Mark Gagnon

The Late Bronze Age was one of the most interconnected and sophisticated periods in all of ancient history.

And the truth is, around the time of the Trojan War, it was about to collapse.

You see, around 1400 to 1200 BC, the Western Mediterranean was dominated by a network of powerful civilizations.

The Mycenaeans were essentially the Greeks of the Bronze Age.

They controlled mainland Greece and the Aegean Islands from a massive fortified palace at Mycenae.

And then you have the Tyrians and the Pylos.

These are the people that Homer was writing about for four centuries after their civilization was basically wiped off the earth.

When he described Agamemnon as the king of golden Mycenae, he was referring to a real place.

And when Schliemann excavated Mycenae in 1876, he found shaft graves filled with gold, including the famous golden death masks.

Now, Schliemann reportedly telegraphed the king of Greece and said this, The thing is that he hadn't.

The masts were just centuries too early, but the discovery proved that Mycenaean Greece had been massively wealthy.

Now, to the east, in what is now Turkey, sat the Hittite Empire, one of the great powers of the Bronze Age, rivaling even Egypt in its time.

And this is where some of the most compelling evidence for a historical Trojan War comes from.

You see Hittite diplomatic records written in cuneiform on clay tablets.

Cuneiform is basically like this imprinting method that the Hittite people and Sumerians, they would basically use to keep records in these clay tablets.

basically mention a place called Wailusa.

Many scholars believe that this is the Hittite name for the city of Troy, corresponding to the Greek Ilios or Ilion.

These same records mention a kingdom called Ahiawa, which most specialists think referred to, you know, broadly the Mycenaean world, though not everyone agrees.

Hittite texts do not name specific Greek cities, and the identification, while widely accepted, is not...

settled amongst every scholar.