Friday, June 13, 2025

Mythical or Real? Part 1

This will be a continuing series for a while. I want to explore nine mythical places that archaeologists think may have actually existed.

History is rife with mythical lands, from the homes of legendary kings to the earthly abodes of gods and monsters. Past civilizations have dreamed of extraordinary places hiding in plain sight.

But while many people believe it unlikely that either Atlantis or Shangri-La was real, other myths may have more truth to them than anyone realized. A growing body of archaeological research suggests certain places—the Minotaur’s maze from Greek mythology; Vinland, the first North American Viking settlement mentioned in Norse sagas; Solomon’s Temple described in the Bible; and others—could have been more than fables.

From western Turkey to Jerusalem, and from coastal England to the Colombian Andes, evidence indicates that these nine mythical places may have really existed.

Let’s look at the first one today.

1. Troy, Turkey – 1200 BCE

The city of Troy was at the heart of Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid. It is one of the most legendary sites of classical Greek mythology. Fantastic details are woven into the tales such as; the interference of the gods in the Trojan War, the half-divine heritage of the Spartan hero Achilles, and the gift of a wooden horse filled with Greek soldiers. But these days, archaeologists believe some aspects of the stories were true.

Nearly 150 years of excavations at the site of Troy in modern Turkey have revealed that it was occupied for 4,000 years. Also, during the Late Bronze Age (when Homer’s Trojan War allegedly took place), the Trojans began to prepare for an insurgence from outside.

Researchers are still looking for proof of the battle that raged outside the city’s walls for ten years. If it’s there, it’s buried under 65 feet of sediment, which built up alongside the shifting Scamander (now the Karamenderes) River. It’s the mouth of that river that makes Troy so important in the first place. Troy was settled over and over again because if you controlled the harbor, you controlled the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.

Troy isn’t the only mythological site discovered in the region. Apollon Smintheion is an imposing temple built for the god Apollo on top of a settlement from the sixth century BCE. Antandros was an ancient shipbuilding settlement. These and the sacred forests of Mount Ida are all historical sites that correspond to places mentioned in the Ilied and Aeneid. Together, they now make up Turkey’s Aeneas Route, a tourist corridor following the epic journey taken by Aeneas, the father of Rome, after he escaped Troy’s sacking by the Greeks.

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