Single Combat during the Trojan War

[Robert Vermaat]

Immanuel Velikovski, who had similar bright ideas.

Forget Velikovski, he's a non-issue. Every Bronze Age/Early Iron Age culture west of India has significant and often bizarre dating problems. Practically everything found has to be shoehorned, twisted, interpreted with wild leaps of logic, or simply shoved sullenly into a corner and ignored in order to fit the "orthodox" chronology. Simply taking the evidence at face value, however, chops about three centuries out of existence, and things start falling into place.

I can't forget Velikovski, because James IS in fact revising that very chronology originally penned down by Velikovski.
What do you mean by 'everything'? The complete chronology of Egypt, the Near East as well as Mediterranean Europe? I can't believe that.

That said, I think that the authors of CoD are trying to do a 'Velikovsky'. It's very similar to discussing 5th c. AD Britain.
Part of their ideas certainly have merit, but they are in danger of wanting a achieve too much. They, too, are restrained by a dearth of historical material, and, too, should accept that some theories just cannot be proven - because no-one can.

Reasonable dates are too much? There is not a dearth of material at all. The problem is that basic scientific archeological principles have to be ignored to support the orthodox dates.

Sorry Matt, I think you are confusing 'archaeological information' (of which there is indeed plenty) with 'historical information' (which is what I was talking about). We simply do not have any written source from mainland Europe that can tell us something about dates, kings, the lot. Homeros wrote a lot later, even if you shorthen the chronology. We have Egypt and we pray that that chronology is right (but we almost know for certain that it isn't) and we compare everyting else to that. But even if we can shorthen that one, AND make it fit with the chronology of everything else, than we still have nothing about the Trojan War, right? So how do we date that one if we cant match it with any available source? We still have to decide which layer best fits the account of Homer. Has anyone done that with absolute certainty?

Just asking, I'm absolutely NO specialist in Bronze Age Greece and I'll read everything you throw at me.
I'm just a wary historian. :wink: