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Deirdre_Rose t1_iyll0do wrote

Reply to comment by PolymerSledge in Gold from ancient Troy, Poliochni and Ur had the same origin by IslandChillin

The Trojan War never happened, but a city that 8th cent Greeks called Troy exists. So yes we know the location of Troy, but the city postdates the story.

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I-Make-Maps91 t1_iynjztj wrote

Something like the trojan wars do seem to have happened, there's signs of large battles at Troy around the time of the bronze age collapse. One theory I've heard was disruptions in the Greek world led to a giant raid in Troy, the wealthy trading city that guarded the route to the Black Sea, and by sacking Troy they ultimately disrupted the trade networks that brought tin to the region and contributed to the bronze age collapse.

Ultimately it's kinda unknowable, but it certainly fits with the Iliad actually having really good directions and the timelines of that era's Troy/Mycenaean civilizations collapse.

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Deirdre_Rose t1_iynn4xz wrote

The Iliad doesn't actually fit the geography or the timeline very well. Also the people in the Iliad are physically bigger than humans, there are talking horses, and gods directly intervening. It is not a historical document.

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I-Make-Maps91 t1_iynsfua wrote

>The Iliad doesn't actually fit the geography or the timeline very well.

Fits it well enough to find at least one city based on the descriptions in the book, and the existence is others is supported by other evidence. It gives accurate names to towns and cities that had but existed for hundreds of years and the clusters of cities mentioned being near each other are, in fact, near each other.

>Also the people in the Iliad are physically bigger than humans, there are talking horses, and gods directly intervening. It is not a historical document.

Don't be obtuse, stories often take inspiration from historical events and then embellish them for entertainment; it's an epic poem not a history book, history didn't exist as a thing to be studied and cared about until Herodotus. No one thinks Achilles was out there fighting a literal river god, but a large conflict between a unified Greece and the city they called Troy some time around the bronze age collapse is highly plausible, given supporting evidence from Hittite and ancient Greek sources.

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