{"id":13405,"date":"2010-12-03T18:50:59","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T18:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/?p=13405"},"modified":"2025-07-31T17:56:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T16:56:29","slug":"wilkens-iman-jacob","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wilkens-iman-jacob\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilkens, Iman Jacob"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iman Jacob<\/strong> Wilkens (1936-2018) <\/strong>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\u00a0published Where Troy Once Stood<\/em>[610<\/a>]<\/sup> which located \"iman-jacob-wilkens\"<\/a>Troy near Cambridge in England and identified Homer\u2019s Trojan War as an extensive conflict in northwest Europe. He follows the work of Belgian lawyer, Th\u00e9ophile Cailleux[393<\/a>]<\/sup>, who presented similar ideas at the end of the 19th<\/sup> century just before Schliemann located his Troy<\/a> in western Turkey, pushing Cailleux\u2019s theories into obscurity until Wilken\u2019s book a century later. The Cambridge location for Troy has recently been endorsed in a book by Bernard Jones [1638<\/a>]<\/sup>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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)(g)<\/sup>*<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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

Felice Vinci<\/a> also gave Homer\u2019s epic a northern European backdrop locating the action in the Baltic[019<\/a>]<\/sup>. 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.<\/p>\n

Wilkens claims that the invaders can be identified as the Sea Peoples and were also known as\u00a0Achaeans<\/a> and Pelasgians<\/a> who settled the Aegean and mainland Greece. This matches Spanuth<\/a>\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Wilkens’ original book had a supporting website(a)<\/sup>, as does the 2005 edition (b) <\/sup>as well as a companion DVD. A lecture entitled The Trojan Kings of England<\/em> is also available online(c)<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

A review of Wilkens’ book by Emilio Spedicato <\/a>is available online(e)<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

(a)\u00a0<\/sup> See: https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20170918084923\/https:\/\/where-troy-once-stood.co.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n

(b) <\/sup>See: https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20191121230959\/https:\/\/www.troy-in-england.co.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n

(c) <\/sup>Trojan Kings (archive.org)<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

(d)<\/sup>\u00a0https:\/\/leidenuniv.academia.edu\/GerardJanssen<\/a><\/p>\n

(e)<\/sup> Review of Iman Wilkens’ (geschichte-chronologie.de)<\/a><\/p>\n

(f) <\/sup>http:\/\/www.rbsp.info\/rbs\/CLONE\/VGS\/wilkens.html<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

(g)<\/sup> (PDF) ATLANTIC TROY | Gerard Janssen – Academia.edu<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0*<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

(h)<\/sup>\u00a0 TROY (archive.org)<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0*<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iman Jacob Wilkens (1936-2018) 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\u00a0published Where Troy Once Stood[610] which located Troy near Cambridge in England and identified Homer\u2019s Trojan War as an extensive conflict in northwest Europe. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[648,22,5989,6690,71,533,5941,342,3356,123,1070,232,4266,1072,427,60,1071,382,45],"class_list":["post-13405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-achaeans","tag-baltic","tag-bernard-jones","tag-cambridge","tag-emilio-spedicato","tag-felice-vinci","tag-gerard-janssen","tag-heinrich-schliemann","tag-hissarlik","tag-homer","tag-iman-wilkens","tag-jurgen-spanuth","tag-moses-finley","tag-pelasgians","tag-rainer-kuhne","tag-sea-peoples","tag-theophile-cailleux","tag-trojan-war","tag-troy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13405"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64264,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13405\/revisions\/64264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}