Searching for Ithaca

Oct 15, 2006 Alun Science, The Past 3 Comments Ancient History, Geology, Greece, Ithaca, James Diggle, Odyssey, Robert Bittlestone

Ithaca? Photo by Jo Sal­mon.

As Γλαυκôπις poin­ted out last week­end Robert Bittle­stone, James Diggle and John Under­hill are look­ing for Ithaca, home of Odys­seus and think they’ve found it. A lot of people thought it’s already be found, there’s an island called Ithaki. How­ever, they argue that the geo­graphy doesn’t match Homer’s descrip­tion. Ithaca is described in the Odys­sey:

I am Odys­seus, Laertes’ son, world-famed
For stratagems: my name has reached the heav­ens.
Bright Ithaca is my home: it has a moun­tain,
Leaf-quivering Neri­ton, far vis­ible.
Around are many islands, close to each other,
Dou­li­chion and Same and wooded Zacyn­thos.
Ithaca itself lies low, fur­thest to sea
Towards dusk; the rest, apart, face dawn and sun.
Odys­sey 9, 19–26 (trans. James Diggle)

This describes Ithaca as a low island and to the west. This doesn’t match mod­ern Ithaki. Instead they argue that Ithaca was where the pen­in­sula of Pal­iki is on the island of Keph­a­lo­nia. So far this isn’t any­thing major, there are geo­graph­ical dis­putes about vari­ous places. How­ever they’ve come up with an eleg­ant way to test their idea.

If they’re right then the land which is now the Thinia isth­mus join­ing Pal­iki to the rest of Keph­a­lo­nia must have been nav­ig­able to ships. This is where it gets a bit odd. This isth­mus is around 180m above sea level. It’s not impossible for land to rise, but the uplift is estim­ated to be 6 metres, so there’s a bit of explain­ing to do. Prof Underhill’s explan­a­tion is infill from the sur­round­ing val­ley sides. I haven’t vis­ited the site but it’s plaus­ible. The eleg­ant bit is that if this is infill they can test their idea.

Rather than archae­olo­gic­ally dig­ging they can find out whether there was a chan­nel there or not by cor­ing. Effect­ively you have a hol­low drill which can pull out a core of earth and keep it firm so that the strata can be examined. It’s been suc­cess­ful before in help­ing identify sites like Helike, so it’s a recog­nised tech­nique and it pro­poses a simple answer. If this is an infilled chan­nel they’ll find that the core is full of loose debris that fell down the moun­tain­side. If they find bed­rock then there isn’t a channel.

And that’s the bit I really like. Bittle­stone has a clear idea of what would prove him wrong.

There’s addi­tional sup­port­ing mater­ial Strabo said of Keph­a­lo­nia “Where the island is nar­row­est it forms an isth­mus so low-lying that it is often sub­merged from sea to sea.” which doesn’t match the mod­ern island but could des­cibe the chan­nel as infilling happened.

You can read more at the project’s web site, includ­ing a down­load of an art­icle which appeared in Geoscient­ist magazine (you’ll need to scroll down a bit). Find­ing the remains of a chan­nel wouldn’t prove Pal­iki was Ithaca, but it would swing the evid­ence strongly in its favour. I’ll add it to me to-read list. I’d like to read it even it is proved wrong, because it does seem a fas­cin­at­ing argument.