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Multi-year research project: "Homer in the Baltic Sea": analysis of human biological and cultural
diversity in Europe during the Bronze Age.
Participants: students of classes II A, IV-A, IV B of the Liceo Classico "Piazzi - Perpenti" of
Sondrio.
STRATEGIES AND METHODOLOGIES
- Lectures Brainstorming;
- Problem solving Working Groups;
- Simulation cases;
Development of concept maps;
- Development Discussion led writing / graphics / computed data;
- Activities;
- Classroom teaching laboratory activities educational workshop during the Field Trip in
Salent (11 – 14 March 2014):
- Organic, at the Park of Porto Selvaggio and Uluzzo Bay;
- Archaeology, at the archaeological site of Roca Vecchia.
RULES ‘OF DOCUMENTATION
- Final report;
- Multimedia product.
During the 2012-2013 school year some classes of the Liceo Classico “G. Piazzi-C.L. Perpenti” in
Sondrio started a complex research work about the interpretation of the ancient Greek language
related to the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two great Homeric epic poems.
The students’ project takes its name from the engineer Felice Vinci’s book “The Baltic Origins of
Homer’s Epic Tales”, which gave them inspiration for some important cultural and linguistic
considerations.
Comparing some Indo-European languages’ features, the students became aware of the existence of
a wide series of similarities between the languages spoken by the people who, during the II
millennium B.C, from the North of Europe migrated westwards, especially to India, Asia Minor and
Greece. These folks were found to share common social, cultural and religious principles, as well.
The linguistic survey started from the study of Prometheus, a mythological Greek character also
known as “the master of the two logs of mother wood”: this appellation appears in the Rgveda with
the name “Matariivan”, because of the so called proto syllabic accent syncopated form of Matari
(mother), Arari (the two logs of woods) and Ivan (master).
Agni, the god according to mythology Prometheus gave the fire to, has strong similarities with the
Greek god Hephaestus, described in the Iliad as a master of fire, Gods’ cupbearer and expert of
metals and talismans.
He is the god of fire, by whom many objects are crafted and precious metals are forged, such as
gold, silver, bronze and orichalc. However, he does not govern that vital fire which rapidly spreads
(the so-called πῦρ, whose etymological root is *PEW, a root which the Sanskrit word PAVANAḤ
derives from too), nor the “fire coming from the sky” (that is to say Zeus’s lightning).
Agni, like Prometheus, is the god of fire, who is only an instrument in human hands. His name
might derive from the Indo-European etymological root *OGN-, which the Latin word IGNIS, the
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Lithuanian word UGNIS and the Slavonic word OGNYé come from. Moreover, the Kalevala, the
national epic poem of Finland, contains a myth similar to that of Prometheus. These analogies,
regarding both linguistic aspects and the contents, show that the Indo-Europeans knew the myth of
Prometheus before they even began migrating to far off places.
Then, Prometheus was compared with Heracles as they represent two different ways of displaying
heroism. As Karoly Kerényi, who was a history of religions and ancient mythology scholar, wrote
in his book “The Gods and the Heroes of the Greeks”, these two characters could be extremely
important to demonstrate the Nordic origin of many Greek, Indian and Mediterranean myths.
Furthermore, researches into the most probable locations of Heracles’s labours and travels (within
and without the Mediterranean boundaries) were conducted, producing some interesting findings.
These studies are based on the analysis of the 2nd Isthmian and the 3rd Olympian composed by
Pindar. The first one is a poem that celebrates Heracles’s descendants by telling the story of his
labours, whereas the second one narrates the hero’s travel to the Hyperboreans, whose country is
mentioned in the Odyssey (11th book, lines 13-19).
In addition to this, the hypothesis about the hind of Ceryneia formulated by the nuclear engineer
Felice Vinci was taken into consideration.
Also, the analysis of Heracles’s battle against the giants in Japigia gave interesting information
about the area where the fight took place. This is narrated in the Corpus Aristotelicum, in the
section called “On Marvellous Things Heard” (97-98, 838a).
Once upon a time in this place there was a town called Thuria Sallentina, mentioned by Tito Livio
in Ab Urbe Condita, book 10, chapter 2: “Eodem anno classis Graecorum Cleonymo duce
Lacedaemonio ad Italiae litora adpulsa Thurias urbem in Sallentinis cepit. Aduersus hunc hostem
consul Aemilius missus proelio uno fugatum compulit in naves; Thuriae redditae veteri cultori
Sallentinoque agro pax parta”. According to the research done during the school year, the city of
Thuria seems to be linked with Toja in Finland and with Troy in Turkey.
The hypothesis arises not only from the analysis of phonetic and linguistic affinities suggested by
the toponym itself, but also from a series of similarities that can be found through studies on
language, geography, antropology and archeology.
First of all, observing the archeological site of Roca, that is supposed to be the ancient Thuria, in the
province of Lecce, some tumuluses dating from the Middle Bronze Age can be seen (XV century
B.C.); the following historical and settlement events seem to have developed in this site in a non
destructive way with regards to the older town.
It is interesting to observe how everything has developed on a headland that overlooks the Adriatic
Sea and surely formed an important stage of the sea trade.
In 2003, following an excavation conducted by the Montpellier University’s archeology
department, in Soleto, a village in Lecce’s province that belonged to the municipalities
constituting the Salentinian Greece, a black-glazed piece of earthenware was found on which a
drawing appears, known as Map of Soleto, datable from 500 B.C., thus representing the oldest
map ever found in the Western world. On it there is a corrupted inscription YPIA, the Thuria Tito
Livio tells about.
Thuria, according to its position, can be compared to a typical coastal settlement of the Bronze Age
because it is situated on a small banked headland whose rocks overlook more than 10 metres (about
32 feet) MSL and widen to the area of Torre dell’Orso, which during ancient times was probably
the landing place of the nearby site of Roccavecchia, so that the place is situated in a predominant
position as the city of Troy in Turkey.
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Considering Felice Vinci’s research about toponymy in his book The Baltic Origins of Homer’s
Epic Tales, the ancient toponym Thuria may have been given by its first inhabitants, who were
probably an Illyrian population with Indo-European origins. In fact, they had found some
similarities with their homeland regarding ground’s morphological features, the presence of waterbearing basins in a dry region and the geographical position.
In Roca there are three hollows generally called Poetry’s Hollows. However, according to Cosimo
Pagliara, who is a professor of Greek and Roman Antiquity at Lecce University, this toponym may
come from the medieval Greek word “posìa” still used in Salento’s Greece, word referred to a place
where people used to take soft water from the natural basin in order to use it for cultural purposes.
In the innermost cave there are a lot of prehistoric engravings and figures and epigraphic texts
written in Messapico (the local language), Greek and Latin. The name of the still unidentified male
god Taotor, Teotor or Tootor Andirahas, who becomes Tutor Antraio, Andraius, Anderaus, Andreus
in Latin texts, is really common in these inscriptions. According to the studies carried out, we have
put forward two theories: the name Taotor/Teotor/Tootor1 (written with the Greek dental aspirate
consonant Q) can show the reduplication process, which is common to many Indo-European
languages, together with the vocalic apophony process. On the other hand, Taotor/Teotor/Tootor
can be a compound name formed by qeoév (god) and Tor/Thor, meaning the Northern god.
Our hypothesis is that the appellation of Andirahas could be a showy epithet (which is typical of the
Homeric poems) that could be traced back to the same etymology of a\nhér, a\ndroév, in the sense of
valiant, brave and strong. In this way the god Thor, mainly known thanks to traditional materials
kept in Iceland, was usually depicted with his magical hammer Mjöllnir, which could break even
the mountains and was associated with thunders, lightnings, storms, strength, destruction, fertility
and with the preservation of the human gender. Thor himself, son of Odin and of Jörõ -goddess of
the Earth-, came from Scandinavian places (Þorr in Old Norse, Þunor in Old English and Donar in
the Old High German, which are similar to the Germanic *þonaroz or *þunraz, which means
“Thunder”). In the same way the god Tootor provides with the fertility of the ground exactly as
Thor: he also protects humans from the pitfall represented by the sea. In fact, ancient people were
scared by the sea as it is demonstrated by the fact that many vows were turned to the sea goddess
according to the scheme of the “obligation” (the bond a man creates with a god promising him
something in return).
Elements that show the existence of settlement earlier than the arrival of Messapi in Roca are the
“specchie” , big heaps of a kind of stone really rugged and shapeless. They were used as burial
places for the most considerable people. This shows the similarity between the specchie salentine,
the great graves from the bronze Age found in the Baltic area (sort of round-shaped artificial hills
built to cover tombs), as well as the Kivik grave in southern Sweden, and the tholos tombs built for
the most honourable personalities in the Peloponnese, especially in the regions surrounding the city
of Micene where we can still admire the graves dedicated to Agamemnon, Orestes, Clytemnestra
and Aegisthus.
Between other artifacts from Roca, we found a particular knife which has been very interesting for
our research. Its particular decorations are really rare in Italy (some have been found in the Lake
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The name of the god is also written as Qotori ANDORAUON in an inscription.
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Garda area) and not easy to find in the whole Mediterranean area, while they are quite common in
the regions from the Alps to the Baltic Sea.
Moreover, some solar discs, which had been embossed with solar cycle motifs, have been dug up in
the archaeological area of Roca; what is surprising is that this solar cycle motif can be also found in
many representations all around Europe and in the Mediterranean islands. The golden discs are
strongly similar to the Nebra disc, which is considered to be one of the most important
archaeological discoveries as regards the representation of the sky in ancient eras; this is because
the Nebra disc, dating back to the bronze Age, clearly represents astronomical phenomena and
religious symbols. Furthermore, the golden discs are similar to the Dutch solar cart of Trundholm as
well, which is kept in the National Museum of Copenhagen, and gives an idea of the ancient solar
divinity simulacra.
We could find a strong relation between Northern Europe, Italy and Greece, so strong that the sun’s
journey to Greece became a mythical story. The images on the solar discs (particularly on Nebra’s
disc) refer to Hephaestus’s buckler’s decorations described with many details in the Iliad’s XVIII
book, vv. 478 and following.
In the final analysis the presence all over Salento of dolmen and menhir with a cultural and funeral
function led us to confirm the relation between Northern and Southern Europe also during the most
ancient periods.
This year, students from classes II A, IV A, IV B of the Liceo Classico “G. Piazzi-C.L. Perpenti” in
Sondrio, in the wake of the results obtained during last school year, have compared the acquired
data with the results which came out owing to the archaeological excavations conducted and
directed, in Crete, by Ewen Callaway’s team, in spring 2013.
The results of Callaway’s team are related to the analysis of mitochondrial DNA of the inhabitants
of the island, during the Bronze Age, who have traits in common with the Indo-European
populations and not with the North-African ones as you would expect.
The students, hence, have tried to reconstruct the obtained pieces into a single mosaic, giving rise to
new historical and ethnographic perspectives that could solve the riddles relative to Homer’s history
and geography.
All the studied and analyzed elements (bull, labyrinth, honey) emphasize clearly the relations that
the first inhabitants of Salento had with Crete. Moreover, the Magna Grecia still survives in Italy in
a few specific genetic variants and in the presence of modern Greek dialects (griko and grecanico)
spoken in Greek Salento and Bovesia in Calabria.
zoeteam
Daniela Montinaro