Bittlestone’s Ithaca takes another step towards the light

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 09 January 2007 23:04.

This evening Channel 4 News announced at considerable length the compelling findings of Robert Bittlestone’s borehole investigation of the Thinia isthmus between the Keffalonian “mainland” and Paliki. The isthmus is not constructed of bedrock but of infill, as Bittlestone predicted.

MR readers with good memories may recall the piece I wrote about Bittlestone’s great quest to recover Odysseus’ homeland for Paliki. This is not a matter of dry prognostications among dusty museum archives but of the living discovery of Homeric legend. Our Hellenic cultural heritage is 3,000 years old - as old as Jewry - and closer to us in significant ways than the Jewish rabbi they nailed to the cross on Calvary. Odysseus modelled the heroic virtues that shaped European minds and fitted us as peoples set against the capricious gods of Nature more naturally than ever the Paulian fragments of a universalist, monotheistic spirituality ever did. Awareness of who and what we really are - an awareness of which we may one day find ourselves much in need - begins there in Homer, not in the Torah.

That said, I recommend a visit to Robert Bittlestone’s website to bring you up to date with proceedings today.

London, January 9 2007. Results were announced today of new geological work which supports the dramatic theory about the location of Homer’s Ithaca put forward by British businessman Robert Bittlestone, Cambridge classicist Professor James Diggle and Edinburgh geologist Professor John Underhill. In 2005 they proposed that the Ithaca described in Homer’s Odyssey is to be found on western Kefallinia, not the Greek island that is today called Ithaki. Within 24 hours the news had been relayed by over 100 newspapers, TV and radio stations world-wide.

The new geological work involved the drilling of a 122 metre (400 foot) borehole at the southern end of the isthmus between Kefallinia and Paliki, to see whether the drill-bit would encounter solid limestone bedrock or loose rockfall and landslide material. The borehole penetrated to well below sea level and as the theory predicted, no solid limestone bedrock was encountered. Professor John Underhill comments:

“We drilled down to a depth of 122 metres, which is almost 15 metres below today’s sea level, and we didn’t meet any solid limestone strata at all. Although this is only a first step in testing whether or not this whole isthmus was once under the sea, it is a very encouraging confirmation of our geological diagnosis.”

The next step will be for archeological teams to excavate certain interesting, man-made features on Paliki. On the outcome of that will rest the entire case. A royal palace would be Bittlestone’s prize. Ours would be to disinter something, even a very little, of our better selves.

Tags: Archeology

Comments:

Posted by PF on Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:55 | #

Two other interesting facets of Greek history which are being elucidated by modern science are the Trojan War and the Dorian Invasion.

I assume everyone knows about the Trojan War, and an in-depth discussion of its historicity is here:

http://projectsx.dartmouth.edu/classics/history/bronze_age/lessons/les/27.html

And the Dorian Invasion:

http://projectsx.dartmouth.edu/classics/history/bronze_age/lessons/les/28.html

Its interesting that refuting the Dorian invasion or claiming that it was purely a linguistic invasion - guffaw guffaw - has been a popular claim in 20th century archaeology. During the Dorian invasion, supposed to have taken place about 1100 to 1200 B.C., tribes of Dorians from present day Macedon or, some say, Bulgaria/Balkans, moved southward into Greece, conquering large areas and driving the resident populace away. There is lots of evidence for population transfers and war in Dark Ages Greece, essentially palaces being surrounded by encampments, layers of ash where cities were burnt to the ground, etc.

One of the most interesting finds, which in my mind goes a long way in confirming the reality of the Dorian invasion, was the discovery of so called ~Barbarian Ware~ pottery outside several towns. Basically, samples taken from certain sites show two kinds of pottery being used in different places on the same site: one kind is typically Mycenaean Greek, and another kind is much more simple and artless in its style. These barbarian pots were found surrounding the periphery of towns, suggesting an encampment or a siege.

Also, the presence of certain kinds of pin-clasps and a certain style of sword, which was found hitherto to be present in areas north of Greece, is located in these formerly Mycenaean settlements at the time of the supposed invasion.

The Greeks themselves knew about the Dorian invasion, and a study of what they wrote about themselves, (i.e. Thucydides) reveals that they were aware that such an invasion had taken place, also roughly the time and extent was mentioned by them. For some reason modern archaeologists often chose to regard this as a myth- I really dont know why. They thought the Greeks dreamed this up about their past, and that it represented no serious population movement and no serious upheaval, just a linguistic shift, from the former dialect to the Dorian dialect. I think the only realistic way for a change of dialect to occur, is for one group of people to replace another group of people. They had no mass media, and most people couldnt read (the latter I am assuming).

I dont have the really good links anymore since I researched it about two years ago. I used to have pictures of the Barbarian Ware and the unique pin-clasps and swords.

Posted by Berislav Brckovi? on Mon, 26 Feb 2007 19:07 | #

Bittlestone’s theory is just one more of many speculations! He is like Schliemann, a very good publicist: an expert “marketer”. He knows his “costumers” well, and he listens to them carefully, and he responds to what he belives they neeed in order to convice them. Professor Diggle doesn’t know that all problems of exegesis actually derive from the fact that the exact meaning of Homer has not been grasped.

In conclusion, as for the “mystery” of the real location of Ithaca raised by different researchers, this can be explained by paraphrasing the thesis on Feuerbach (”Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”), which could be applied to the Ithaca question in the following way: researchers have hitherto located Ithaca in various geographical locations; the point is to determine and locate it on the geographical location that completely corresponds to Homer’s description. This is the only measure. This is where all previous and future theses about Ithaca either stand or fall (assuming, of course, that Homer’s description of Ithaca in the Odyssey is truthful).

See: http://www.odysseus-ithaca.net

Posted by Berislav Brckovi? on Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:16 | #

Please search my new book at amazon.com: ODYSSEUS’S ITHACA:THE DISCOVERY. Thank you.

Berislav Brckovi?

Posted by Berislav Brckovi? on Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:07 | #

What is the author of the book Odysseus’s Ithaca: The Discovery has done.

I explained the simple meaning of Homers’s words, his primitive but correct orientation, conected the relevant episodes and the main story in the Odyssey and have located Ithaca- homeland of Odysseus towards the poet’s description on the one of the most enchanting and interesting places on earth.
The home of this ancient mythological hero, one of the best known figures of human history, has finally beeen located.

Author: Berislav Brckovi?

Posted by Berislav Brckovi? on Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:58 | #

ODYSSEUS’S ITHACA
: The Discovery

Author: Brckovic, Berislav

Review Date: JUNE 02, 2008
Publisher:BookSurge (63 pp.)
Price (paperback): $23.50
Publication Date: October 18, 2007
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-419-67585-0
Category: AUTHORS
Classification: NONFICTION

A Croatian lawyer offers a meticulously researched and exhaustively detailed identification of the present-day whereabouts of Homer’s ancient Ithaca.

The location of Odysseus’s homeland, as described in the Odyssey, has long been a matter of debate for philologists, archaeologists and Homeric scholars. One easy conclusion to the argument is that the island currently known as Ithaca, located in the Ionian Sea just off the northeast coast of Cephallonia, was the mythological hero’s home. However, this island, known by locals as Thiaki, does not share topographical details with the Ithaca described in the Odyssey; while the island in the myth is low-lying and far to the west, Thiaki is mountainous and sits to the east of a larger land mass. Burrowing deep into the text of the Odyssey and creating a somewhat tedious inventory of Ithacan characteristics, Brckovic provides a convincing case that Erisos, the northern peninsula of the island of Cephallonia, is indeed the Ithaca to which Odysseus returned at the conclusion of the epic poem. The author assumes that Homer, despite mythologizing his Greek hero and his adventures, meant to reference an authentic landscape as one of the central settings of his narrative. Building off that assumption, Brckovic cites more than 100 lines of the poem that precisely describe the general environs of Erisos. Not satisfied with a concise argument, the author spends the second half of the book identifying exact locations in and around Erisos that inspired a dozen or so important locales mentioned in the Odyssey, including the Harbour of Phorcys, Raven’s Rock, the Hamlet of Laertes and the Hill of Nion. A generous use of color photographs and maps both current and historical support the thesis presented in this slim but thorough volume.

A convincing, compelling argument compromised by a density of details.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:55 | #

On the day of Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, right before he killed his wife’s suitors, a character in the epic poem made symbolic-mystical reference to what Plutarch, and others since, have interpreted as a total solar eclipse occuring.

Whether or not that character’s words referred to a total solar eclipse is in dispute. Nevertheless, in the poem Odysseus came home about ten years after the sack of Troy which is most commonly thought to have occured somewhere in the interval 1192 to 1184 BC, and “a total solar eclipse occurred over the Ionian islands — of which Ithaca is one — on April 16, 1178 B.C.,” according to calculations by modern astronomers.

Researchers have cross-checked this date by analysing other astronomical references in the text of the poem:

—29 days before the supposed eclipse and the massacre of the suitors, three constellations are mentioned as Odysseus sets out from the island of Ogygia, [...]. Odysseus is told to watch the Pleiades and late-setting Boötes and keep the Great Bear to his left.

—five days before the supposed eclipse, Odysseus arrives in Ithaca as the Star of Dawn — that is, Venus — rises ahead of the sun.

—the night before the eclipse, there is a new moon.

—the messenger of the gods, Hermes, is sent west to Ogygia by the king of the gods Zeus to release Odysseus and then immediately returns back east roughly 34 days before the eclipse. The researchers conjecture this trip refers to an apparent turning point of the motion of the planet Mercury. (Mercury was the Roman name for Hermes.)

The fall of Troy occured between 1250 and 1115 B.C. In that 135-year span only one date satisfies all the above astronomical criteria, completely apart from the eclipse: April 16, 1178 B.C., the calculated date of the eclipse.

So, it looks like Ulysses arrived back home around noontime on April 16, 1178 BC.