Troy in Southeastern, Not Southwestern Turkey?

Just chanced onto this on ZDF, the German public TV station.

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/#/bei...er-Fall-Troia/

Not sure if everyone can reach this, thanks to the existence of IP blocking software, and it's in German (sorry about that), but it has some interesting claims and, for those who can't understand German, some great CGI and scenery.

Basically this German comparative linguist Raoul Schott claims that Troy was not where Schliemann and present academic consensus traditionally place it, i.e. in northwestern Turkey on the Dardanelles, but rather in southeastern Turkey, in Cilicia, north of Aleppo and northeast of Adana. He bases himself on passages in the Iliad and excavations carried out at a site called Karatepe in Cilicia, which he says was the ancient Troy. Schott claims that this is the case because the area around Karatepe corresponds, according to him, closely to the story, and because unearthed stone reliefs from the site show warriors in outfits that look a lot like those of hoplites.

He therefore holds that the Iliad was a piece of historical fiction referring not to the past but to the present, and that Homer was a Greek scribe in Assyrian service. Supposedly there was an uprising against Assyrians in the area by the locals (I didn't quite get it in German but I assume it'd by the Neo-Hittites) and there was a 9 year siege of Karatepe as a result. Homer experienced and based himself on this.

Pretty wild claims, obviously, but interesting nevertheless. The documentary is a bit bombastic, especially towards the end ("this is the first time the story of brave heroes is given a historical background") and doesn't cross-examine Schott's claims with excavations of Troy VII and linguistic evidence found in Hittite records apparently referring to an Ilion in that area. I've also seen people claim Troy was in Croatia (???) before, so...

Still though, it's an interesting argument. Especially the way the area corresponds to the story and the stone reliefs...

Claiming that Homer was a real person is about where I stopped him. The Homeric poems stem from a pre-literate society and there is evidence for many different versions other than the one we have. This is a popular academic theory and most of the evidence points to it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CountArach

Claiming that Homer was a real person is about where I stopped him. This [Homer was not a real person] is a popular academic theory and most of the evidence points to it.

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I do not know for certain if that is true or not, but so far all the professors I have met (a great deal, believe me, some quite specialising in the study of Antiquity say the theory is popular in academic literary circles, while the purely historical circles remain unreceptive to the hypothesis. You could be right, but as I said, I had a different view on this matter.

It is said that "Homer" could actually have been an entire family. In which the stories were passed down from family member to family member until they could be written. not a popularly accepted theory but still possible. The problem with this and all history dating before writing is the simple fact there was no writing. Pots no matter how beautifully illustrated can only tell us so much