Bernard Jones

Homer *

Published June 9, 2011

Homer (c. 8th cent. BC) is generally accepted as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, regarded as the two greatest epic poems of ancient Greece. A recent study of the Greek used by Homer has enabled scientists from the University of Reading to confirm that the language used is compatible with that used in the 8^th century BC, in fact dating it to around 762 BC⁽ⁱ⁾.

Nevertheless, there are questions raised regarding the authorship of the ‘Homeric’ epics. For example, Andreas Pääbo is certain that the Odyssey and the Iliad came from two different authors^(ar).

Even more extreme was the opinion of the ancient geographer, Eratosthene s who was a persistent critic of Homer, whom he considered to be a fantasist. Strabo reported what the geographer said in the late 3rd century BC: “You will find the scene of Odysseus’ wanderings when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of winds”^(av).

Manolis Manoledakis, a professor of Classical Archaeology, in a paper^(as) on the Academia website “examines an aspect of the broader issue of the geography of the Odyssey, the primary stimulus being the references of the poem to places that could be associated with the Black Sea, namely the Aeaea and the entrance to the Underworld. As we shall see, while these particular places are indeed relevant to the Black Sea region, they do not belong to the context of a specific journey with specific halts in a specific geographical sequence. The Odyssey is a synthesis of many different episodes, and there is no point in trying to trace a complete geographical course for Odysseus’ voyage.”

It should also be noted that over 130 quotations from the Illiad and Odyssey have been identified in Plato’s writings^(s). George Edwin Howes (1865-1942), an American classicist, produced a dissertation^[^1458]+ on Homeric quotations in Plato and Aristotle.

Almost nothing is known of Homer’s life. He has been variously described as mad, blind and even mythical. Andrew Dalby, the English linguist, has gone so far as to claim^[0591] that the author of the two famed epics was a woman! While in 1897 Samuel Butler, the novelist, was even more specific when he proposed that Homer was a Sicilian woman^(j).

For centuries it was assumed that the content of these Homeric poems was the product of his imagination, just as the historical reality of Homer himself has been questioned. In 1795, F.A. Wolf, a German academic declared that ‘Homer’ was just a collective name applied to various poets whose works were finally combined into their present form in the 6th century BC. Wolf’s ideas sparked furious argument among Greek scholars that still resonates today. Now (2015), historian, Adam Nicholson has claimed that the author ‘Homer’ should not be thought of as a person but instead as a ‘culture’^(o).

In a 2021 review of Victor Davis Hanson’s Who Killed Homer? ^[1854], Adam Kirsch outlines how “Milman Perry proved that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by a lone genius^(ah). They were originally not written at all, but through fieldwork in Yugoslavia, Perry (1902-1935) demonstrated how the Homeric epics were the result of traditional bardic storytelling. Wikipedia describes Perry as “an American Classicist whose theories on the origin of Homer’s works have revolutionized Homeric studies to such a fundamental degree that he has been described as the ‘Darwin of Homeric studies’.”

Ed Whelan, an Irish classical scholar, published a brief paper in 2021 that endorsed the Homeric ‘multiple authors’ theory^(ap).

An anonymous author offered “Although there has been a great deal of controversy about the question of whether Homer alone wrote the two famous poems, much of the evidence points towards Homer being the author due to the consistent style of writing. Also, some analysts argue that Homer may have written one of the poems but not the other since both differ greatly in style. In contrast, the reason other analysts state for this difference is that Iliad was written in his youth while Odyssey was created during Homer’s years of age.” ^(aq).

The identification of the site at Hissarlik in modern Turkey as Troy by Heinrich Schliemann led to a complete re-appraisal of Homer’s work and, of course, further controversy. Homer’s Iliad is the story of the Trojan War and it has been suggested that in fact, he had compressed three or more Trojan wars into one narrative. What is not generally known is that there are also ancient non-Homeric accounts of the Trojan War^(q).

Kenneth Wood and his wife Florence have built on the research of his mother-in-law, the late Edna Leigh, and produced Homer’s Secret Iliad^[391], a book that attempts to prove that the Iliad was written as an aide-memoire for a wide range of astronomical data.

Allied to, but not directly comparable with, is the astronomical information identified in the Bible by the likes of E. W. Maunder (1851-1928)^[¹¹³⁷^].

Guy Gervis has adopted some of their work and, in a lengthy article, specifies a date of around 2300 BC for the events described in the Iliad and Odyssey, based on an analysis of this astronomical data⁽ⁿ⁾. Harald A.T. Reiche held similar views which followed some of the ideas expressed in Hamlet’s Mill^[0524] by Santillana & Dechend who were colleagues of Reiche at M.I.T. They also claimed that “myths were vehicles for memorising and transmitting certain kinds of astronomical and cosmological information.”

Much has been written about the historicity of Homer’s epic accounts, including a good overview on Wikipedia^(ab). Many have concluded that Homer did use real events, even if they were frequently dressed in mythological clothing compatible with the literary conventions of his day. I consider Plato to have treated the story of Atlantis similarly.

A recent study of solar eclipses recorded in Odyssey using data from NASA has confirmed that Odysseus returned to Ithaca on the 25th of October 1207 BC^(r).

Scholars have generally supported the idea that Homer’s works have a Mediterranean backdrop with regular attempts to reconcile his geography with modern locations, such as the claim in 2005 by Robert Brittlestone, a British investigator to have located the site of Ithaca, the homeland of Odysseus, on the Greek island of Cephalonia. This popular idea should be put alongside the views of Zlatko Mandzuka who maintains^[^1396] that all the locations mentioned in the Odyssey can be identified in the Adriatic.

Kazmer Ujvarosy of San Francisco State University, has noted that there are 22 different places currently on offer as the location of Ithaca^(ax).

Nevertheless, there has been a growing body of opinion that insists that this Mediterranean identification is impossible. A range of alternative regions has been proposed^(f) as the setting for the epics, which extend from Portugal as far northward as the Baltic.

In his Odyssey (VII: 80), Homer wrote about the island of Scheria in the western sea. His description of the island has been compared with Plato’s description of Atlantis and has led to the theory that they refer to the same place. There is little doubt that both the detailed geography and climatic descriptions that are provided by Homer cannot be easily reconciled with that of the Mediterranean. Consequently, the Odyssey has had many interpretations, ranging from Tim Severin’s conclusion^[392] that it refers entirely to the Eastern Mediterranean to Iman Wilkens’ book, Where Troy Once Stood^[610], which has the voyage include the west coast of Africa, then across to the West Indies and following the Gulf Stream returns to Troy which he locates in Britain.

Location is not a problem exclusive to the writings of Plato. Wilkins’s claims are a reflection of similar ideas expressed by Théophile Cailleux^[393] in the 19th century. Gilbert Pillot has also argued for voyages of Ulysses having taken him into the North Atlantic ^[^742]. A Spanish review of Pillot’s book is available^(ag). In 1973, Ernst Gideon (? – 1975) wrote in a similar vein in Homerus Zanger der Kelten, reprinted later as Troje Lag in Engelan^[1643].

It is worth noting that Bernard Jones in The Discovery of Troy^[1638]has recently moved Troy to Britain, probably in the vicinity of Cambridge, a location also preferred by Wilkens! Like many others, he argues that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were not set in the Mediterranean as so many of the details that he provides are incompatible with the characteristics of that sea. However, Jones has gone further and claimed that there are details in Virgil’s Aeneid, which are equally inconsistent with the Mediterranean ^[p.6-10], requiring a new location! Jones’ book has been reviewed on the Hall of Maat website^(at) as well as by Jason Colavito^(au).

An interesting overview of the various attempts to transfer the Odyssey from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe is available^(w). Damien Mackey has also endorsed the idea of a Northern European backdrop to Homer’s Odyssey^(aa).

Another researcher who places most of Odysseus’ travels in the eastern Atlantic is Gerard. W.J. Janssen of Leiden University on the academia.edu website^(v). In a series of six papers^(ai-an), he systematically reviews Homer’s geography, identifying locations referred to by him with places in the Atlantic. He compares his identifications with other commentators including Iman Wilkens and Théophile Cailleux. His website, with an English translation, offers additional information, including the suggestion^(ao) that Homer’s Laestrygonians were to be found in Cuba, an interpretation also offered by Cailleux and Wilkens. They also claim that Odysseus’ Caribbean trip included a visit to Saba, a Dutch possession, which is identified as the Aeolian Isle!

The idea of an Atlantic backdrop to the Homeric epics will not go away. The Dutch researcher, N.R. De Graaf^(ae). continues to write extensively on his Homeros Explorations website^(ad)^(x) regarding many of the specifics in Homer’s accounts. He has proposed Lanzarote in the Canaries as the location of Scheria, which concurs with the views of Wilkens and Janssen. Other specifics are that Ithaca was near Cadiz and that Sparta was Cordoba, while the ancient city of Carmona on the plains of Andalucia are, for De Graaf, Mycenae!^(af)

E.J. de Meester also argued^(ac) for the British Isles as the location of many of Homer’s references. It struck me as quite remarkable that the level of debate regarding the date, source and geographical details of Homer’s works is rather similar to the controversy surrounding Plato’s Atlantis in Timaeus and Critias. The late Edo Nyland was another researcher who had also opted for a Scottish backdrop to the Odyssey and had recently published his views^[394].

Felice Vinci also supports^[⁰¹⁹^] a Northern European background to the Iliad and Odyssey. However, in Vinci’s case, Scandinavia, and in particular the Baltic Sea, is identified as the location for the adventures in Homer’s classic. An English language synopsis of his book is available on the Internet. The persuasiveness of Vinci’s argument has recently renewed interest in the idea of a Baltic Atlantis. The assumption is that if Troy could be located in the Baltic, so might Atlantis. Vinci’s views are comparable with those of J. Rendel Harris expressed in a lecture delivered in 1924^(p)in which he claims that “we are entitled to take Homer and his Odysseus out of the Mediterranean or the Black Sea, and to allow them excursions into Northern latitudes.”

However, a scathing review of Vinci’s book can be found on the Internet^(d) and in issue 216 (2006) of Fortean Times written by Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs.

Further support for a Northern European Troy has come from the historian Edward Furlong, a former naval navigation officer, who has advocated for over twenty years that the journey of Odysseus went as far north as Norway. His particular views are outlined on the Internet^(c).

Other writers, such as the late Henrietta Mertz ^[0396/7], have suggested that Homer’s epic refers to a trip to North America. Professor Enrico Mattievich Kucich of Lima University is also certain that the ancient Greeks discovered America America^[400]. However revolutionary this idea may seem it shows how this particular subject is growing and would probably justify a reference book of its own.

The idea of an Atlantic backdrop to the Homeric epics will not go away. The Dutch researcher, N.R. De Graaf continues to write extensively on his Homeros Explorations website^(x) regarding many of the specifics in Homer’s accounts.

In 1973, James Bailey also proposed in his well-received The God-Kings and the Titans^[149^]that the Odyssey recorded a trans-Atlantic trip. Evidence exists for large-scale mining in the Americas as early as the 5th millennium BC. Bailey maintained that the Europeans imported enormous quantities of copper and tin from Central and South America to feed the demands of the Old World Bronze Age, an idea that was later heavily promoted by Frank Joseph and in great, if overly speculative, detail by Reinoud de Jong^(y).

Finally, the Atlantis connection with this entry is that if, as now appears to be at least a possibility, Homer’s Odyssey was about a journey to the North Sea then the possibility of the North Sea setting for the Atlantis story is somewhat reinforced.

A recent book^[395] by Steven Sora has developed the Atlantic notion further with the suggestion that not only was Troy located outside the Strait of Gibraltar but that both Homer’s Trojan War and Plato’s Atlantean war are two versions of the same war with the understandable distortions and embellishments that can occur with a narrative, probably involving some degree of oral transmission and then written down hundreds of years after the events concerned.

Ukraine is soon to be added to the growing list of alternative locations for the setting of Homer’s epics with the publication of Homer, The Immanent Biography, a book by A.I. Zolotukhin^(g). He claims that Homer was born in Alibant (Mykolayiv, Ukraine) on September 14, 657 BC^(t). He follows the views of Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876) who believed that most of Odysseus’s travels took place in the Black Sea rather than the Mediterranean. Additionally, he locates Atlantis in the western Crimean area of Evpatoria^(l). His 60-page book is available on his website^(m).

An interesting paper^(e) by the German historian, Armin Wolf, relates how his research over 40 years unearthed 80 theories on the geography of the Odyssey, of which around 30 were accompanied by maps. One of the earliest maps of the travels of Odysseus was produced by Abraham Ortelius in 1597^(u), in which the adventures of Odysseus all take place within the Central and Eastern Mediterranean, arguably reflecting the maritime limits of Greek experience at the time of Homer or his sources! Another website^(z) by Jonathan S. Burgess, Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto offers further information on this, including some informative bibliographical material.

In 2009, Wolf published, Homers Reise: Auf den Spuren des Odysseus^[669^]a German-language book that expands on the subject, also locating all the travels of Odysseus within the Central and Eastern Mediterranean.

Wolf’s ideas were enthusiastically adopted by Wolfgang Geisthövel in Homer’s Mediterranean^[1578], who also concurs with the opinion of J.V. Luce ^[1579], who proposed that Homer was “describing fictional events against authentic backgrounds.” This would be comparable to a James Bond movie, which has an invented storyline set in actual exotic locations around the world.

Perhaps the most radical suggestion has come from the Italian writer, Michele Manher, who has proposed^(h) that Homer’s Iliad originated in India where elements of it can be identified in the Mahabharata!

In August 2015, a fifteen-hour reading of the Iliad was performed in London.

^[^1458]+https://archive.org/stream/jstor-310358/310358_djvu.txt

^(c)https://www.academia.edu/8167048/WHERE_DID_ODYSSEUS_GO_

^(d)https://mythopedia.info/Vinci-review.pdf

^(e) https://authorzilla.com/9AbvV/armin-wolf-mapping-homer-39-s-odyssey-research-notebooks.html (link broken)

^(f)https://codexceltica.blogspot.com/search?q=atlantis

^(g)https://pushkinclub.homerandatlantis.com/english/homer.html

^(h)https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=100

⁽ⁱ⁾https://www.insidescience.org/content/geneticists-estimate-publication-date-iliad/946

^(j)https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/aoto/index.htm

^(k)https://web.archive.org/web/20180320072706/https://www.nwepexplore.com (see ‘n’)

^(l)https://homerandatlantis.com/?lang=en

^(m)https://homerandatlantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Homer_The_Immanent_biography_pdf2.pdf

⁽ⁿ⁾ https://web.archive.org/web/20180320072706/https://www.nwepexplore.com

^(o) https://www.newser.com/story/200859/homer-wasnt-a-person-historian.html

^(p) https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:1m1163&datastreamId=POST-PEER-REVIEW-PUBLISHERS-DOCUMENT.PDF (link broken) *

^(q) https://luwianstudies.org/the-homeric-epics/

^(r) Scientists provide evidence that Homer´s Odyssey is not fiction (archive.org)

^(s) https://plato-dialogues.org/tools/char/homerqot.htm

^(t) https://homerandatlantis.com/?p=4938&lang=en

^(u) https://kottke.org/19/03/mapping-the-odyssey-isnt-easy

^(v)https://www.academia.edu/38535990/ATLANTIC_OGUGIA_AND_KALUPSO?email_work_card=view-paper

^(w)https://codexceltica.blogspot.com/2009/10/homers-north-atlantic-odyssey.html

^(x) http://www.homeros-explorations.nl/

^(y) https://www.academia.edu/3894415/COPPER_AND_TIN_FROM_AMERICA_c.2500-1200_BC_

^(z) https://wakeofodysseus.com/

^(aa) https://historyancientphilsophy.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/more-to-the-iliad-and-the-odyssey-than-meets-the-eye/

^(ab) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Homeric_epics#History

^(ac) https://web.archive.org/web/20090907222615/https://home-3.tiscali.nl/~meester7/engodyssey.html

^(ad) Homeros Explorations – Homer, facts or fiction? (homeros-explorations.nl)

^(ae) https://www.homeros-explorations.nl

^(af) Mycenae, rich in gold – Homeros Explorations (homeros-explorations.nl)

^(ag) Perijóresis: Odisea (perijoresis.blogspot.com) (Spanish)

^(ah) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/14/the-classicist-who-killed-homer

^(ai) https://www.academia.edu/40668880/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_I

^(aj) https://www.academia.edu/40849368/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_II

^(ak) https://www.academia.edu/40982169/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_III

^(al) https://www.academia.edu/41200642/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_IV

^(am) https://www.academia.edu/41474241/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_PART_V

^(an) https://www.academia.edu/41625852/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_PART_VI

^(ao) LAISTRUGONIACUBA, LA HAVANA (homerusodyssee.nl)

^(ap) The Homeric Question – Who WAS Homer? (bibliotecapleyades.net)

^(aq) Homer | Biography, Books and Facts (famousauthors.org)

^(ar) (26) The Odyssey’s Northern Origins and a Different Author Than Homer | Andres Pääbo – Academia.edu

^(as) (99+) The Odyssey, the Black Sea, and an Endless Voyage to a Utopian Destination | Manolis Manoledakis – Academia.edu

^(at) http://www.hallofmaat.com/migrations/the-discovery-of-troy-and-its-lost-history/

^(au) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/new-book-claims-homers-iliad-proves-troy-was-a-celtic-city-in-northern-europe

^(av) Strabo 1.2.15

^(ax) https://www.academia.edu/6432607/The_Homeric_Ithaca_Identified_with_the_Island_of_Othoni?email_work_card=view-paper

Tagged A.I. Zolotukhin, Abraham Ortelius, Adam Nicholson, Aeneid, Andalucia, Andreas Pääbo, Andrew Dalby, Armin Wolf, Atlantis, Baltic, Bernard Jones, Black Sea, Britain, Canaries, Carmona, Cephalonia, copper, Cordoba, Cuba, Damien Mackey, E. J. de Meester, E. W. Maunder, Ed Whelan, Edna Leigh, Edo Nyland, Enrico Mattievich Kucich, Eratosthenes, Ernst Gideon, F.A. Wolf, Felice Vinci, Fortean Times, Frank Joseph, George Edwin Howes, Gerard. W.J. Janssen, Gilbert Pillot, Gulf Stream, Guy Gervis, Hall of Maat, Hamlet's Mill, Harald A. T. Reiche, Heinrich Schliemann, Henriette Mertz, Homer, Illiad, Iman Wilkens, Ithaca, J.RndelHarris, J.V. Luce, James Bailey, Jason Colavito, Jonathan S. Burgess, Karl Ernst von Baer, Kazmer Ujvarosy, Kenneth & Florence Wood, Laestrygonians, Lanzarote, M.I.T., Mahabharata, Manolis Manoledakis, Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs, Michele Manher, Milman Perry, Mycenae, N. R. DeGraaf, North Sea, Odyssey, Reinoud de Jonge, Robert Brittlestone, Saba, Samuel Butler, Santillana & Dechend, Scheria, Solar Eclipses, Steven Sora, Strait of Gibraltar, Théophile Cailleux, Tim Severin, Trojan War, Troy, Turkey, Ukraine, Victor Davis Hanson, Virgil, Wolfgang Geisthövel, Yugoslavia, Zlatko Mandzuka

Wilkens, Iman Jacob

Published December 3, 2010

Iman Jacob Wilkens (1936- ) was born in the Netherlands but worked in France as an economist until retiring in 1996. In 1990 he threw a cat among the pigeons when he published Where Troy Once Stood^[610] which located Troy near Cambridge in England and identified Homer’s Trojan War as an extensive conflict in northwest Europe. He follows the work of Belgian lawyer, Théophile Cailleux^[393], who presented similar ideas at the end of the 19^th century just before Schliemann located his Troy in western Turkey, pushing Cailleux’s theories into obscurity until Wilken’s book a century later. The Cambridge location for Troy has recently been endorsed in a book by Bernard Jones ^[1638].

Wilkens is arguably the best-known proponent of a North Atlantic Troy, which he places in Britain. Another scholar, who argues strongly for Homer’s geographical references being identifiable in the Atlantic, is Gerard Janssen of the University of Leiden, who has published a number of papers on the subject^(d).

>It is worth noting that the renowned Moses Finley also found weaknesses in Schliemann’s identification of Hissalik as Troy^(f). This is expanded on in Aspects of Antiquity ^[1953].<

Felice Vinci also gave Homer’s epic a northern European backdrop locating the action in the Baltic^[019]. Like Wilkens, he makes a credible case and explains that an invasion of the Eastern Mediterranean by northern Europeans also brought with them their histories as well as place names that were adopted by local writers, such as Homer.

Wilkens claims that the invaders can be identified as the Sea Peoples and were also known as Achaeans and Pelasgians who settled the Aegean and mainland Greece. This matches Spanuth’s identification of the Sea Peoples recorded by the Egyptians as originating in the North Sea. Spanuth went further and claimed that those North Sea Peoples were in fact the Atlanteans.

Wilkens’ original book had a supporting website^(a), as does the 2005 edition ^(b)as well as a companion DVD. A lecture entitled The Trojan Kings of England is also available online^(c).

A review of Wilkens’ book by Emilio Spedicato is available online^(e).

^(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170918084923/https://where-troy-once-stood.co.uk/

^(b)See: https://web.archive.org/web/20191121230959/https://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/

^(c)http://phdamste.tripod.com/trojan.html

^(d) https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/GerardJanssen

^(e) Review of Iman Wilkens’ (geschichte-chronologie.de)

^(f)http://www.rbsp.info/rbs/CLONE/VGS/wilkens.html *

Tagged Achaeans, Baltic, Bernard Jones, Cambridge, Emilio Spedicato, Felice Vinci, Gerard Janssen, Heinrich Schliemann, Hissarlik, Homer, Iman Wilkens, Jürgen Spanuth, Moses Finley, Pelasgians, Rainer Kuhne, Sea Peoples, Théophile Cailleux, Trojan War, Troy

Vinci, Felice

Published June 12, 2010

Felice Vinci (1946- ) is an Italian nuclear engineer with a background in Latin and Greek studies and is a member of MENSA, Italy. He believes that Greek mythology had its origins in Northern Europe.

His first book on the subject in 1993, Homericus Nuncius^[1358], was subsequently expanded into Omero nel Baltico^[0018] and published in 1995. It has now been translated into most of the languages of the Baltic as well as an English version with the title of The Baltic Origins of Homer’s Epic Tales^[0019]. The foreword was written by Joscelyn Godwin.

Vinci explained that “I have been interested in the Greek poet Homer and Greek mythology since I was seven years old. My elementary school teacher gave me a book about the Trojan War, so the leading characters of Homer’s poem, ‘Iliad,’ were as important for me as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

“In 1992, I found the Greek historian Plutarch‘s key-indication which positioned the island Ogygie in the North Atlantic ocean. I decided to dedicate myself to this research. The ancient Greek that I had studied in secondary school helped me very much. Subsequently, I was helped and encouraged by Professor Rosa Calzecchi Onesti, a famous scholar who has translated both of Homer’s poems, ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey,’ into Italian. Her translations are considered a point of reference for scholars in Italy.”^(s)

Readers might find two short reviews of Vinci’s book on an Icelandic website (in English) of interest^(t)^(u).

However, the idea of a northern source for Homeric material is not new. In the seventeenth century, Olof Rudbeck insisted that the Hyperboreans were early Swedes and by extension, were also Atlanteans. In 1918, an English translation of a paper by Carus Sterne (Dr Ernst Ludwig Krause)(1839-1903) was published with the title of The Northern Origin of the Story of Troy^(m).

Vinci offers a compelling argument for re-reading Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey with the geography of the Baltic rather than the Mediterranean as a guide. A synopsis of his research is available on the Internet⁽^a⁾.

His book has had positive reviews from a variety of commentators^(j⁾. Understandably, Vinci’s theory is not without its critics whose views can also be found on the internet^(d^)(b)and in particular I wish to draw attention to one extensive review by Andreas Pääbo which is quite critical^(k⁾.>His objections are based on a firm contention that the Odyssey and the Iliad came from two different authors^(v).<

Stuart L. Harris has written a variety of articles for the Migration and Diffusion website^(c)including a number specifying a Finnish location for Troy following a meeting with Vinci in Rome. M.A. Joramo was also influenced by Vinci’s work and has placed the backdrop to Homer’s epic works in northern European regions, specifically identifying the island of Trenyken, in Norway’s Outer Lofoten Islands, with Homer’s legendary Thrinacia. An Italian article also links the Lofotens with some of Homer’s geographical references^(r).

Jürgen Spanuth based his Atlantis theory^[⁰¹⁵^] on an unambiguous identification of the Atlanteans with the Hyperboreans of the Baltic region. More specifically, he was convinced ^[p88] that the Cimbrian peninsula or Jutland, comprised today of continental Denmark and part of northern Germany had been the land of the Hyperboreans.

As a corollary to his theory, Vinci feels that the Atlantis story should also be reconsidered with a northern European origin at its core. He suggests that an island existed in the North Sea between Britain and Denmark during the megalithic period that may have been Plato’s island. He also makes an interesting observation regarding the size of Atlantis when he points out that ‘for ancient seafaring peoples, the ‘size’ of an island was the length of its coastal perimeter, which is roughly assessable by circumnavigating it’. Consequently, Vinci contends that when Plato wrote of Atlantis being ‘greater’ than Libya and Asia together he was comparing the perimeter of Atlantis with the ‘coastal length’ of Libya and Asia.

Malena Lagerhorn, a Swedish novelist, has written two books, in English, entitled Ilion ^[1546] and Heracles ^[1547], which incorporate much of Vinci’s theories into her plots^(l). She has also written a blog about the mystery of Achilles’ blond hair⁽ⁿ⁾.

Alberto Majrani is another Italian author, who, influenced by Vinci, is happy to relocate the origins of many Greek myths to the Nordic regions ^[1875]. Although his focus is on the Homeric epics, he has also touched on Plato’s Atlantis story, proposing, for example, that the Pillars of Heracles were a reference to the thousands of basaltic columns, known as the ‘Giant’s Causeway’ to be found on the north coast of Ireland with a counterpart across the sea in Scotland’s Isle of Staffa.^(o)

Not content with moving the geography of Homer and Plato to the Baltic, Vinci has gone further and transferred^[¹¹⁷⁸^] the biblical Garden of Eden to the same region^(e). Then in a more recent blog^(q) he repeats his views on the location of Eden in Lapland and reiterates his core thesis that “the real scenario of the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey was the Baltic-Scandinavian world, the primitive seat of the blond Achean navigators: they subsequently descended into the Mediterranean, where, around the beginning of the sixteenth century BC., they founded the Mycenaean civilization.”

A 116 bullet-pointed support for Vinci from a 2007 seminar, “Toija and the roots of European civilization” has been published online^(h). In 2012 John Esse Larsen published a book^[¹⁰⁴⁸^]expressing similar views.

An extensive 2014 audio recording of an interview with Vinci on Red Ice Radio is available online^(f). It is important to note that Vinci is not the first to situate Homer’s epics in the Atlantic, northern Europe and even further afield. Henriette Mertz has Odysseus wandering across the Atlantic, while Iman Wilkens also gives Odysseus a trans-Atlantic voyage and just as controversially locates Homer’s Troy in England^[⁶¹⁰^]. Edo Nyland has linked the story of Odysseus with Bronze Age Scotland^[³⁹⁴^].

Christine Pellech has daringly proposed in a 2011 book^[^0640], that the core narrative in Homer’s Odyssey is a description of the circumnavigation of the globe in a westerly direction⁽ⁱ⁾. These are just a few of the theories promoting a non-Mediterranean backdrop to the Illiad and Odyssey. They cannot all be correct and probably all are wrong. Many have been seduced by their novelty rather than their provability. For my part I will, for now, stick with the more mundane and majority view that Homer wrote of events that took place mainly in the central and eastern Mediterranean. Armin Wolf offers a valuable overview of this notion^(g).

It is worth noting that Bernard Jones has recently moved ^[1638] Troy to Britain, probably in the vicinity of Cambridge! Like many others, he argues that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were not set in the Mediterranean as so many of the details that he provides are incompatible with the characteristics of that sea. However, Jones has gone further and claimed that there are details in Virgil’s Aeneid, which are equally inconsistent with the Mediterranean[p.6-10], requiring a new location!

Felice Vinci is also a co-author (with Syusy Blady, and Karl Kello) of Il meteorite iperboreo ^[1906] in which the Kaali meteor is discussed along with its possible association with the ancient Greek story of Phaeton.

More recently, Vinci wrote a lengthy Preface^(p⁾ to Marco Goti‘s book, Atlantide: mistero svelato^[1430], which places Atlantis in Greenland!

⁽^a⁾ The Location of Troy | Felice Vinci (archive.org)

⁽^b⁾ https://mythopedia.info/Vinci-review.pdf

^(c)http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?authorid=113

^(d)https://homergeography.blogspot.ie/

^(e)http://www.cartesio-episteme.net/episteme/epi6/ep6-vinci2.htm

^(f)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6QPtcZWBPs

^(g)Wayback Machine (archive.org) See: Note 5

^(h) https://www.slideshare.net/akela64/1-aa-toija-2007-English

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://www.migration-diffusion.info/books.php

^(j) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=44

^(k) https://www.paabo.ca/reviews/BalticHomericVinci.html

^(l) https://www.ilionboken.se

^(m) The Open Court magazine. Vol.XXXII (No.8) August 1918. No. 747

⁽ⁿ⁾ https://ilionboken.wordpress.com/insight-articles/the-mystery-of-achilless-blond-hair/

^(o)https://ilionboken.wordpress.com/insight-articles/guest-article-where-were-the-pillars-of-hercules/

^(p) Atlantis: Mystery Unveiled – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it)

^(q)The climatic optimum, the Indo-European paradise and the Garden of Eden – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it)

^(r) Lofoten Islands: the Sirens, the Wandering Cliffs, Scylla and Charybeds, the Maelstrom and the island of Trinachia – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it)

^(s) https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/vinci-felice-1946

^(t) https://nome.unak.is/wordpress/05-1/reviews51/felice-vinci-the-baltic-origins-of-homers-epic-tales-the-iliad-they-odyssey-and-the-migration-of-myth-rochester-vermont-inner-traditions-2006/

^(u) https://nome.unak.is/wordpress/06-1/reviews61/felice-vinci-omero-nel-baltico-le-origini-nordiche-dellodissea-e-delliliade-5th-edition-rome-palombi-editori-2009/ *

^(v) (26) The Odyssey’s Northern Origins and a Different Author Than Homer | Andres Pääbo – Academia.edu *

Tagged Alberto Majrani, Andreas Pääbo, Armin Wolf, Baltic, Bernard Jones, Cambridge, Carus Sterne, Christine Pellech, Denmark, Eastern Mediterranean, Edo Nyland, Ernst Ludwig Krause, Felice Vinci, Garden of Eden, Giants Causeway, Greenland, Heniette Mertz, Homer, Hyperboreans, Iceland, Illiad, Iman Wilkens, John Esse Larsen, Jutland, Jürgen Spanuth, Karl Kello, Lapland, Lofoten Islands, M.A. Joramo, Malena Lagerhorn, Marco Goti, North Sea, Odyssey, Olof Rudbeck, Phaeton, Plato, Plutarch, Rosa Calzecchi Onesti, Scotland, Staffa, Stuart L. Harris, Syusy Blady, Thrinacia, Troy

Troy

Published June 12, 2010

Troy is believed to have been founded by Ilus, son of Troas, giving it the names of both Troy and Ilios (Ilium) with some minor variants.

“According to new evidence obtained from excavations, archaeologists say that the ancient city of Troy in northwestern Turkey may have been more than six centuries older than previously thought. Rüstem Aslan, who is from the Archaeology Department of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (ÇOMU), said that because of fires, earthquakes, and wars, the ancient city of Troy had been destroyed and re-established numerous times throughout the years.” This report pushes the origins of this famous city back to around 3500 BC^(s).

Dating Homer’s Troy has produced many problems. Immanuel Velikovsky has drawn attention to some of these difficulties^(aa). Ralph S. Pacini endorsed Velikovsky’s conclusion that the matter could only be resolved through a revised chronology. Pacini noted that “the proposed correction of Egyptian chronology produces a veritable flood of synchronisms in the ancient middle east, affirming many of the statements by ancient authors which had been discarded by historians as anachronisms.”^(z)

The precise date of the ending of the Trojan War continues to generate comment. A 2012 paper by Rodger C. Young and Andrew E. Steinmann has offered evidence that the conclusion of the conflict occurred in 1208 BC, which agrees with the date recorded on the Parian Marble^(ah). This obviously conflicts with the date calculated by Eratosthenes of 1183 BC. A 2009 paper^(ai) by Nikos Kokkinos delves into the methodology used by Eratosthenes to arrive at this date. Peter James has listed classical sources that offered competing dates ranging from 1346 BC-1127 BC, although Eratosthenes’ date had more general acceptance by later commentators ^[^46.327] and still has support today.

New dating for the end of the Trojan War has been presented by Stavros Papamarinopoulos et al in a paper^(aj) now available on the Academia.edu website. Working with astronomical data relating to eclipses in the 2nd millennium BC, they have calculated the ending of the War to have taken place in 1218 BC and Odysseus’ return in 1207 BC.

The city is generally accepted by modern scholars to have been situated at Hissarlik in what is now northwest Turkey. Confusion over identifying the site as Troy can be traced back to the 1^st century AD geographer Strabo, who claimed that Ilion and Troy were two different cities!^(t) In the 18th century, many scholars consider the village of Pinarbasi, 10 km south of Hissarlik, as a more likely location for Troy.

The Hisarlik “theory had first been put forward in 1821 by Charles Maclaren, a Scottish newspaper publisher and amateur geologist. Maclaren identified Hisarlik as the Homeric Troy without having visited the region. His theory was based to an extent on observations by the Cambridge professor of mineralogy Edward Daniel Clarke and his assistant John Martin Cripps. In 1801, those gentlemen were the first to have linked the archaeological site at Hisarlik with historic Troy.”^(m)

The earliest excavations at Hissarlik began in 1856 by a British naval officer, John Burton. His work was continued in 1863 until 1865 by an amateur researcher, Frank Calvert. It was Calvert who directed Schliemann to Hissarlik and the rest is history^(j).

However, some high-profile authorities, such as Sir Moses Finley (1912-1986), have denounced the whole idea of a Trojan War as fiction in his book, The World of Odysseus ^[1139]. Predating Finley, in 1909, Albert Gruhn argued against Hissarlik as Troy’s location⁽ⁱ⁾.

Not only do details such as the location of Troy or the date of the Trojan War continue to be matters for debate, but surprisingly, whether the immediate cause of the Trojan War, Helen of Troy was ever in Troy or not, is another source of controversy. A paper^(ab) by Guy Smoot discusses some of the difficulties. “Odysseus’, Nestor’s and Menelaos’ failures to mention that they saw or found Helen at Troy, combined with the fact that the only two witnesses of her presence are highly untrustworthy and problematic, warrant the conclusion that the Homeric Odyssey casts serious doubts on the version attested in the Homeric Iliad whereby the daughter of Zeus was detained in Troy.”

The Swedish scholar, Martin P. Nilsson (1874-1967) who argued for a Scandinavian origin for the Mycenaeans ^[1140], also considered the identification of Hissarlik with Homer’s Troy as unproven.

A less dramatic relocation of Troy has been proposed by John Chaple who placed it inland from Hissarlik. This “theory suggests that Hisarlik was part of the first defences of a Trojan homeland that stretched far further inland than is fully appreciated now and probably included the entire valley of the Scamander and its plains (with their distinctive ‘Celtic’ field patterns). That doesn’t mean to say that most of the battles did not take place on the Plain of Troy near Hisarlik as tradition has it but this was only the Trojans ‘front garden’ as it were, yet the main Trojan territory was behind the defensive line of hills and was vastly bigger with the modern town of Ezine its capital – the real Troy.” ^(af)

Troy as Atlantis is not a commonly held idea, although Strabo, suggested such a link. So it was quite understandable that when Swiss geo-archaeologist, Eberhard Zangger, expressed this view ^[⁴⁸³^] it caused quite a stir. In essence, Zangger proposed^(g) that Plato’s story of Atlantis was a retelling of the Trojan War.

For me, the Trojan Atlantis theory makes little sense as Troy was to the northeast of Athens and Plato clearly states that the Atlantean invasion came from the west. In fact, what Plato said was that the invasion came from the ‘Atlantic Sea’ (pelagos). Although there is some disagreement about the location of this Atlantic Sea, all candidates proposed so far are west of both Athens and Egypt.(Tim.24e & Crit. 114c)

Troy would have been well known to Plato, so why did he not simply name them? Furthermore, Plato tells us that the Atlanteans had control of the Mediterranean as far as Libya and Tyrrhenia, which is not a claim that can be made for the Trojans. What about the elephants, the two crops a year or in this scenario, where were the Pillars of Heracles?

A very unusual theory explaining the fall of Troy as a consequence of a plasma discharge is offered by Peter Mungo Jupp on The Thunderbolts Project website^(d)together with a video^(e).

Zangger proceeded to re-interpret Plato’s text to accommodate a location in North-West Turkey. He contends that the original Atlantis story contains many words that have been critically mistranslated. The Bronze Age Atlantis of Plato matches the Bronze Age Troy. He points out that Plato’s reference to Atlantis as an island is misleading, since, at that time in Egypt where the story originated, they frequently referred to any foreign land as an island. He also compares the position of the bull in the culture of Ancient Anatolia with that of Plato’s Atlantis. He also identifies the plain mentioned in the Atlantis narrative, which is more distant from the sea now, due to silting. Zangger considers these Atlantean/Trojans to have been one of the Sea Peoples who he believes were the Greek-speaking city-states of the Aegean.

Rather strangely, Zangger admits (p.220) that “Troy does not match the description of Atlantis in terms of date, location, size and island character…..”, so the reader can be forgiven for wondering why he wrote his book in the first place. Elsewhere^(f), another interesting comment from Zangger was that “One thing is clear, however: the site of Hisarlik has more similarities with Atlantis than with Troy.”

There was considerable academic opposition to Zangger’s theory⁽^a⁾. Arn Strohmeyer wrote a refutation of the idea of a Trojan Atlantis in a German-language book ^[⁵⁵⁹^].

An American researcher, J. D. Brady, in a somewhat complicated theory, places Atlantis in the Bay of Troy.

In January 2022, Oliver D. Smith who is unhappy with Hisarlik as the location of Troy and dissatisfied with alternatives offered by others, proposed a Bronze Age site, Yenibademli Höyük, on the Aegean island of Imbros^(v⁾. His paper was published in the Athens Journal of History (AJH).

To confuse matters further Prof. Arysio Nunes dos Santos, a leading proponent of Atlantis in the South China Sea places Troy in that same region of Asia⁽^b⁾.

Furthermore, the late Philip Coppens reviewed^(h)the question marks that still hang over our traditional view of Troy.

Felice Vinci has placed Troy in the Baltic and his views have been endorsed by the American researcher Stuart L. Harris in a number of articles on the excellent Migration and Diffusion website^(c). Harris specifically identifies Finland as the location of Troy, which he claims fell in 1283 BC although he subsequently revised this to 1190 BC, which is more in line with conventional thinking. The dating of the Trojan War has spawned its own collection of controversies.

However, the idea of a northern source for Homeric material is not new. In 1918, an English translation of a paper by Carus Sterne (Dr Ernst Ludwig Krause)(1839-1903) was published under the title of The Northern Origin of the Story of Troy⁽ⁿ⁾. Iman Wilkens is arguably the best-known proponent of a North Atlantic Troy, which he places in Britain. Another scholar, who argues strongly for Homer’s geography being identifiable in the Atlantic, is Gerard Janssen of the University of Leiden, who has published a number of papers on the subject^(u). Robert John Langdon has endorsed the idea of a northern European location for Troy citing Wilkens and Felice Vinci ^(w). However, John Esse Larsen is convinced that Homer’s Troy had been situated where the town Bergen on the German island of Rügen^(x) is today.

Most recently (May 2019) historian Bernard Jones^(q) has joined the ranks of those advocating a Northern European location for Troy in his book, The Discovery of Troy and Its Lost History ^[1638]. He has also written an article supporting his ideas in the Ancient Origins website^(o). For some balance, I suggest that you also read Jason Colavito’s comments^(p).

Steven Sora in an article^(k) in Atlantis Rising Magazine suggested a site near Lisbon called ‘Troia’ as just possibly the original Troy, as part of his theory that Homer’s epics were based on events that took place in the Atlantic. Two years later, in the same publication, Sora investigated the claim for an Italian Odyssey^(l). In the Introduction to The Triumph of the Sea Gods ^[395], he offers a number of incompatibilities in Homer’s account of the Trojan War with a Mediterranean backdrop.

Roberto Salinas Price (1938-2012) was a Mexican Homeric scholar who caused quite a stir in 1985 in Yugoslavia, as it was then when he claimed that the village of Gabela 15 miles from the Adriatic’s Dalmatian coast in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina, was the ‘real’ location of Troy in his Homeric Whispers ^[¹⁵⁴⁴^].

More recently another Adriatic location theory has come from the Croatian historian, Vedran Sinožic in his book Naša Troja (Our Troy) ^[¹⁵⁴³^]. “After many years of research and exhaustive work on collecting all available information and knowledge, Sinožic provides numerous arguments that prove that the legendary Homer Troy is not located in Hisarlik in Turkey, but is located in the Republic of Croatia – today’s town of Motovun in Istria.” Sinožic who has been developing his theory over the past 30 years has also identified a connection between his Troy and the Celtic world.

Similarly, Zlatko Mandzuka has placed the travels of Odysseus in the Adriatic in his 2014 book, Demystifying the Odyssey^[¹³⁹⁶^].

Fernando Fernández Díaz is a Spanish writer, who has moved Troy to Iberia in his Cómo encontramos la verdadera Troya (y su Cultura material) en Iberia ^[1810] (How we find the real Troy (and its material Culture) in Iberia.).

Like most high-profile ancient sites, Troy has developed its own mystique, inviting the more imaginative among us to speculate on its associations, including a possible link with Atlantis. Recently, a British genealogist, Anthony Adolph, has proposed that the ancestry of the British can be traced back to Troy in his book Brutus of Troy^[1505]. Petros Koutoupis has written a short review of Adolph’s book^(ad).

Caleb Howells, a content writer for the Greek Reporter website, among others, has written The Trojan Kings of Britain ^[2076] due for release in 2024. In it he contends that the legend of Brutus is based on historical facts. However, Adolph came to the conclusion that the story of Brutus is just a myth^(ae), whereas Howells supports the opposite viewpoint.

Iman Wilkens delivered a lecture^(y)in 1992 titled ‘The Trojan Kings of England’.

It is thought that Schliemann has some doubts about the size of the Troy that he unearthed, as it seemed to fall short of the powerful and prestigious city described by Homer. His misgivings were justified when many decades later the German archaeologist, Manfred Korfmann (1942-2005), resumed excavations at Hissarlik and eventually exposed a Troy that was perhaps ten times greater in extent than Schliemann’s Troy^(r).

An anonymous website with the title of The Real City of Troy^(ag) began in 2020 and offers regular blogs on the subject of Troy, the most recent (as of Dec. 2023) was published in Nov. 2023. The author is concerned with what appear to be other cities on the Plain of Troy unusually close to Hissarlik!

^(a)https://web.archive.org/web/20150912081113/https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1995/95.02.18.html

^(b⁾http://www.atlan.org/articles/atlantis/

^(c)http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?authorid=113

^(d)https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/09/16/troy-homers-plasma-holocaust/

^(e)Troy – Homers Plasma holocaust – Episode 1 – the iliad (Destructions 17) (archive.org) *

^(f) https://www.moneymuseum.com/pdf/yesterday/03_Antiquity/Atlantis%20en.pdf

^(g) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo-lb2AAGfY

^(h) https://www.philipcoppens.com/troy.html or See: Archive 2482

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://www.jstor.org/stable/496830?seq=14#page_scan_tab_contents

^(j) https://turkisharchaeonews.net/site/troy

^(k) Atlantis Rising Magazine #64 July/Aug 2007 See: Archive 3275

^(l) Atlantis Rising Magazine #74 March/April 2009 See: Archive 3276