Barry Strauss - The Trojan War A New History

*All dates are approximate.

A ncient Greek history traditionally begins in the year 776 B.C., when the first Olympic Games are supposed to have been held. By coincidence, the earliest example of the Greek alphabet dates to about 750 B.C. So both tradition and scholarship would agree in labeling everything that happened before the early eighth century B.C. in Greece as prehistory. But thanks largely to archaeology, we know a great deal about the history of the prehistoric Greeks. And some of our knowledge even comes from written sources, because centuries before the Greek alphabet, scribes used a primitive writing system for record-keeping in Greek. Called Linear B, it was in use from about 1450 to about 1180 B.C., after which it disappeared. Much more sophisticated writings also survive from other so-called prehistoric cultures, and they offer important historical information about prehistoric Greece.

But more on that later. First, let us quickly scan the historic period of ancient Greece. The Greek city-states reached their heyday in the centuries between about 750 and 323 B.C. The period between 750 and 480 is known as the Archaic Age, while the years from 480 to 323 are called the Classical Period. At the end of the Classical Period, King Alexander III of Macedon, known today as Alexander the Great, conquered all of Greece as well as the Persian Empire to the east. Alexanders conquests began a new era of Greco-Macedonian kingdoms known as the Hellenistic Age, 32330 B.C. That gave way, in turn, to the Roman Empire, which lasted until A.D. 476, when it split into barbarian kingdoms in the West and the Byzantine Empire in the East.

Almost all ancient written testimonies about the Trojan War date to the 1,200-year period from the start of the Archaic Age to the end of the Roman Empire. But in order to understand what really happened, we must look backward. The four centuries before the start of the Archaic Age are known collectively as the Greek Dark Ages (ca.1150750 B.C.). Dark refers to the absence of writing, but the physical evidence uncovered by archaeologists sheds light on that era.

Another important term is Iron Age, used for the millennium from about 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1. In this epoch, new technology made iron the most durable metal for tools and weapons. The earlier two millennia, from about 3000 to about 1000 B.C., are known as the Bronze Age, after that eras most widespread metal for tools and weapons; iron was known but rare. The Bronze Age is the setting for this book.

In Greece, the Bronze Age is commonly divided into three periods, Early (30002100 B.C.), Middle (21001600), and Late (16001150). Naturally, it is difficult to assign dates to events that took place so long ago. Most dating is relative and approximate rather than absolute: that is, we can say that A is older than B or even that A comes from the period of, say, 16001500 B.C., but rarely can we be more specific.

Sometimes we get help from surviving written records, such as lists of Egyptian kings and their reigns (although even in that case we are not completely sure about dating). On occasion we hear of an eclipse, which can be dated by astronomers. In rare instances, it is possible to find samples of once-living material (from bone to shells to minerals) that can be dated by laboratory testing through radiocarbon dating, neutron activation analysis, or dendrochronology (counting tree rings, based on tree physiology as well as on rainfall and other environmental factors). By the last technique, for example, the tremendous volcanic explosion that destroyed most of the island of Thera has been dated to 16271600 B.C.

But these cases are few and far between because they depend on the quality of the sample and because testing is very expensive. Dendrochronology requires having both a number of comparative ancient tree samples as well as having nearby living trees with identical ring patterns to the sample in question. And radiocarbon testing can narrow dating to about a century but not a year.

So most dating of material dug out of the earth has to be done by more rough-and-ready methods. Fortunately for historians the remains of past civilizations tend to be deposited in layers. For example, if a house is built in A.D. 1700 and then torn down and replaced in 1800, the remains of the old house will be located below the remains of the new house. Any glass, wood, bricks, artwork, or other material found together with the foundations of the old house can be dated to the period 17001800. If we could take a slice of history in the soil of an ancient land, like Greece, we would find layers of history stacked up one above the other. The technical name for these layers is strata, and the careful study of them is called stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is one of the most important tools in the archaeologists kit for assigning dates.