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105-428: Troy ( Ancient Greek : Τροία , romanized :  Troíā ; Latin : Trōia ; Hittite : 𒆳𒌷𒋫𒊒𒄿𒊭 , romanized:  Truwiša / Taruiša ) or Ilion ( Ancient Greek : Ίλιον , romanized :  Ī́lion , Hittite : 𒌷𒃾𒇻𒊭 , romanized:  Wiluša ) was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlık (near Tevfikiye ), Turkey . The place was first settled around 3600 BC and grew into

210-578: A courtyard which was likely used for public events. One of these buildings, Megaron IIA, is the biggest known building of its kind in the Aegean-Anatolian region. The citadel was protected by massive stone walls and towers topped with mudbrick superstructures. It was accessed through two ramps, one of which is well preserved and attracts attention from modern day tourists. Because the city was not large enough to require two gates for practical purposes, some archaeologists have speculated that one of

315-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

420-587: A 100-year gap between Troy III and Troy IV. Combined with a similar analysis of the pottery sequences of Korfmann and Schliemann this suggests that for a time in the late Early Bronze Age occupation contracted to the western end of the citadel mound. From 1988 to 2005, excavations were conducted by a team from the University of Tübingen and the University of Cincinnati under the direction of Professor Manfred Korfmann , with Professor Brian Rose overseeing Post-Bronze Age (Greek, Roman, Byzantine) excavation along

525-466: A clear view of Trojan plain and the sea beyond it. The citadel was accessed by five gates, which led into paved and drained cobblestone streets. Some of these gates featured enormous pillars which serve no structural purpose and have been interpreted as religious symbols. The halls were built in megaron style, resembling Mycenaean architecture . The lower town was built to the south of the citadel, covering an area of roughly 30 hectares. Remains of

630-454: A dense neighborhood have been found just outside the citadel walls, and traces of Bronze Age occupation have been found further away. These include huts, stone paving, threshing floors, pithoi, and waste left behind by Bronze Age industry such as murex shells associated with the manufacture of purple dye. The extent of the lower town is evidenced by a defensive ditch cut 1-2 into the bedrock. A wall or palisade may have stood several meters behind

735-524: A distinct Northwest Anatolian cultural group, with influences from the Aegean and the Balkans. The primary local pottery styles were wheel-made Tan Ware and Anatolian Gray Ware. Both styles were offshoots of an earlier Middle Helladic tradition related to Minyan Ware . The earliest gray ware at Troy was made in Aegean shapes, though by 1700 BC it had been replaced by Anatolian shapes. Foreign pottery found at

840-400: A distinctive characteristic in later periods, reflecting perennial security concerns at the vulnerable coastal site. Residents lived in attached houses made of stone and mudbrick. Some houses had a megaron layout, among which one room is notably larger than the others. Although the city plan is not entirely clear from its limited remains, the houses appear to have been oriented in parallel to

945-404: A few thousand years, or even many thousands. Currently, the maximum for fully anchored chronologies is a little over 11,000 years from present. Amino acid dating is a dating technique used to estimate the age of a specimen in paleobiology , archaeology , forensic science , taphonomy , sedimentary geology and other fields. This technique relates changes in amino acid molecules to

1050-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

1155-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

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1260-468: A location near the village of Pınarbaşı, Ezine , a mound approximately 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) south of the currently accepted location. Published in his Voyage de la Troade , it was the most commonly proposed location for almost a century. In 1822, the Scottish journalist Charles Maclaren was the first to identify with confidence the position of the city as it is now known. The first excavations at

1365-418: A new handmade style sometimes known as "barbarian ware". Imported Mycenaean-style pottery attests to some continuing foreign trade. However, the city's population appears to have dropped, and rebuilding seems to be confined to the citadel. One of the most striking finds from Troy VIIb1 is a bronze biconvex hieroglyphic Luwian seal giving the name of a woman on one side and the name of a man who worked as

1470-440: A notable slope, similar to those at other sites including Hattusa . However, the walls differ from contemporary Aegean and Anatolian sites both in their lack of figural sculpture and in their masonry . While Troy VI's walls were made entirely of close-fitting ashlars , contemporary sites typically used ashlars around a rubble core . Troy VI's walls were overlooked by several rectangular watchtowers, which would also have provided

1575-636: A pottery industry, possibly associated with a wine or oil industry. The style of these pots shows stylistic similarities to other North Aegean sites, suggesting cultural contact. (Because other artifacts do not show these links, archaeologists believe that Greek settlement of Troy did not begin until later.) Both the Troy VI walls and the Troy VIIa Terrace House were reused for worship and communal feasting, as evidenced by animal bones, pottery assemblages, and traces of burned incense. Strikingly,

1680-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

1785-502: A scribe on the other. The seal is important since it is the only example of preclassical writing found at the site, and provides potential evidence that Troy VIIb1 had a Luwian -speaking population. However, the find is puzzling since palace bureaucracies had largely disappeared by this era. Proposed explanations include the possibility that it belonged to an itinerant freelance scribe and alternatively that it dates from an earlier era than its find context would suggest. Troy VIIb2

1890-526: A section of the Troy ;VI wall which was weaker than the rest. Since the mythic city had likewise had a weak section of its walls, Dörpfeld became convinced that this layer corresponded to Homeric Troy. Schliemann himself privately agreed that Troy VI was more likely to be the Homeric city, but he never published anything stating so. Carl Blegen , professor at the University of Cincinnati , managed

1995-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

2100-432: A small fortified city around 3000 BC. During its four thousand years of existence, Troy was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt. As a result, the archeological site that has been left is divided into nine layers , each corresponding to a city built on the ruins of the previous. Archaeologists refer to these layers using Roman numerals. Among the early layers, Troy II is notable for its wealth and imposing architecture. During

2205-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

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2310-574: A trench across the mound of Hisarlık to the depth of the settlements, today called " Schliemann's Trench ". In 1871–1873 and 1878–1879, 1882 and 1890 (the later two joined by Wilhelm Dörpfeld), he discovered the ruins of a series of ancient cities dating from the Bronze Age to the Roman period. Schliemann was planning for another excavation season in 1891 when he died in December 1890. He proposed that

2415-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

2520-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

2625-476: Is a radioactive isotope of potassium that decays into argon-40. The half-life of potassium-40 is 1.3 billion years, far longer than that of carbon-14, allowing much older samples to be dated. Potassium is common in rocks and minerals, allowing many samples of geochronological or archeological interest to be dated. Argon , a noble gas, is not commonly incorporated into such samples except when produced in situ through radioactive decay. The date measured reveals

2730-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

2835-465: Is also notable for its architectural innovations as well as its cultural developments, which included the first evidence of horses at the site. The language spoken in Troy VI is unknown. One candidate is Luwian , an Anatolian language believed to have been spoken in the general area. Potential evidence comes from a biconvex seal inscribed with the name of a person using Anatolian hieroglyphs often used to write Luwian. However, available evidence

2940-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

3045-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

3150-431: Is generally known as Troya or Truva . The archaeological site of Troy consists of the hill of Hisarlık and the fields below it to the south. The hill is a tell , composed of strata containing the remains left behind by more than three millennia of human occupation. The primary divisions among layers are designated with Roman numerals , Troy I representing the oldest layer and Troy IX representing

3255-404: Is known as the "old wood" problem. It is possible, particularly in dry, desert climates, for organic materials such as dead trees to remain in their natural state for hundreds of years before people use them as firewood or building materials, after which they become part of the archaeological record. Thus, dating that particular tree does not necessarily indicate when the fire burned or the structure

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3360-483: Is marked by dramatic cultural changes including walls made of upright stones and a handmade knobbed pottery style known as Buckelkeramik . These practices, which existed alongside older local traditions, have been argued to reflect immigrant populations arriving from southwest Europe. These newcomers may have shared an origin with the Phrygians who initiated similar cultural shifts at sites such as Gordion . This layer

3465-404: Is not sufficient to establish that Luwian was actually spoken by the city's population, and a number of alternatives, such as Greek and Lemnian-Etruscan , have been proposed. Hittite documents found at Hattusa suggest that literacy existed at Troy and that the city may have had a written archive. The Alaksandu Treaty required King Alaksandu to read its text publicly three times a year, while

3570-556: Is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

3675-426: Is used to calculate the equivalent dose (De) that the sediment has acquired since deposition, which can be used in combination with the dose rate (Dr) to calculate the age. Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating is the scientific method of dating based on the analysis of patterns of tree rings , also known as growth rings . Dendrochronology can date the time at which tree rings were formed, in many types of wood, to

3780-488: The Milawata letter mentions that the deposed King Walmu was still in possession of wooden investiture tablets. The archive would likely have been housed in the citadel's innermost precinct, whose remains were pushed over the northern side of the hill during 3rd century construction. Despite attempts to sift through the rubble, no documents have been found. Troy VI was destroyed around 1300 BC, corresponding with

3885-520: The Baltic region , carnelian imported from India , and lapis imported from Afghanistan . Some of these items are strikingly similar to those found at sites such as Poliochni and Ur , leading some scholars to speculate that they may have been made by itinerant jewelers who worked routes covering much of the Ancient Near East. Troy II was destroyed twice. After the first destruction,

3990-759: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

4095-686: The Istanbul Archaeology Museum . Almost all the precious metal objects that went to Berlin were confiscated by the Soviet Union in 1945 and are now in Pushkin Museum in Moscow . Even in his own time Schliemann's legacy was controversial because of his excavation methods which included removing features he considered insignificant without first studying and documenting them. Wilhelm Dörpfeld (1893–1894) began working

4200-611: The Late Bronze Age , Troy was called Wilusa and was a vassal of the Hittite Empire . The final layers (Troy VIII-IX) were Greek and Roman cities which in their days served as tourist attractions and religious centers because of their link to mythic tradition. The archaeological site is open to the public as a tourist destination, and was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998. The site

4305-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

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4410-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

4515-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

4620-483: The Bronze Age city were destroyed by the Greeks' building projects, notably the peak of the citadel where the Troy VI palace is likely to have stood. By the classical era , the city had numerous temples, a theater, among other public buildings, and was once again expanding to the south of the citadel. Troy VIII was destroyed in 85 BC, and subsequently rebuilt as Troy IX. A series of earthquakes devastated

4725-435: The Bronze Age they would have been overlaid with wood and mudbrick superstructures, reaching a height over 9 metres (30 ft). The walls were built in a "sawtooth" style made of 7–10 metres (23–33 ft) segments which joined at shallow angles. This characteristic is common in the walls of Mycenaean citadels, though at Troy it is also found in other buildings, suggesting that it may have been decorative. The walls also have

4830-445: The Bronze Age, as suggested by Hittite records which refer to a city in northwest Anatolia called Wilusa ( 𒌷𒃾𒇻𒊭 ) or Truwisa ( 𒆳𒌷𒋫𒊒𒄿𒊭 ) which is generally identified with the site of Hisarlık, near Tevfikiye . In Greek myth, these names were held to originate from the names of the kingdom's founders, Tros and his son Ilus . In Latin , the city was referred to as Troia or Ilium . In Turkish , it

4935-863: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Absolute dating In archaeology, absolute dating is usually based on the physical, chemical, and life properties of the materials of artifacts, buildings, or other items that have been modified by humans and by historical associations with materials with known dates (such as coins and historical records ). For example, coins found in excavations may have their production date written on them, or there may be written records describing

5040-489: The Mycenaean palaces . The destruction layer shows evidence of enemy attack, including scorch marks. After the destruction of Troy VIIa around 1180 BC, the city was rebuilt as Troy VIIb. Older structures were again reused, including Troy VI's citadel walls. Its first phase, Troy VIIb1, appears to be largely a continuation of Troy VIIa. Residents continued using wheel-made Grey Ware pottery alongside

5145-472: The Terrace House was not renovated when it was adopted as a cult center and thus must have been used in a ruined state, potentially suggesting that the occupants of Troy VIIb3 were deliberately re-engaging with their past. Troy VIIb was destroyed by fire around 950 BC. However, some houses in the citadel were left intact and the site continued to be occupied, if only sparsely. Troy VIII

5250-548: The Troy I level. From 2006 until 2012, these excavations continued under the direction of Korfmann's colleague Ernst Pernicka, with a new digging permit. In 2013, an international team made up of cross-disciplinary experts led by William Aylward, an archaeologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was to carry out new excavations. This activity was to be conducted under the auspices of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University and

5355-608: The accuracy of C 14 dating . Troy 0 is a pre-Bronze Age layer known from limited finds of pottery shards and wooden beams. It is tentatively dated to c.  3600–3500 BC but little is known about it. Troy I was founded around 3000 BC on what was then the eastern shore of a shallow lagoon. It was significantly smaller than later settlements at the site, with a citadel covering less than 1 ha . However, it stood out from its neighbours in particular for its massive limestone fortifications which were regularly renovated and strengthened. Defensive architecture would continue to be

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5460-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

5565-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

5670-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

5775-678: The citadel was rebuilt with a dense cluster of small houses on an irregular plan. The final destruction took place around 2300 BC. While some scholars have linked this destruction to a broader crisis that affected other Near Eastern sites, there is no definitive evidence for the city having been destroyed by an attack. Troy II is notable for having been misidentified as Homeric Troy, during initial excavations, because of its massive architecture, treasure hoards, and catastrophic destruction. In particular Schliemann saw Homer's description of Troy's Scaean Gate reflected in Troy II's imposing western gate. However, later excavations demonstrated that

5880-498: The city around 500 AD, though finds from the Late Byzantine era attest to continued habitation at a small scale. Early modern travellers in the 16th and 17th centuries, including Pierre Belon and Pietro Della Valle , had mistakenly identified Troy with Alexandria Troas , a ruined Hellenistic town approximately 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of Hisarlık. In the late 18th century, Jean Baptiste LeChevalier identified

5985-475: The classical-era remains and led to their subsequent partnership. In 1868, German businessman Heinrich Schliemann visited Calvert, and secured permission to excavate Hisarlık. At this point in time, the mound was about 200 meters long and somewhat less than 150 meters wide. It rose 31.2 meters above the plain and 38.5 meters above sea level. As with Calvert and others, in April 1870 Schliemann began by excavating

6090-653: The coast of the Aegean Sea at the Bay of Troy. Possible evidence of a battle was found in the form of bronze arrowheads and fire-damaged human remains buried in layers dated to the early 12th century BC. The question of Troy VI's status in the Bronze-Age world was the subject of a sometimes acerbic debate between Korfmann and the Tübingen historian Frank Kolb in 2001–2002. One of the major discoveries of these excavations

6195-624: The coin and when it was used, allowing the site to be associated with a particular calendar year. Absolute dating techniques include radiocarbon dating of wood or bones, potassium-argon dating , and trapped-charge dating methods such as thermoluminescence dating of glazed ceramics. In historical geology , the primary methods of absolute dating involve using the radioactive decay of elements trapped in rocks or minerals, including isotope systems from younger organic remains (radiocarbon dating with C ) to systems such as uranium–lead dating that allow determination of absolute ages for some of

6300-465: The date of death of the organic matter in an artifact or ecofact . The relatively short half-life of carbon-14, 5,730 years, makes dating reliable only up to about 60,000 years. The technique often cannot pinpoint the date of an archeological site better than historic records but is highly effective for precise dates when calibrated with other dating techniques such as tree-ring dating . An additional problem with carbon-14 dates from archeological sites

6405-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

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6510-400: The ditch, as in the outer defenses of other cities such as Qadesh and Carchemish . However, material evidence for such a wall is limited to postholes and cuts in the bedrock. The lower city was only discovered in the late 1980s, earlier excavators having assumed that Troy VI occupied only the hill of Hisarlık. Its discovery led to a dramatic reassessment of Troy VI, showing that it

6615-610: The eastern Aegean and southeastern Europe. Troy itself appears to have maintained these connections, showing similarities to sites in Thessaly and southeastern Europe, as well as Aegean sites such as Poliochni in Lemnos and Thermi in Lesbos . Despite some connections to Anatolian sites including Bademağacı , it did not yet have the close ties with central Anatolia seen later. Troy I was destroyed by fire around 2550 BC. Troy II

6720-400: The exact calendar year. Dendrochronology has three main areas of application: paleoecology , where it is used to determine certain aspects of past ecologies (most prominently climate); archaeology , where it is used to date old buildings, etc.; and radiocarbon dating , where it is used to calibrate radiocarbon ages (see below). In some areas of the world, it is possible to date wood back

6825-464: The first several sublayers of Troy VII were in fact continuations of the earlier city. Although some scholars have proposed revising the nomenclature to reflect this consensus, the original terms are typically used to avoid confusion. Troy VI existed from around 1750 BC to 1300 BC. Its citadel was divided into a series of rising terraces, of which only the outermost is reasonably well-preserved. On this terrace, archaeologists have found

6930-441: The food chain as animals eat plants and as predators eat other animals. With death, the uptake of carbon-14 stops. It takes 5,730 years for half the carbon-14 to decay to nitrogen; this is the half-life of carbon-14. After another 5,730 years, only one-quarter of the original carbon-14 will remain. After yet another 5,730 years, only one-eighth will be left. By measuring the carbon-14 in organic material , scientists can determine

7035-502: The function of regional capital, its status protected by treaties. Aspects of its architecture are consistent with the Iliad 's description of mythic Troy, and several of its sublayers (VIh and VIIa) show potential signs of violent destruction. Thus, these sublayers are among the candidates for a potential historical setting of those myths. Troy VI and VII were given separate labels by early excavators, but current research has shown that

7140-497: The gates was intended for ceremonial processions. The lower city was protected by a wooden palisade unlike any other known in that era. It was a complex structure nearly 3 meters wide, with interior buttresses and columns and beams secured in notches cut into the bedrock. Wheel-made pottery appears at the site for the first time, along with caches of treasures that attest to Trojan participation in networks of aristocratic competition. These items were made from amber imported from

7245-403: The ground. Troy VIIa seems to have been built by survivors of Troy VI's destruction, as evidenced by continuity in material culture. However, the character of the city appears to have changed, the citadel growing crowded and foreign imports declining. The city was destroyed around 1180 BC, roughly contemporary with the Late Bronze Age collapse but subsequent to the destruction of

7350-561: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

7455-476: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

7560-428: The item. Heating an item to 500 degrees Celsius or higher releases the trapped electrons , producing light. This light can be measured to determine the last time the item was heated. Radiation levels do not remain constant over time. Fluctuating levels can skew results – for example, if an item went through several high radiation eras, thermoluminescence will return an older date for the item. Many factors can spoil

7665-446: The last time that the object was heated past the closure temperature at which the trapped argon can escape the lattice. K–Ar dating was used to calibrate the geomagnetic polarity time scale . Thermoluminescence testing also dates items to the last time they were heated. This technique is based on the principle that all objects absorb radiation from the environment. This process frees electrons within minerals that remain caught within

7770-521: The megaron at Midea in the Argolid . Archaeologists believe there may have been a royal palace on the highest terrace, but most Bronze Age remains from the top of the hill were cleared away by classical era building projects. The citadel was enclosed by a massive wall whose limestone base is visible to modern day visitors. These walls were periodically renovated, expanding from an initial width of 1.2 to 5 metres (3.9 to 16.4 ft) around 1400 BC. During

7875-466: The most recent. Sublayers are distinguished with lowercase letters (e.g. VIIa and VIIb) and further subdivisions with numbers (e.g. VIIb1 and VIIb2). An additional major layer known as Troy 0 predates the layers which were initially given Roman numeral designations. The layers have been given relative dates by comparing artifacts found in them to those found at other sites. However, precise absolute dates are not always possible due to limitations in

7980-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

8085-472: The oldest rocks on Earth. Radiometric dating is based on the known and constant rate of decay of radioactive isotopes into their radiogenic daughter isotopes . Particular isotopes are suitable for different applications due to the types of atoms present in the mineral or other material and its approximate age. For example, techniques based on isotopes with half-lives in the thousands of years, such as carbon-14, cannot be used to date materials that have ages on

8190-556: The order of billions of years, as the detectable amounts of the radioactive atoms and their decayed daughter isotopes will be too small to measure within the uncertainty of the instruments. One of the most widely used and well-known absolute dating techniques is carbon-14 (or radiocarbon ) dating, which is used to date organic remains. This is a radiometric technique since it is based on radioactive decay. Cosmic radiation entering Earth's atmosphere produces carbon-14, and plants take in carbon-14 as they fix carbon dioxide. Carbon-14 moves up

8295-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

8400-455: The remains of freestanding multistory houses where Trojan elites would have lived. These houses lacked ground-floor windows, and their stone exterior walls mirrored the architecture of the citadel fortifications. However, they otherwise display an eclectic mix of architectural styles, some following the classic megaron design, others even having irregular floorplans. Some of these houses show potential Aegean influence, one in particular resembling

8505-510: The result of gaps in the surviving evidence. The settlements included a dense residential neighborhood in the citadel. Walls from Troy II may have been reused as part of Troy III. By the period of Troy V, the city had once again expanded outside the citadel to the west. Troy IV sees the introduction of domed ovens. In Troy V, artifacts include Anatolian-style "red-cross bowls" as well as imported Minoan objects. They would trade with other cities around them. Troy VI–VII

8610-429: The sample before testing as well, exposing the sample to heat or direct light may cause some of the electrons to dissipate, causing the item to date younger. Because of these and other factors, Thermoluminescence is at the most about 15% accurate. It cannot be used to accurately date a site on its own. However, it can be used to confirm the antiquity of an item. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating constrains

8715-400: The second layer, Troy II, corresponded to the city of legend, though later research has shown that it predated the Mycenaean era by several hundred years. Significant finds included many "owl-headed idols" and stone axes from the lower levels. Some of the most notable artifacts found by Schliemann are known as Priam's Treasure , after the legendary Trojan king . Many of these ended up in

8820-455: The site 1932–38. Wilhelm Dörpfeld collaborated with Blegen. These archaeologists, though following Schliemann's lead, added a professional approach not available to Schliemann. He showed that there were at least nine cities. In his research, Blegen came to a conclusion that Troy's nine levels could be further divided into forty-six sublevels, which he published in his main report. A post hoc Correspondence Analysis of Blegen's pottery sequence showed

8925-445: The site alongside Schliemann and later inherited excavation at the site and published his own independent work. His chief contributions were to the study of Troy VI and VII, which Schliemann had overlooked due to his focus on Troy II. Dörpfeld's interest in these layers was triggered by the need to close a hole in the initial excavators' chronology known as "Calvert's Thousand Year Gap". During his excavation, Dörpfeld came across

9030-597: The site includes Minoan, Mycenaean, Cypriot, and Levantine items. Local potters also made their own imitations of foreign styles, including Gray Ware and Tan Ware pots made in Mycenaean-style shapes, particularly after 1500 BC. Although the city appears to have been within the Hittite sphere of influence, no Hittite artifacts have been found in Troy VI. Also notably absent are sculptures and wall paintings, otherwise common features of Bronze Age cities. Troy VI

9135-509: The site was a thousand years too old to have coexisted with Mycenaean Greeks . Troy continued to be occupied between 2300 BC and 1750 BC. However, little is known about these several layers due to Schliemann 's careless excavation practices. In order to fully excavate the citadel of Troy II, he destroyed most remains from this period without first documenting them. These settlements appear to have been smaller and poorer than previous ones, though this interpretation could be merely

9240-406: The site were trenches by British civil engineer John Brunton in 1855. The next excavation at Hisarlık was conducted in 1865 by Frank Calvert , a Turkish Levantine man of English descent who owned a farm nearby. Calvert made extensive surveys of the site and correctly identified it with classical-era Ilion. This identification convinced Heinrich Schliemann that Homeric Troy should be sought beneath

9345-423: The site, though the exact relationship between myth and reality remains unclear and there is no definitive evidence for a Greek attack on the city. In Classical Greek , the city was referred to as both Troia ( Τροία ) and Ilion ( Ἴλιον ) or Ilios ( Ἴλιος ). Metrical evidence from the Iliad and the Odyssey suggests that the latter was originally pronounced Wilios . These names seem to date back to

9450-412: The southern walls. Artifacts from this era include dark colored handmade pottery, objects made of copper, as well as a monumental stone stele with a relief depicting an armed warrior. Troy I was founded as part of a consolidation of settlement in the area. Its founders came from nearby towns such as Kumtepe and Gülpınar , which had been part of an earlier network that had cultural and economic ties to

9555-475: The sublayer known as Troy VIh. Damage in the Troy VIh layer includes extensive collapsed masonry and subsidence in the southeast of the citadel, indicative of an earthquake . Alternative hypotheses include an internal uprising as well as a foreign attack, though the city was not burned and no victims were found in the debris. Troy VIIa was the final layer of the Late Bronze Age city. It

9660-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

9765-490: The time at which sediment was last exposed to light. During sediment transport, exposure to sunlight 'zeros' the luminescence signal. Upon burial, the sediment accumulates a luminescence signal as natural ambient radiation gradually ionises the mineral grains. Careful sampling under dark conditions allows the sediment to be exposed to artificial light in the laboratory which releases the OSL signal. The amount of luminescence released

9870-401: The time elapsed since they were formed. All biological tissues contain amino acids . All amino acids except glycine (the simplest one) are optically active , having an asymmetric carbon atom. This means that the amino acid can have two different configurations, "D" or "L" which are mirror images of each other. With a few important exceptions, living organisms keep all their amino acids in

9975-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

10080-482: Was a major Late Bronze Age city consisting of a steep fortified citadel and a sprawling lower town below it. It was a thriving coastal city with a considerable population, equal in size to second-tier Hittite settlements. It had a distinct Northwest Anatolian culture and extensive foreign contacts, including with Mycenaean Greece , and its position at the mouth of the Dardanelles has been argued to have given it

10185-504: Was built around 2550 BC. Although there is no evidence of a cultural break after the previous settlement, the new city had a very different character. It was twice the size of the preceding city, featuring a lower town as well as an expanded citadel divided into two precincts. These precincts, divided by colonnades , suggest growing socio-political stratification in Trojan society. At the center were large megaron-style buildings around

10290-568: Was built soon after the destruction of Troy VI, seemingly by its previous inhabitants. The builders reused many of the earlier city's surviving structures, notably its citadel wall, which they renovated with additional stone towers and mudbrick breastworks. Numerous small houses were added inside the citadel, filling in formerly open areas. New houses were also built in the lower city, whose area appears to have been greater in Troy VIIa than in Troy VI. In many of these houses, archaeologists found enormous storage jars called pithoi buried in

10395-442: Was built. For this reason, many archaeologists prefer to use samples from short-lived plants for radiocarbon dating. The development of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating, which allows a date to be obtained from a very small sample, has been very useful in this regard. Other radiometric dating techniques are available for earlier periods. One of the most widely used is potassium–argon dating (K–Ar dating). Potassium-40

10500-649: Was destroyed around 1050 BC after an apparent earthquake. Troy VIIb3 dates from the Protogeometric era. No new builds were constructed, so its existence is known primarily from artifacts found in the West Sanctuary and terraces on south side of mound. These areas were excavated in the 1990s, surprising the archaeologists who had assumed that the site was abandoned until the Archaic Era. Locally made neck-handled amphoras shows that Troy still had

10605-400: Was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann and Frank Calvert starting in 1871. Under the ruins of the classical city, they found the remains of numerous earlier settlements. Several of these layers resemble literary depictions of Troy, leading some scholars to conclude that there is a kernel of truth underlying the legends . Subsequent excavations by others have added to the modern understanding of

10710-541: Was founded during the Greek Dark Ages and lasted until the Roman era . Though the site had never been entirely abandoned, its redevelopment as a major city was spurred by Greek immigrants who began building around 700 BC. During the Archaic period , the city's defenses once again included the reused citadel wall of Troy VI. Later on, the walls became tourist attractions and sites of worship. Other remains of

10815-479: Was over 16 times larger than had been assumed, and thus a major city with a large population rather than a mere aristocratic residence. However, only 2–3% of the lower city had been excavated as of 2013, and few architectural features are likely to exist. Almost 2m of the surface has eroded, likely removing much of the evidence that hadn't already decomposed, been built over, or reused in later construction . The material culture of Troy VI appears to belong to

10920-483: Was the Troy VI–VII lower city. This lower town had a wide anti-chariot defensive ditch backed by a wooden palisade. Added to the citadel this lower town would have brought Troy up to an area of around 200,000 square meters. This discovery led to a major reinterpretation of the site, which had previously been regarded as a small aristocratic residence rather than a major settlement. A number of radiocarbon dates, from charcoal samples, were obtained from various phases of

11025-564: Was to use the new technique of "molecular archaeology". A few days before the Wisconsin team was to leave, the Turkish government cancelled about 100 excavation permits throughout Turkey, including Wisconsin's. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It

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