A good item worth the read. I have also cited the work by da Vinci a few years back in which he identifies the peoples with a string of villages along the Baltic coast. Inasmuch as the achaeans were derived from the dorian invasions from the north, it now appears that this village list also served to describe the whole people.
This puts the Trojan War circa 1179 BC with the Dorian invasions taking place in the preceding generation(s rather than after the collapse in 1159 BC.
It is possible that an earlier cycle of songs based on the Baltic and on Ulyses was updated to encompass the war with Troy.
Did the Trojan War really happen?
https://www.quora.com/Did-the-Trojan-War-really-happen
By way of background, I have been to Troy, walked around it, stood where Helen and Priam stood while Helen pointed out the Greek heroes for him on the plain below. I think that when one reviews the evidence, there is no doubt the Trojan War happened.
First of all the site is correct. It matches the descriptions in the poem point for point both geologically and architecturally. For example, from the city walls you can see the river that is supposed to be there, you can see the plain before the city where the fighting was conducted, you can see the sea where the Greek ships could have made their camp , and you can see the island that Homer explicitly says Poseidon watched the war from.
[ this also describes almost all period cities as well. Inland location along with a close island as a refugia. arclein ]
The most prominent architectural feature is the “finely made walls” that Homer describes and the walls at the Troy site are made of smaller stones closely matched instead the customary practice of very large stones more crudely matched like you see at Agamemnon's Mycenae (where I have also been). These walls are slightly backward sloped (probably to make them more resilient in an earthquake) instead of the characteristic perfectly vertical walls at other fortresses. Remember that Partroclus is described as climbing the walls three times in Achilles’ armor. Climbing the walls would be impossible at any fortress from the period - except at Troy. Looking up from the broad plain between the sea and the city (which is large enough for 200,000 men to fight upon) your view is of the Northeast Bastion rising high above on a cliff and that would seem like soaring “topless towers” as described by Homer to any Greek soldier looking up from the raging battle below. Homer further describes the city as “windy Troy” and when I was there on a beautiful summer day the wind was blowing so hard one had to brace oneself when standing on the Northeast Bastion overlooking the plain. There is a spring with mulberry trees below the walls, you can dip your hand in it, and the poem says the Trojan women washed their clothes in a spring with mulberry trees just below the walls. Homer did not compose the poems that make up the Iliad, the original poems would be 500 years before him. But whoever it was that composed them was at Troy. He saw the place. He watched the battles.
There is also more archaeological evidence. In the most likely layer for the city from the time period of the Trojan War, there is evidence of a siege and of a population huddling inside the walls in crowded conditions eating from vats in a “soup kitchen.” The city of that layer has both extensive outer defenses against chariots (a Greek favorite weapon) and an inner citadel of palatial character. The city of that layer was destroyed by fire. There are Greek Heroic Period arrowheads found at the site. There is one location where many horse skeletons were found, suggesting a commercial horse breeding operation. What is the last line of the Iliad? “And such were the funeral rites of Hector, tamer of horses.”
Another piece of evidence is the catalog of the Greek cities in the Iliad that sent ships of men to the war. Some of the cities in the catalog were unknown to later recorded history and lost even at the time of Homer, but archaeological evidence has been found that indicates they existed in the Heroic Period of the Late Bronze Age when the Trojan War was fought. The catalog was accurate when it was created, not a later invention by Homer-era fiction writers who would not have known the names and existence of these cities. Archaeologists have actually found not only cities but also Late Bronze Age palaces by following the descriptions in the Iliad.
But it gets better. In the Hittite diplomatic archives, there are letters written from the Hittite king to a most powerful king of the Heroic Greeks. The Hittite king honors the Greek king by calling him “brother” in the letters which suggests the status of the Greek king was high. The letters seek to amend the rupture in diplomatic relations caused by “difficulties” (diplomatic speak for war?) over a city with what is most probably a Hittite version of the name of Troy. That is right, the Trojan War is explicitly mentioned in the Hittite diplomatic archive. Recall that during the war Troy got help and even troops from neighboring states, and these were probably vassal states of the Hittites as Troy might have been itself, and some suggest the Trojan War was a proxy war between the Greek and Hittite powers.
Wait, it gets even better, one of the letters in the Hittite diplomatic archive identifies Alexander, a name for Paris who the Epic Cycle poems say ran off with Helen to start the Trojan War. (The actual incident is before the start of the Iliad.) The letter identifies him as a prince of Troy and suggests he inflamed the situation, though it stops short of saying explicitly what he did that was so grievous. (Not surprising in a letter between kings considering the potentially delicate matter of running off with a king’s wife.) The archives are historical documents, not epic poems, and there it is, right in front of our collective faces, the name of one of the chief protagonists of the Trojan War. With a statement that is most reasonably interpreted to mean that he did something that started a war over a city named Troy. How much evidence does it take?
When one reviews all of the information, geological, archaeological, and historical, to me it is overwhelmingly likely that the Trojan War happened. The only question is why? Was it a proxy war between rising powers (Greek and Hittite), a war over control of trade through the Hellespont, a concocted war to consolidate the power of Mycenae over the other city states of Greece, or a war because a woman was just so amazingly beautiful? I have known women beautiful enough to launch a thousand ships, and I bet the first rock-star-level celebrity heroes of the Late Bronze Age like Paris, Achilles, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Priam, and Hector did as well. Perhaps this classifies me as a romantic zealot, but I go with the last explanation.
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