Mark Gagnon

Egypt barely survived, and the cities across Levant were just completely demolished.

Now, scholars call this entire phenomena, the collapsing of all these civilizations in the region, the Late Bronze Age Collapse.

And it remains one of the great mysteries of ancient history.

Like, what caused it?

And no one really knows, but there's, of course, many explanations.

It was likely caused by some combination of drought plus famine plus civil war, internal rebellion, revolution, systemic failure, and then raids by the mysterious Sea Peoples.

Now, Troy's destruction around 1220 to 1180 BC fits pretty squarely within this catastrophe.

It's very possible that the Trojan War was one event or even a series of events within the broader collapse.

And it could have been a real Mycenaean military campaign against a wealthy Anatolian city that was just transformed over centuries of oral tradition to be this great epic story that we know today.

Now, the Trojan War, whether it happened exactly as it described or whether it ever happened at all, might be one of the most influential stories in the history of Western civilization.

Like for a war that we don't even know if it really happened, it's one of the most impactful wars ever.

And the impact, I mean, is everywhere.

The Iliad, by most accounts, is the oldest surviving work of Western literature.

Every epic poem, war novel, every story about heroes, glory, the cost of glory, in some sense is in the shadow of the Iliad.

When Virgil wrote the Aeneid in the first century, he created Rome's national epic by having the Trojan prince Aeneas escape the fall of Troy and then eventually found a city called Rome.

The Romans, the most powerful state in the ancient world, literally built their identity on being descendants of a Trojan refugee.

I mean, the influence here is crazy.

I mean, obviously, the Roman Empire extends all the way to Europe and England and then...

From England, we have America.

Like, in a way, our founding myth is kind of predicated on this story that we don't even know if it's real.