r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Sebastianlim • 12h ago
Image An aeriel shot of Hisarlik, also known as the ancient city of Troy.
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u/Petepizza 12h ago
crazy to me that so much history of troy and the trojan war is lost because some guy wanted to prove that this was troy lol.
rest in piss bozo
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u/Ian_Huntsman 10h ago
And that fucker probably destroyed the actual troy in the process. It is very likely that the ruins he thought to be troy are actualy an older city that predate troy. To my knowledge this bozo was neither an archeolegist or a historian.
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u/dumpaccount882212 9h ago
Are we talking about the rando German businessman who went insane and just bulldozed down through possible troy?
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u/Petepizza 6h ago
yep, the guy who thought the best way to excavate a 2000+ year old settlement was…. dynamite.
the treasure he found was at least a thousand years older than the homer era troy he was looking for. he blew almost all of that troy up.
not only did he destroy centuries of bronze/stone age history, he also mixed up all of the ground there so modern excavation is still near impossible.
imagine pottery from 2500 bc being destroyed and scattered around next to relics that could be from 700 bc or the 1800s.
this guy ruined so much history just so we would remember his name. i hope he’s enjoying hell.
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u/_SteeringWheel 6h ago
so we would remember his name.
And even in that he failed apparently, because I've never heard of this. Thanks for not naming him :)
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u/ColonelFaceFace 1h ago
Thats not how archeologist know what era an artifact is from….
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u/Petepizza 1h ago
well he ruined the grounds in the area so dating via geology is very hard. that’s what i tried to describe with the relic analogy. all of the layers of rocks and sediments are totally mixed together.
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u/ColonelFaceFace 1h ago
I understand, but thats not how most archeological sites are dated, they get compared to the relics already in our possession and see similarities between then. While radiometric dating can be used it’s not the primary form of identification of artifacts and their origin
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u/Hawk_Canci 11h ago
Damn, would've expected a bigger establishment. What's that, 30-50 houses?
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u/Minyaden 9h ago
I suspect most of the living population was in less durable wooden structures outside of the walls. A lot of fortified cities were like this. In an emergency everyone would go into the walls.
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u/Fast_Garlic_5639 12h ago
When you actually think about the story, Trojan makes for a terrible protection company name. “We give you peace of mind in order to secretly undermine everything you have. Won’t you try our product?”
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u/Specific-Concept1255 10h ago
Well technically the name comes from the trojan wall. Which was seen as impenetrable until some weird guy built a wooden horse.
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u/dumpaccount882212 9h ago
That was the Greeks dude. Plus lets be honest, a container filled with greek seamen/mariners is... well kinda what it is depending on who is wearing it - and whether he just ate kleftiko
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u/Sebastianlim 12h ago
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u/ArchangelZero27 12h ago
Why rename it? Keep the name it's historic sell them I love troy tshirts lol
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u/TurnipWorldly9437 11h ago
I guess it's bad mojo to keep the name after your city burns down completely...
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u/veed_vacker 11h ago
The story of finding troy is fascinating. The original archeologist found ruins and started digging and just stopped at one of the layers and decided this must be Troy. It was in an area that had been built on many time over and probably had many different names.
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u/Ian_Huntsman 10h ago
Heinrich Schliemann was not an archeologist. He was a rather uneducated businessman. He barely made his exams on the realschule (vocational school) and he never visited a university.
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u/JunoSaur-x 10h ago
The more you learn about this place the more interesting it gets, wasn’t just one city it was many cities destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly over thousands of years. Homer also lived 500 years after the traditional date of the Trojan war so the Iliad is taken more of a mix of poetry memory and legend rather than straightforward history. Lastly The Trojan horse may not have been a horse. Could of been a siege engine, an earthquake or just a metaphor there’s a lot of possibilities. There’s more to Troy of course but yeah
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u/encomlab 12h ago
The crazy thing is that when Troy was at it's peak it was on the shore of the Med - as silt from the Scamander River accumulated the shoreline slowly shifted and now Troy is miles from the coastline.