It may have been a siege tower, which was used to make a breach in the walls of the city of Troy after the Greeks had battled outside it for years.
I'm also a non-academic with interest in the ancient world, especially Greece. First, it wouldn't surprise if there was never in fact a "Trojan horse". A lot of mythology fails to correlate with fact.
The possibility that it was instead a siege tower, and later changed to a wooden horse, is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it holds up to scrutiny.
Most historians place the Trojan War into the Mycenaean Period of Greece - which lasted from about 1600 BCE to 1100 BCE - and the battle with Troy was probably the later part of that period. Let's say 1200 BCE. But according to Wikipedia, the earliest siege towers weren't being used until around 900 BCE. So I'd say it's unlikely.
A Trojan horse just makes one helluva story, so the oral and written traditions had no problem passing it down through the years. :)
By the way - I happen to be writing/producing a graphic novel about ancient Greece - the end of the Golden Age/5th century BCE - where we'll see the events in Athens which led to Socrates' trial and execution. Working with an artist to create the pages - take a look if you have any interest! Polis: The Trial of Socrates, lates page. I'd love to know what you think.
That post is great! You're very talented. Regarding siege towers, something like a covered battering ram may have been possible, even if it were not as high as the top of the walls. I love the Trojan horse story, though, and since we may never know, I'd rather believe it happened.
Surely it's more fun if Trojan horse story is true! But if a Trojan horse actually had warriors inside of it that kind of feels like people would have noticed. And even if they would have been elite how many would you be able to put inside a Trojan horse and keep it quiet. Maybe they didn't need that many if they would just open the gates for the Greek army. I also consider that if they took in the Trojan horse inside the city that it would not be close to the gates since they probably would take it to their best location away from the gates so it would be very hard to exit the Trojan horse and navigate to the gates without being noticed. Since clearly there would be guards out even at night time. A battering ram with a wooden horse head at the front seems very likely.
On the other hand I think you may be right that they may have pulled this off since the longer back we go in history the smarter people seems to have been. Considering the amazing pyramids that was built with amazing precision. As well as all the amazing knowledge written in various books. For example The Bible is very interesting how we still don't know the full detail what people who wrote it and how they put it together. But clearly people were extremely smart.
Probably easier to think deeper with less humans around in terms of distraction! These days with billions of humans on earth there is so much more distraction so it becomes less deep thinking for majority. Unless they isolate themselves of course! Something that Goethe said was the highest artistic thing you could do. And focus yourself in 1 area and avoid distraction. Also when they put down words on paper it was harder to erase so I guess that made people think even deeper on trying to put down only their best ideas.
If they built a giant horse in wood then they would have to make sure that there was no holes where you could see the interior. Seems like amazing gifts was a major thing back in those days to try to impress other emperors. I guess people lived more in the moment and knew their life may be short so when they did something they truly wanted it to be glorious.
Curious what you think of the writings of Aristotle I downloaded his complete works on my Amazon Kindle and it's truly amazing the depth the Greeks went into explaining daily life. And how deep especially Aristotle went to even explain words in precise detail. Very artistic. Really amazing stuff to read when you got some free time. Since it's so original and thought provoking.
Just for some perspective: the (likely) difference in time from the Trojan War to Aristotle was about 900 years. That's the difference between our time and the Crusades.
The Mycenean era - which is when the Trojan War would have occurred - is separated by several centuries of "dark age" before the ancient Greeks that most of us are familiar with began to develop.
Dark ages sounds kinda fascinating. Also very curious how ancient people could start to develop magically! The genepool I'm very curious on since there are major difference between various people.
Thanks for that 900 year range yes that is a lot of years. Very hard for us to grasp who can barely remember 50 years in our head. That we are just at the beginning of knowledge sharing on a global scale! Clearly we may get hit with a dark age again if we produce deep intelligence that perhaps see humans as obsolete.
Either our society gets dumber because smarter people get a major advantage by latest technology and use it on the rest. Or everyone gets empowered and we all work together towards a better future! Clearly we now empower humans with very smart machines. But how will people use them that's an interesting question. Especially now with the Blockchain technology!
When I say "began to develop" I meant the culture, rather than the people. One of my points is that the culture of the ancient Greeks was very different from the Mycenaeans - though much of their mythology was built on stories from that age.
Right. That makes much more sense.
Me too.
nice history...!!
@riad420
Awesome !!
Great and educational article of Trojan Horse, Gates of Hell, and Angamuco.
Now, thanks to your post I have an idea what this Trojan Horse was actually used for. I found it very interesting. I also like the way the scientists had reasonable explanation why the animals died, but priest walked out without any injury. However, how did the priest walked out without the animal, wasn’t that the reason he was higher above the ground while riding the animal? Anyway the ancient city of Angamuco was as big as Manhattan with buildings all over and as many as 40K structure, which is unbelievable since it was centuries ago, I guess humans were an excellent builders afterall.