Caleb Howells

Historian
King Arthur: The Man Who Conquered Europe (2019)
The Trojan Kings of Britain (2024)
Writer for The Collector, Greek Reporter, and Timeless Myths

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@Jorrit_Kelder @RaafHuns @adeymusto As Hans van Wees pointed out, Homer’s general descriptions of warfare, weapons/armour, and geography is basically consistent with a mythologised version of his own era, the Archaic Era.

Regarding the relative date of Trojan War, consider these three points from Herodotus:

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@ss_reny82137 @bednnap @Yln_DC @zillaofgod16421 @DiscussingFilm I mean, I don’t know what to tell you 🤷🏻‍♂️ I was a massive fan of superheroes. I absolutely loved Spider-Man and Batman in particular. I dressed up as them, had books (not comic books but I mean actual books, like catalogues), etc. And no, I wasn’t familiar with Iron Man. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@2179Jason @trashstarr333 @Yln_DC @zillaofgod16421 @DiscussingFilm Evidently I guess I wasn’t, but then that kind of makes my point. Most people, even kids who were into superheroes (like I was), weren’t familiar with Iron Man.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

Was the real Mount Sinai in Arabia?

My latest video examines the evidence.

https://t.co/Lke3F3y3ap

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@trashstarr333 @Yln_DC @zillaofgod16421 @DiscussingFilm I absolutely didn’t despite being a massive superhero fan growing up.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@ss_reny82137 @bednnap @Yln_DC @zillaofgod16421 @DiscussingFilm I was a massive fan of superheroes growing up.

Yet, I had absolutely no idea who Iron Man was in 2008, and this was despite him appearing in the animated Spider-Man series that I watched.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@TheBLSCoinClub @hemingquay @NickAtNight999 @dcolascione @romanhelmetguy I think that the overwhelming majority, if not all, of the apparent traces of the Bronze Age in Homer’s poems can actually be understood coherently through the lens of a mythologised version of the Archaic world, without needing to bring the Bronze Age into it at all.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

Well, this is been a fantastic week or so of research! I’ve finally resolved multiple issues that have been puzzling me for years, concerning loose threads from both my King Arthur book and my Trojan War book. I’m very excited to do some videos about what I’ve found!

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@TheBLSCoinClub @hemingquay @NickAtNight999 @dcolascione @romanhelmetguy …started to show interest in the Black Sea. It’s often been pointed out that Troy is a very strategic city and that the Trojan War may have been fought over access to the Black Sea, yet Greek colonies don’t start showing up there until the seventh century BCE.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@TheBLSCoinClub @hemingquay @NickAtNight999 @dcolascione @romanhelmetguy Yeah, that’s my interpretation of it too. Bronze Age Wilusa was just one of many cities that were sacked in the Collapse.

I think the geopolitics of c. 700 BCE makes a lot of sense for the foundation of the Trojan War legend, partly because that’s exactly when the Greeks…

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@TheBLSCoinClub @hemingquay @NickAtNight999 @dcolascione @romanhelmetguy …and Homer’s time, there are two destruction layers. One of them was in c. 900 BCE. Another was in c. 650 BCE.

It’s that later one that I believe can be connected to the Trojan War. The dating is based on G2/3 Ware and is, in my opinion, compatible with c. 700 BCE.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@TheBLSCoinClub @hemingquay @NickAtNight999 @dcolascione @romanhelmetguy No it’s fine, I wouldn’t expect anyone to just blindly listen to me haha! It’s important to carefully analyse the facts.

What archaeology reveals at Troy is that it was actually destroyed quite a few times over its long history. Between the destruction in 1180…

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@TheBLSCoinClub @dcolascione @hemingquay @NickAtNight999 @romanhelmetguy I would say that the evidence places Homer firmly in the seventh century, with the Iliad being composed in c. 650 BCE and the Odyssey being composed somewhat later.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@TheBLSCoinClub @hemingquay @NickAtNight999 @dcolascione @romanhelmetguy Indeed, and given that the legends of the Trojan War do not present it as being followed by the Bronze Age Collapse and several centuries of Dark Ages, that adds further support to placing the Trojan War much later than the traditional date of 1200’BCE.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@TheBLSCoinClub @grahamscheper Absolutely.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@ThatchEffendi They had to worry about pleasing their people and decisions were often made by a counsel of men rather than by a Bronze Age style ‘god-king’. There’s no hint of that Bronze Age power in Homer’s poems.

Significantly, the term ‘anax’ was still used politically in Homer’s time.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@ThatchEffendi Homer doesn’t present Agamemnon as a wanax in the Bronze Age sense. The politics portrayed in the Iliad and the Odyssey are the politics of the Archaic Era, c. 700 BCE, in which the kings had relatively unstable power and couldn’t just waltz around like gods in the flesh.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@rueghosts @grahamscheper …by the more contemporary Roman sources and also by archaeology.

To be clear, he did make mistakes and exaggerate the facts. But his narrative is fundamentally rooted in real events, not outright fictions

I wrote an article about this earlier this year: https://t.co/mnwXPCzFhj

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@rueghosts @grahamscheper That’s a common assertion which is really just rooted in his claim that the Romans built Hadrian’s Wall in c. 400, which is of course much too late.

However, Gildas tells us an awful lot about the end of Roman Britain. The majority of it can be at least broadly confirmed…

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@PastPaulitics But no acknowledgement that such expectations were based on a fundamental mistreatment of Gildas as a source. Just, “Oh, it was more than we were expecting.”

No recognition that their entire attitude toward Gildas’ historical worth needed to fundamentally change.

[Caleb Howells @Caleb_Howells25]

@PastPaulitics There was someone who had been arguing for years that there was no major Anglo-Saxon migration and that Gildas was basically historically worthless. Then the genetic study in 2022 destroyed that view. I remember seeing this gentle “More DNA than most of us expected” remark.