Did the Trojan War Really Exist?

Many ponder the question, “Did the Trojan War really exist?” Though it is thought to be a legend, recent discoveries potentially linked to the Trojan War are leading people to speculate that the war was real. Most people know the Trojan War through Homer’s Iliad.

Beyond Homer’s story, however, additional evidence exists to support the notion that the war was more than legend. The actual topography that exists now corresponds with the city that Homer describes in the Iliad. Troy was a strategically situated city on a large body of water near modern day Cannakalle, Turkey. Homer’s description of Troy as a maritime center of commerce would be consistent with the ruins of the city near Cannakalle. This vital trading center would be a logical city that the Greeks would have liked to conquer.

In addition to the geography, artifacts of a war have been found. In 1924 a large ditch was discovered around the edges of the great city’s ruins, used to fortify the city from invaders. Many sling shot bullets and spearheads dating back to the predicted time of the war (1194-1184 B.C.), have been excavated. If the aggressors (Greeks) had lost, the bullets would have been recovered by the defenders (the Trojans) and would not now exist as artifacts.

The argument against the Trojan War is that the Iliad is a work of fiction. The author, Homer, was thought to have lived 500 years after the war occurred, but how could he remember such vivid details of warriors’ deaths? Also, many aspects of the Iliad seem fictional. How could Achilles have only one weak spot on his whole body? How could his horses talk? How could the fires set upon Troy last for seven years? Yet to pre-Christian civilizations, what we think of as mythology would have been a true belief system for these ancient peoples.

Frequent discoveries are leading people to hypothesize that there was possibly a Trojan War. Just because Homer’s Iliad is thought to be legend, does this mean that it never happened? If there is a Loch Ness Monster, why couldn’t there have been a Trojan War?