Abstract
THE Eleventh General Meeting of the German Anthropological Society was held at Berlin during the past month, Prof. Virchow taking the chair and acting as president at each of the six sittings. At the opening sitting after speeches by Herr von Gossler and the President, in which they reviewed the past and the present condition of the Society, and notably drew attention to its aims and its achievements, Herr Friedel gave a short exposition of his paper. “On Prehistoric Discoveries made in Berlin and. its Neighborhood.” This was followed by an interesting address from Dr. Schliemann respecting the site of Troy. He re-stated his now well-known convictions, “and gave considerable evidence in support of the belief that Homers Troy was not merely a mythical town, but that it had once actually filled a place in the world's history. “I wish,” said the Doctor, “I wish that I were able to prove Homer to have been an eye-witness of the Trojan war. But unfortunately this is impossible. In his day swords were in general use as a weapon and iron well known as a metal; in Troy again, swords were unheard of, while of iron the inhabitants knew nothing whatever. So, too, the manners, the customs and the general civilisation which he describes are of an epoch that is centuries later than the one to which the results of my excavations belong. Homer presents to us the legend of Ilium's tragic fate in the form which it had been handed down to him by the bards who had gone before; and, as we have already seen, he invests the traditional account of the war and of the fall of Troy with the colouring of the time in which he lived. Yet he was not without personal knowledge of the actual localities, for his descriptions (both the general one of Troy itself, as also of the plains of Troy in particular) are, if taken as a Whole, quite accurate and truthful” At the close of his address, Dr. Schliemann announced his intention of commencing a series of excavations on the site of Orchomenos in Boeotia, the prehistoric capital of the Minyans, on his return to Athens, the Greek Government having accorded him full permission to do this.
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Annual Congress of the German Anthropological Society . Nature 22, 453–454 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/022453a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/022453a0