Passed from mouth to mouth, reborn across eras: How the 3,000-year-old Odyssey survived

The Odyssey is once again drawing audiences, even in an age crowded with spectacular films and entertainment. More than 3,000 years after its emergence, the epic still raises difficult questions: when was it created, and did its events really happen?

From an archaeologist’s perspective, neither question has a simple answer. The Iliad and the Odyssey were not books completed by one person on a single day. They developed through centuries of oral transmission, gathering memories of the past and experiences from later generations layer by layer.

The ruins identified as Troy lie on Hisarlik Hill in modern-day Turkey, where excavations have continued for nearly 150 years. The site contains evidence of many cities that rose and fell from around 3000 BCE through the Roman period in the fifth and sixth centuries CE.

Among the remains associated with the period Homer described, around the 12th century BCE, archaeologists found traces of burning, weapons and human bones. These discoveries provide tangible evidence from the era, but they do not offer a simple final answer to how closely the epic’s story matches historical events.