Slashdot Mirror
Odysseus's Return From the Trojan War Dated
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.""
I can sleep at night now.
I just can't be bothered.
That is actually a cool article to read. I found it quite an interesting read.
hello
That's how I've always felt (as an English minor)... that the stories of Homer were dated. :-D
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
"Is ol' Odysseus gonna have to smack a bitch???"
Here's another scientist's perspective on the historicity of the Odyssey:
You will find the scene of the wanderings of Odysseus when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of the winds.-- 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 suggested the prophecy of Theoclymenus referred to a solar eclipse.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.
Have these same scientists found Aeaea or Mt. Olympus? I'd really love to make the acquaintance of Circe or Aphrodite.
With all this new info, perhaps now they can finally find his fossilized poop.
Table-ized A.I.
Part of me wants to make a snide comment about the usefulness of this, part of me thinks that it is pretty cool that they could find this sort of stuff out and "discover" it so long after it had been written and the times and dates were erased into history.
Overall, I guess it's quite cool - even if it doesn't have a direct impact on my life.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I had March 25th in the sweep.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
It was a couple of times larger than Krakatoa/1883 (albeit smaller than Tambora/1815)
The Raven
Resurrection of Dinosaurs Dated. Scientists have thoroughly examined the fashion styles of individuals in the documentary Jurassic Park, and have dated the first reincarnations of dinosaurs to approximately 1700 A.D.
And there won't be that many of you if you keep replying to
From TFA:
"about noon on April 16, 1178 B.C., and would have coincided roughly a decade before the most often cited estimate for the sack of Troy â" about 1190 B.C."
Isn't 1178 BC about a decade AFTER 1190 BC??? And thus making the scientists not look like fools...
c'mon guys you think im going to fall for the 'ol it happened on my birthday routine. not that much ever happens on April 16th.
They still haven't found a shred of evidence for Jesus or his magic tricks but much older things? No problem.
Trolling is a art,
-- Charles Péguy
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, 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.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"myth" as the OP said is used to describe a story that was made up to explain why the world is the way it is.
"legend" is stories spoken (or more exactly sung) about past history. They're (very strongly) embellished retelling of (long forgotten) historical facts.
Common use doesn't make the distinction, scholars do.
It's exactly the same as the words "hypothesis" and "theory" have very specific meanings when used by a scientist, as opposed to when used by some random guy (specially if the random guy is a proponent of the "intelligent design" and "evolution is only a theory" ideologies)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The way I heard it is that memories become legend, legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
Is that a hidden Lord of the Rings joke?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
People -- most notably Edmund Burke -- have theorized that the Golden Fleece was sheepskin used in sluicing operations to catch gold dust, and the story is about a raid on a neighboring civilization to capture their mineral recovery technology.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Won't someone please think of the cyclops!?
meaning that the conception created Jesus's soul which is also tied to reasoning behind the Christian beliefs against abortion.
Why would Jesus need a human soul? Isn't he supposed to be a physical manifestation of Yahweh?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This does provide some more (circumstantial) evidence that the events described by Homer occurred during the Bronze Age Catastrophe, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_collapse.
If you have a Palm device including smartphone you can read Homer in Greek and English with a free interlinear reader program many text avail. all free.
http://www.handheldclassics.com/
John Jacskon
"History is written by the Winners" is a common statement used in the world. It's not exactly true though.
The original quote reads something like this, "History is the sum total of lies agreed upon by the winners." -- Napoleon Bonaparte