ok well you're an expert at holding my attention

You look like a librarian I know if you were I would absolutely go and listen to you speak. And ill just say this you don't need a degree in something to study and learn something new or be very knowledgeable on a subject but thats just my opinion. Great video and I learned something.

What a fun topic. I've been fascinated by this since I was first introduced to the story as a young kid, probably 11-12, and that bug only got worse when Michael Wood did his "In search of the Trojan War" series on PBS. You covered the Hittite angel well. From what I understand, the newest digs have now revealed a much larger bronze age lower walled city. That little hill in North Western Turkey is a hill that keeps on giving. Thanks for this--made my night. Best and cheers!

The Angel of Mons is a commonly retold myth. This doesn't mean WW1 didn't happen. It's quite possible to accept the mundane setting without believing the fantastical stories.

Well you clearly have more books than I do…. Just kidding, I have 40 years of Southern Living Christmas cookbooks on the shelves. I don’t. You win. Bad joking aside, I’d say you’re more than a simple student of history. I’d say your information is easier for simple minds like my own to understand. The was first one of your videos that was recommended in feed. I subscribed based on this video alone. In the states, college students once took western civilization in two courses as a requirement. Unlike many, I enjoyed the both courses immensely. My professor, Mr. Krueger (he didn’t need a phd) made history come to life with nothing more than a grade book and a piece of chalk. I enjoyed your enthusiasm and clear understanding of subject. You didn’t require chalk. Thats the sincerest compliment I can pay you.

Well can’t argue with that

We’re all descendants of Aeneas!

If I may correct: you found a way into your biological memory - Dune style... the cells remember and all that :)

Was Dido nice she seemed nice

@@darkhighwayman1757 A little intense, but yeah, she always seemed nice.

Burn the witch!

​@@ozramblue117why?

It also strips away all the layers of cultural and political nuance from it. No longer was Menelaus' reign in Sparta contingent on his being Helen's husband and no mention was made of the daughter she left behind. Achilles was made out to be a thrall of Agamemnon, who threw men at Troy's walls without anything in the way of ladders or other siege equipment. I remember watching it at a cinema with a friend when it came out, and we spent much of it laughing uncontrollably at the absurdities (there was no one seated nearby to be bothered, fortunately).

i think more likely people had to read the iliad or odyssey in school, and maybe didn’t pay that much attention. i’ve never even heard of that film.

@@lostmybadger I don't think most students read those books anymore. At least in my state.

And Menelaus wasn't actually killed...

I honestly didn't know about the movie until well after it was made. I stumbled into it at a thrift store, and was dumbfounded that I had never heard of it, considering classic history and mythology is something I'm very much interested in.

I am planning to react to a few films I've never seen before and comment on them.

Everyone knows that Achilles was Brad Pitt. Duh!😆

I'm absolutely here for "Cinzia's Cinema Critique"!

@@CinziaDuBois alternatively look at whatever alex jones says

Honestly I am surprised as an American that anyone here thought it was real. As for the Trojan war I thought it was up in the air since the site was too old to have been during the Trojan war/there were several cities built there/etc.

You hit exactly what I was gonna say 10/10 great comment

I would only add that probably: Ahhiyawa were Achaeans; Troyans were probably from other greek tribe (Ionians); Troyans were under the "protection" of Hettite; Hettite didn't help Troyans when Greeks were fighting each other, but Achaeans didn't want to provoke Hettite, so there was no other military actions on land than siege of Troy and when time was running out Achaeans did some scheme like Troyan Horse (that is why Troyans believed that Achaeans got on their ships and left Troy alone - Troyans thought that Achaeans got scared of Hettite). Meanwhile my ancestors had better things to do.

The inclusion of non-Greek names is pretty simple, honestly. You don't need time to elapse to explain the mixture of cultural names. Near-Eastern mercenaries were sure to have partook in the war. Some would no doubt have won great acclaim. Rather than explain that these were foreigners, the Greeks would probably have just acted as though these were Greeks with weird names to add another feather of glory to the Greek hat. Cultures do this all throughout history. When a foreign group does something great, take exclusive credit and begin circulating the names of those responsible as though they were always present in your culture.

Even in n Greek mythology, Troy was destroyed twice. Once by Heracles and ten other men, and the second time a generation later in the more well known Illiad tale.

OF course it was attacked, and of course there must've been something like a war regarding the city. It "guarded" the Bosphorus straits, the entrance to the Black Sea, which was ringed with extremely fertile land and a lot of great places to establish colonies. Whoever controlled the straits had unfettered access to all that.

So true. Even today you have things like Northern Ireland being a religious conflict. King Arthur is really interesting in the same way because we are fairly sure he existed however no one seems to know where or when. Also we call him King however it is a major plot point that he is holding the throne for someone else so he is never actual king. There is a really good argument for a roman fortress near me being the source of the legend in that "Arthur" held it for a period post Rome and then it all went wrong.

@@paulotoole4950 wait what? Holding the throne for someone else, didn't drawing the sword from the stone declare him the rightful king of England obviously I'm talking about the plot of the legend not real world history. I'm aware that Arthur is likely based off a Welsh or Cornish warlord.

Maybe the Trojan horse was a Greek siege tower made to breach the walls. In which case it made sense for the Trojans to drag it inside when they had the opportunity.

@@frankmitchell3594 Another angle is that the horse was sacred to Poseidon, the Earthshaker. It is possible that the walls of Troy/Wilusa may have been damaged by earthquake, and the wooden horse is a mythologized remembrance of this.

@@Lucius1958 Thats not the first time I hear this, and it is a reasonable explanation. It could also be that it is simply the embellishment of some sort of treason or bribe that allowed de atackers to get into the town. It would not be very "homeric" to describe how they convinced some political party, merchant, religiuos minority, or opressed cast to open a gate in exchange for wealth and positions in the new administration, no? Between the written compilation and the actuall events, there were 500 years of poets and bards telling the story, and making it "fancy" so, everything could have happened.......

Exactly. The Trojan War was about two dudes using their two armies to fight over a lady. One side used a giant wood horse full of soldiers to defeat the other side. Always look a giant wooden gift horse in the mouth. The end. Achilles Who? Aphrodite Who??? What’s the Iliad?

this!!!!

It’s probably better to compare with Romance of the Three Kingdoms. A fictional retelling of the Three Kingdoms period. It happened somewhat as described, but Homer made a few changes to make his favorites look better.

Greek's loved to put on a show.

There was definitely a "Troy" as described by Homer. In fact, it's one of the 9 or 10 distinct layers of settlement on the site. However, there is still much debate as to whether there was a conflict that brought down Troy as there is a lack of concrete evidence for such an event.

Yep. Definitley thought the Trojan horse was a real story and I had no idea about the mythological stuff or Achilles. So embarrassing as a Percy Jackson Stan as a kid 🤦‍♀️

I learned about the Trojan Horse, and that Helen fell in love with Paris and became the "face that launched a thousand ships". No clue about the mythological side until much later.

I would also add Wilusa/Ilios (Ilion) to the list.

It is incredible how little oral traditions change. One would imagine a giant game of telephone, but it's not

@@hfsk123 The Iliad was written down lol, but yes, the telephone game is a very poor example because oral poems and histories would have been memorised studiously for hours and told over and over again, not just heard once and remembered vaguely later.

@@SiqueScarface In Mycenean Greek, 'Ilios' would have been 'Wilios' since w falls off words in later Greek.

The latest theories of the language spoken by the people of Wilusa point towards Luwian, a sister language of Hittite and Ancient Greek also part of the Indo European family, that besides cuneiform, also had a hieroglyphic script. There are a lot more studies being published lately about the possible politics and culture of the parts of Western Anatolia in the periphery of the Hittite kingdom that offer other intermediate options between a conflict just of “Greeks” vs “Hittites”, as the cultural and political reality of the area seems to be a lot more complex. If anyone is interested, I’d recommend check out the lecture by Dr Eberhard Zangger on the Luwians on the Europos podcast KZfaq channel and the lecture on Luwian hieroglyphs by Dr Petra Goedegebuure available on the Univeristy of Chicago’s Oriental Institute KZfaq channel.

I've read the book. I also thought it was fascinating.

It was a real event, but the only version we got is a Manga that was based on it.

Exactly there's no everyone right and wrong it's a thing that happened

Some people get so smart they get ridiculous.

No, there was no event. There's no reason to believe any specific conflict created the myth. Just like how there was no specific flood that spurred the various flood myths.

@@TacticusPrime Except we have diplomatic letters from the Hittites that show there was a rebel named Piyamaradu who was from Troy. Also, it has all sorts of traditions from the bronze age that have been corroborated. As for flood myths, there was some actual flood that got exaggerated to the point where the flood covered the whole world rather than a couple cities.

Where?! Genuinely. It took me three months to find this single TikTok. Where the heck are you seeing a wealth of misinformation? 😅

Several centuries of misinformation.

@@CinziaDuBois Well there's always the new one about a viking black female jarl because of a tv show. Now while there is evidence of some darker skined vikings there's no evidence of them in a leadership position

This isn't disinformation - the historicity of the Trojan War was a question in my finals as an Ancient History undergrad (in a "Theory of History" module), and my head of department during my postgrad was an exponent of the position that early Roman history (such as the regal period) should be approached as works of fiction. I for one have always firmly been in the "the Trojan War didn't happen" camp.

@@arfived4 The trojan war is most likely an allegory for something that actually happened like the Atlantis myth.

Enunciation*

She's good but not DIVINE.

Mid Atlantic accent. Fake.

@@thomashonjr Angelic rather than Divine, surely?

@@Mr_Dopey Adjusting your accent to make it more comprehensible to a wide audience does not make you a "fake". Accusing someone who is modifies her accent of being a "fake" does, however, make you a "dick".

I think it might be a new meta to get clicks by claiming outlandish things. Wouldn't be the first time *cough*History Channel*cough* That, or the education system is really just that bad.

Well you know theres the whole the earth is flat, and somw people think the moon isnt real.

@@silverkyre the movie "Don't look up" in real life, hahahaha.

A crisis of silence and introspection. People would be reading or channel surfing but with the social media generation. This is it. Not that it's their fault, they've been online from conception.

@@krinkrin5982 This. Honestly, it's probably a healthy mix of both.

Thank you, Jose

I've read speculation that it's an allegory for an earthquake, as Poseidon was god of earthquakes and horses as well as the sea.

@@rcrawford42 And that an earthquake may have destroyed Troy’s wall thus allowing the Greeks entry, hence the building of the horse to honor Poseidon? Makes a lot of sense when we think about it since The wall was supposed to be impenetrable.

I don’t think there’s anything else to debunk to be honest 😅 took my three months to find this. TikTok is pretty clean

Awesome, thank you!

Liv and I have chatted on Twitter a bit. She’s really lovely 😊 though I’m not big enough to ever be worthy of being on her podcast haha. She knows far more than me, so I would t contribute anything worthy to her already outstanding show. Girl got the keep the quality high, not drag it down haha

@@CinziaDuBois Cinzia, don't put yourself down! You're very knowledgeable, amazing, smart human with a unique perspective and fascinating insight

My pleasure!

Thank you! Sadly I don’t know of much else to debunk. It took me three months just to find this tik tok haha. It’s pretty clean out there

I agree. That makes sense to me too. The horse is certainly the first thing I think about.

Thank you so much 😀

I always assumed that the story about his heel was made up to describe a hero that was incredibly successful and died to a severed achilles tendon or major blood vessel in the back of the ankle or something. So who knows!

Take Alexander the Great. During his lifetime, he started claiming he was the son of Zeus. And then people started making up myths about him and his supposed divine acts. While I cannot speak with any certainty, I think it's not preposterous at all to believe these characters might have a kernel of truth to them.

if you look up Bronze Age Dendra armor, you could see how someone wearing it would look invincible, except for the back of their lower legs if they were also wearing greaves. and Achilles was said to have the best armor in the Illiad.

@@ArakkoaChronicles People believed military commanders had magical powers as late as Napoleon.

As I understand it, the original stories regarding Achilles did not attribute physical invincibility to him, but rather that he was simply unbeatably skilled

Considering that Ovid is an absolutely terrible person whom nobody should read, I would be unsurprised.

What a bizarre notion.

@@therat1117 the metamorphoses goes hard tho

@@naomi5328 Hard on the r*pe and misogyny, as well as the bastardisation of Greek myth.

I doubt slavery to be a main cause of the outbreak of the civil war.

@@sapereaude5121 It could be reasonably simplified to such. The extended version is “the Southern states were paranoid that President Lincoln would free their slaves, and they felt that it was the right of every state to determine such things independently so they decided to secede which caused a crisis because the issue was not addressed in any of the documents or laws and eventually the rebels went too far in their seizure of federal property prompting President Lincoln to raise an army to end the rebellion and the rebels to send their own to meet it.”

I am somewhat offended by the Bible being referenced as “incorrect myths” but the lack of basic geographic knowledge is frightening. Jonah was not swallowed by a whale, at least not explicitly in the original Hebrew though obviously a whale was thought a logical extrapolation of “great fish”. It happened during the rule of Jeroboam II 8th century BC which is admittedly probably not common knowledge but it seems a theology related question more fit for one’s Priest than one’s tutor.

​@@codieomeallain6635 "Myth - a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events." Perhaps you view the term with a negative context instead of it's actual meaning, which can be understandable due to how it is sometimes incorrectly or dismissively used. I have encountered some people that define myth as something untrue, or only a tale where the actual intended meaning is so much more complex. I honestly have problems describing the bible or any other major religious work as anything other than myth, because I think that is the most appropriate term for people both inside and outside of the given religion the text is attached to. I believe the term pays the proper amount of respect to a work's overall human impact. Please don't take the usage of the word as anything disparaging or dismissive, instead my usage of the word myth speaks to the value of the text as a relevant cultural touchstone for peoples even outside of the religious context. I also believe that a question for a priest and a question for an academic need not be separate questions when discussing religious text. Sometimes the heightened reality found within religious myths are strengthened by adding a scientific and historical perspective in order to better understand the work. As an example let's take Revelations, every street preacher for 2000 has used it as some sort of fanciful tale about the future when it was clearly allegory written about Rome and the plight of the Christian church's early days with the myriad of issues and conflicts it had to endure. The text separated from the scholarly facts of when and why the work was written strips any intended meaning from it and instead just lets people add in their own interpretations, which completely undermines the work itself.

I don't feel like I know a lot of important things, especially regarding history, but at least I know the things you listed. Kinda boggles my mind that anyone doesn't know those things...

☠️

@@genghiskhan3914 ?

Glad you enjoyed it

Hell of a contradiction they had going there.

@@Vipre- I remember my grandmother getting right down angry that Greek gods were referred to as gods. 😂 In her opinion it was blasphemous.

@@Vipre- Ummmm yeah - no doubt ... if the world would have ended up primarily Polytheistic - the Iliad/Odyssey/Aeneid/Posthomerica could have very well ended up canonized as our modern day bible LOL.

Such a rich irony! The inability, indeed refusal, to recognize ones own religion as itself a mythology is a comically obvious example of cognitive dissonance on a grand scale. Its akin to Jehovahs Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventists barring their kids from reading storybooks because they are fictional. Many of the more rigid Christians object strenuously to referring to the Bible as "literature" since that would imply that its stories are "made up." God forbid!

The irony that they were averse to mythology yet religious is fantastic.