him when he's talking about subjects about which he clearly doesn't have a clue.
Re:What we really want to know is (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm, you know, Mount Olympos is a real mountain. It's right here [google.co.nz] ...
As for Circe, in Italian myth (by which I guess I mean Etruscan myth) she was thought to live on a cape on the west coast of Italy, about halfway between Rome and Naples, which is still called Monte Circeo [google.co.nz]. I think Circe may have left by now, though.
Re:What we really want to know is (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about Aeaea, but I do know that Mt. Olympus [wikipedia.org] is a real mountain, and the highest one in Greece.
Re:about Atlantis - Thera/Santorini eruption (Score:3, Informative)
Re:phew.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:phew.. (Score:3, Informative)
Millions of people also believe that three wise men appeared alongside the shepherds in Bethlehem on the night Jesus was born. On the contrary, the Bible doesn't say how many wise men there were (only that they brought three gifts), and they didn't arrive until almost two years later.
Of course you may not believe any of this actually happened, but just because the popular story is ridiculous doesn't mean the events actually recorded in the Bible are untrue.
Re:Are they going to look for Atlantis next? (Score:1, Informative)
Actually it turns out that narrative poems are particularly prone to certain types of changes, because -- at least in pre-classical Greece -- they're not recited by rote. There's overwhelming evidence that early Greek epics were re-told using an enormous set of conventions (formulaic language, typical scenes, typical plot elements); so stories were driven partly by how the story is known to go, partly by the individual storyteller's creative imagination, and partly by these conventions. Basically, what we now refer to as "poetry" was for an early Greek poet "the special kind of language that you use for telling certain stories and which happens to come out in good meter almost automatically".
The poets were professionals who went from house to house, village to village, to entertain people. They were paid for exciting stories. The poetic form helped the poets memorize the long stories but didn't prevent them from adding new verses for better pay.
This is stated directly in the
introductory poem [sacred-texts.com] of the Finnish epic the Kalevala:
That shall echo forth the praises
Of the beer that I have tasted,
Of the sparkling beer of barley.
Bring to me a foaming goblet
Of the barley of my fathers,
Lest my singing grow too weary,
Singing from the water only.
Bring me too a cup of strong-beer,
It will add to our enchantment,
To the pleasure of the evening,
Northland's long and dreary evening,
For the beauty of the day-dawn,
For the pleasure of the morning,
The beginning of the new-day.
The Finnish original is even more direct: the better you feed me, the longer the story.
Re:Are they going to look for Atlantis next? (Score:5, Informative)
Petrushka opined,
"Solar eclipses in conjunction with a new moon are possibly enough to make it worth investigating this one..."
No, not really. Solar eclipses ALWAYS happen at the same time as the new moon. However, the fact that Mercury went retrograde 34 days before, as mentioned in the text of the poem; at the same season that Bootes is setting and the Pleiades are visible, as mentioned in the text of the poem; and that Venus is visible in the morning, as mentioned in the text of the poem; and that the sun is eclipsed, as mentioned in the text of the poem; and it ALL JUST HAPPENS to occur around the most probable estimate of the historical date of the events--THAT is what makes this worth investigating.
There is evidence of significant historical details being preserved in oral tradition. This might be one example.
To be entirely fair, though (Score:5, Informative)
To be entirely fair, though:
1. Jesus seemed to have been a pretty common name back then. So basically it's like having a myth in the USA about a guy called John or in Russia about a guy called Ivan. There were plenty of Jesuses around and there are a few mentions of some unrelated ones in the chronicles. Whether one was actually the son of God or not, is a completely other issue.
2. A lot of records from that era don't exist any more, or are incomplete. Seriously, we're left scratching our heads even when it comes to such issues of state interest as what the strength of the roman legions were, at almost any given point, or what were their generals.
So assuming that you can just find out about some John Doe (for the Romans, Jesus was just another nutter executed for speaking against the emperor, not anyone special in any way,) and that you can take lack of a signal as confirmation that such a person existed, is kind of ignorant. Again, even from Rome itself we don't actually have the records of everyone they executed, and we _can't_ say that, for example, someone called Bigus Dickus never existed because we didn't find his records.
Plus that area had some bloody revolts, very soon thereafter, and some very brutal and devastating roman retaliation, followed by pretty much forced exodus at sword point. There are more than enough records that were lost in that chaos.
3. There seems to have been an interesting early sect, namely the Ebionites [wikipedia.org], which actually had a bunch of people who knew Jesus and supposedly _relatives_ of Jesus. They actually insisted that the leadership of the church should go to the relatives of Jesus, not to Peter, which wouldn't make sense if they didn't have such among them.
The interesting thing is that they seem to have had a very different view of Christianity and Jesus than what the apostles mangled it into, and even more so than what the Byzantines later decided it should be. What we inherited as Christianity is a long series of deviations, starting with Paul who basically insisted to throw away half the old Judaism (i.e., of the Old Testament) to make the new religion more palatable to non-jews and thus easier to proselitize. The Ebionites actually called Paul an apostate.
At any rate, these guys had a much more... down to earth view of it all, and viewed Jesus as just, you know, a human. A prophet and divinely inspired, to be sure. But not the divine "superuser" that later Christianity made him into. And while a lot of information about them is lost, from what the mainstream christians said about them, it seems that these guys thought Mary was _not_ a virgin at birth, Jesus _didn't_ come back from the dead, etc. The bugger just died on the cross, like everyone else, and stayed dead.
At any rate, I'd say that a sect based on a group of his friends and relatives makes no sense at all, if he didn't exist. Or let me qualify that better: if _a_ Jesus didn't exist.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you should be a christian or anything. Note that, going by the views of, you know, those who actually knew him and didn't have to embelish the story to proselitise, he was just a guy. Maybe divinely inspired, if you want to believe that, or maybe he just got a sunstroke there in the desert or ate some funny mushrooms and had visions of what didn't actually exist, if you want to take the skeptical view. Take your pick.
I'm only saying that _a_ guy called Jesus _might_ have actually have existed and started the whole madness. Of course, we don't know for sure, but it's not too ludicrious a hypothesis, even if the evidence is less than bullet-proof. On the other hand, exactly what he was, and if he's even vaguely like what your local pastor claims, that's another story.
Re:phew.. (Score:4, Informative)
I love how popular it is to doubt Christianity among the geek community, as if it somehow further proves your superior intelligence over the rest of the world. Unfortunately, when you choose an argument such as this "he never existed," you're disregarding your beloved wikipedia which you'd normally jump to for a link instantly when it fit your needs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus [wikipedia.org]
It's a choice of faith whether you believe that he was anything more than a Jewish teacher.... But if you're willing to believe most of what we know of history from that period, many elements of which was gleaned from only a single source of archaeological evidence, denying his existence is a bit absurd.
Re:Are they going to look for Atlantis next? (Score:1, Informative)
Well, it states where they were published at the end of the article: "Magnasco and Baikouzis detailed their findings online June 23 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
The abstract is here [pnas.org], but you (or your academic institution) will need a subscription to access the full text.