Seeking Ancient Ithaca

via MSNBC.

On a far more interesting note this morning, an amateur British archaeologist has come up with a new theory regarding the legendary home of Odysseus, the legendary Greek king of the Homeric tale The Odyssey, sequel to the Trojan epic The Illiad. The island of Ithaca has long been identified with the island presently called Ithaki, but it does not closely match the description given by the poet - that of a low lying land and the outermost island of the chain, whereas present day Ithaki is mountainous and lies inside the larger island of Kefallina. The new theory being espoused by Robert Bittlestone is that Kefallinia may have been separated from its penninsula Paliki by a narrow channel of water in the time of Homer.

"Because no one has ever been able to find Ithaca, people felt the Odyssey was like a Lord of the Rings story," Bittlestone said in an interview. "This would say Ithaca was a real place — it doesn't say Odysseus was a real person, that's another jump."

The theory is that this channel, called "Strabo's Channel" in ancient times, was filled as a result of tectonic activity in the intervening years. Bittlestone has acquired some assitance from Dutch geologic firm Furgo, which plans to use ground pentrating radar and other tools to probe the area of the channel to determine the makeup of the soil there. If solid rock, then the theory isn't correct, but if it is mad eup of loose debris, then it certainly seems possible that the ancient home of the legendary Greek traveler, if not the man himself, appears likely to have existed after all.