Robert Bite Si Tong stands above the village of Pate Licata, overlooking the narrow isthmus connecting the two villages through the red tile roof, which is a part of the Greek island of Severonia on the west coast. In the valley below, farmers in overalls are harvesting olives. The breeze smells of oregano and thyme. Peter Si Tong said, "It seems that we are standing on a solid foundation." . "But everything under our feet is falling rocks. Across the valley is the ancient Ithaca Island.
British management consultant Beate Si Tong believes that he has solved a mystery that has puzzled scholars for more than 2,000 years. In the book Unbounded Odysseus published by Cambridge University Press in 2005, he thinks that a peninsula on Sevinia Island was an independent island Ithaca about 3000 years ago, namely Homer's Odysseus Kingdom. He believes that the waterway separating the two islands is full of continuous earthquakes and landslides, forming the Paliki Peninsula as we know it today.
Like heinrich schliemann and Michael Ventris, the merchants who discovered the ancient Trojan ruins in the 1970s, architects deciphered Minoan script in Crete in the 1950s. The 57-year-old stone biting is part of the glorious tradition, inspired by amateurs who have made extraordinary discoveries outside the traditional academic scope. Gregory Nagy, director of the Center for Greek Studies in Washington, said: "Beat Si Tong has a good insight. He did a very important thing. This is a real breakthrough fusion of oral poetry and geology, and it is also the most reasonable explanation about Ithaca that I saw in the second millennium BC. We will never read the Odyssey in the same way again.
What's more provocative is that Peter Si Tong can make use of cutting-edge technical tools that his former scholars can't use. He thinks that events similar to those described in the Odyssey have probably happened, and the landmark events of the protagonist's adventure in Ithaca can be found in Paliki Peninsula of Sevinia. "I found that most of the events described on the island were completely credible," he said, adding that the chapter about Odysseus' wonderful adventures between magical figures, Scylla the sea monster and piranha, or Circe the witch was obviously out of poetic imagination, and the most important part was the statement that modern Paliki was ancient Ithaca. "James Diegel, a professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University, said that I had no doubt about this. This is irresistible and has geological support. The other part is speculative. But once you cross the terrain, you will find an unusual matching point.
Since ancient times, the location of Homer Ithaca has always been a major problem in the literary world. Erato Cheinisse, a geographer in the third century BC, lamented, "When you find a shoemaker who sews wind bags, you will find Odysseus wandering." Some people think that Homer's geography is a poet's guess. As Bernard Knox, a famous classicist, once said, "When Homer's role shifted to Greece and its offshore islands in the west, chaos dominated."
Modern scholars have proposed many places, some even as far away as Scotland or the Baltic Sea. The most obvious candidate is today's Ithaca Island, which lies in the east of Sevnia. But this does not conform to Homer's description:
Around her, there is a circle of islands side by side, Durkheim. Similarly, Zach Sintos is also lush, but my position is low and far, farthest from the sea, with dusk in the west and dawn in the east.
Scholars have long agreed that I am ancient and modern Zachintos. Similarly, ancient times are also the main body of modern cephalosporins, and there is also a big town called Sami here. But modern Ithaca-a few miles east of West Virginia-is not the farthest place to go to sea, and its mountainous terrain does not conform to Homer's description of "low-lying land". Birtles Tong believes that after the refugees came to Ithaca after the earthquake or other disasters and changed their names, the ancient Durkheim became the modern Ithaca. "The old explanation will only make people feel dissatisfied," he said. "I've been thinking, is there a radical new plan? Back home near London, he studied maps and satellite images carefully. He mused that if Paliki was once an independent island, it was indeed the "farthest ocean". "
Then Bitstone found the treasure. Reading the chapter about Toulong in Geography by strabo, an ancient writer, is the most important source of ancient geographical knowledge. Bite Si Tong found such a passage: "The narrowest part of the island formed a low gorge. According to the data of Strappo in the 2nd century BC, Toulong was once two islands. Strabo's description shows that the passage separating Cefnia from the present peninsula has been gradually filled.
Peter Si Tong was convinced from the beginning that his thinking was correct. In 2003, he went to Siberia, rented a jeep and began to cross the isthmus, which is a narrow and rugged land connecting the mainland and Paliki Peninsula. He said that when he noticed the winding canyon on the five-mile-long isthmus, he was looking for "traces of the front channel." In some places, cracks as deep as 300 feet suggest a possible route of an ancient waterway.
Peter Si Tong already knows that Certonia is located on the most unstable geological fault line in the world. For thousands of years, the African plate and the Eurasian plate have been colliding a few miles from the Paliki coast, forming a stable thrust fault, which periodically erupts in strong earthquakes. 1953, almost all the buildings on the island were razed to the ground, causing 90% of the residents on the island to flee. Birtles Tong speculated that maybe a big earthquake pushed the Strabo Strait (which he called "Strabo Strait") above sea level, making it actually high and dry.
In 2003, Birtles contacted John Underhill, a professor of geography at Edinburgh University. Underhill, who has studied blackhead geology for more than 20 years, told him that such a large-scale geological uplift is impossible. But he was interested. He met Peter Si Tong in Toulon Island and witnessed it with his own eyes.
Yamashita immediately noticed that the half-mile wide isthmus was a geological "chaotic" rock, and rocks of different ages proved that the avalanche came from steep mountains on both sides. For centuries, with the occurrence of landslides, these fragments may extend to the isthmus layer by layer, forming rugged hills. He said: "I thought it was easy to refute the argument of Peter Si Tong, but it is not the case. Suddenly, I thought, Clichy, there may really be a paragraph below. "
The more he looked at it, the more sure he was that Toulong was once two islands. Underhill said: "The only credible explanation for this geological structure is that some of them slipped down the mountain.
"Birtles Tong, no doubt." Great kinetic energy overwhelmed everything. A mountain collapsed, collapsed. Butre Si Tong added that he believed that in the end his investigation would prove Homer's description of Ithaca's location was accurate. "I wish I could defend him," he asserted, "saying that he is not geography. When he asked his hero Odysseus to say, "My island is farther west", it was a blood well. He said that if Aretusa Spring is near the village of Athens, the pig farm and crow rock in meeus should not be too far away.
According to Homer's description, the swineherd's hut was "everywhere" on the ground. There are 600 sows and 360 boars behind the wall, and the roof is wrapped with wild pears in the "quarry". Some Greek herders still use this technology. In the epic, Odysseus disguised himself as "dirty rags, torn and dirty"-staying in a pig farm for a day or two, and then telling Mayes that he was going to beg for food in the palace. Since Odysseus asked Youmaius to take him, there must be no pig farm in the palace. Although it is very close, Youmaius can go back and forth twice a day.
We turned a stone road and stopped in front of an old well on a circular platform. Butre Si Tong said, "There are springs and wells everywhere." Whether this is the real Aretusa Bronze Age spring or not, it is important that there is just a water-bearing fault line under the surface, where Homer's "black water" will appear. "
Next, we walked along an old sunken path through a strange little wild oak forest. In the sun, we found an animal pen surrounded by stones. Birtles Tong said: "Obviously, this area has been used for raising animals for a long time." . "If you have hundreds of pigs, like Youmaius, you need a lot of water, and this is where you can find water." Just behind the pig farm, a cliff named Crow Stone by Peter Si Tong suddenly appeared on the path. Below us, we saw the depths of Tory Bay, Argos and the blocked port, from which Odysseus and his 12 battleship could start to participate in the Trojan War. From here, we can also see that his palace may be located on the slope of Cone Mountain in castel, our destination.
Half an hour after leaving the pig farm, we stopped in an olive grove and began to climb the 830-foot steep slope of castel, through the dense thorns. The bell of the invisible goat rings in our ears. We climbed the mossy terrace that once supported the house, and then, near the hill, we climbed a defensive wall and a pile of jagged stones.
Somewhere under our feet, it may be the ruins of the "high-walled courtyard" where Penelope's suitors gather, or it may be a hall with stone pillars, cypresses, sofas, chairs and noisy banquets. Perhaps somewhere here, Odysseus' desperate wife works in front of the loom, knitting mourning clothes for his elderly father Laertes. Then Penelope secretly untied the cloth every night and promised the suitors that when the cloth was folded, she would marry one of them. Perhaps here, Odysseus started his bloody work with the feather helmet on the "Four Leather Shield" and "Hero Head". As Homer said, "When people's heads were smashed, terrible screams sounded and blood flowed all over the floor." Finally, the bodies piled up in the dust, "just like the fish dragged by fishermen from the gray waves in the net, lying on the curved beach, lying in groups on the beach, eager for salt water until the sun shines high." End their lives.
Bittlestone wandered around the stormy hilltop, pointing out that the fragments of pottery, hip flask and oil jug wrapped in sheep dung and dust for generations are the last traces of an ancient town or palace.
Of course, the chances of finding artworks calling themselves "Odysseus" are very high, and they are all slim here. But obviously, according to the preliminary archaeological investigation, the existing walls and some pottery can be traced back to the Bronze Age (2000- 1 100 BC). Birtles looked at the cliff-covered plug head of Virginia, blue eyes flashing with excitement. "We don't know what is hidden under these falling stones," he said to himself and me, "but something must have happened here."
Editor's Note: On September 3, 2008, for more than 2,000 years, scholars have been puzzled and curious about a question that is crucial to our understanding of the ancient world: Where is Ithaca described in Homer's Odyssey? The description in the epic is inconsistent with the geographical position of Ithaca Island, which is one of the ionian islands on the west coast of modern Greece.