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00:02It's one of the greatest stories of all time.
00:07The Legend of the Trojan War is an epic tale from 3,000 years ago.
00:13There's a great will to believe that there was a Trojan War,
00:16and it was for the love of a beautiful woman.
00:19But is any of it more than just a myth?
00:23You have science on the one hand,
00:25and you have the imagination gone wild on the other.
00:30Tonight, Horizon can reveal the latest scientific evidence about the real Trojan.
00:36There are skeletons.
00:39We found, for example, a girl, I think 16, 17 years old.
00:44It was a city which was besieged, and they were defeated.
00:52The evidence comes from the written tablets of a lost civilization.
00:59An extraordinary shipwreck.
01:02And treasure uncovered at Troy itself.
01:06The scientist collides with the romantic.
01:11We show how science is taking us closer than ever
01:15to the truth behind one of mankind's most enduring stories.
01:42For thousands of years, these tunnels have held a secret.
01:48Until now.
01:51They are carved into the bedrock of an ancient city in northwest Turkey.
01:58The marks of the workmen who made them still visible.
02:04You see the burning still of the lamps up here.
02:08And the chisels which went into to make this cavity.
02:15Archaeologist Manfred Kaufman has come here with a new scientific technique
02:19that he hopes will uncover a truth about these tunnels.
02:24It may reveal something that many have suspected, but no one has been able to prove.
02:30His technique may take us closer than ever to the hard facts behind an ancient myth.
02:37The story of the Trojan War.
02:47It's one of the greatest love stories ever.
02:52Helen was the most beautiful woman in the world.
02:57She's married to a Greek king, but she's spirited away to the magnificent city of Troy
03:03after she's seduced by the Trojan prince Paris.
03:15For the Greeks, this means war.
03:19Their most powerful king, Agamemnon, assembles an army.
03:28A thousand ships from all across Greece set sail to lay siege to Troy
03:34and bring back Helen.
03:43The siege drags on for ten years.
03:47The Greeks cannot break Troy's great walls.
03:51So they resort to trickery.
03:55They leave the great wooden horse outside the city.
03:59And the Trojans pull it inside.
04:05Greek soldiers hidden in the horse jump out and open the city gates.
04:13Troy is then raised to the ground.
04:23The story was composed by the Greek poet Homer almost 3,000 years ago.
04:32It's so compelling that for centuries people wondered if any of it was true.
04:38Was there a war fought for love?
04:41Did a coalition of Greeks set sail?
04:45Did Troy even exist?
04:52Eric Klein is an archaeologist who has tried to answer these questions.
04:58Is there any truth in this story?
05:00Is there a nugget, a kernel of truth at the base of the story around which everything else is wrapped?
05:05Is there some historical war which took place, which Homer wrapped in layer after layer after layer?
05:13So it became much more than just a single battle, a single conflict, much more than just a war.
05:19It became a story, an epic, a saga.
05:23And what we have to try and do is peel away the layers and get at the truth if there
05:29is any there to find.
05:32The first task was to find out when in history the legend was said.
05:41Most scholars accept that Homer composed the story in the 8th century before Christ.
05:49But it's thought that he was writing about a time hundreds of years earlier.
05:55Sometime in the age of bronze.
06:00At the beginning of this era, the pyramids of Egypt were being built.
06:12Writing came to Greece.
06:19And the invention of bronze weapons revolutionised the face of warfare.
06:26It was in the late Bronze Age, around 1200 years before Christ, that it is believed the story of the
06:33Trojan War is said.
06:37Having determined the time, the task now facing archaeologists was to find out if Troy ever existed.
06:48The first breakthrough was made by Heinrich Schliemann in 1870.
06:54He was something of an amateur, but he had other qualities.
07:00To be an archaeologist, you have to be both good and lucky.
07:05Schliemann was not necessarily that good, but he was luckier than almost anybody else that has ever put trowel or
07:12spade into the ground.
07:15Schliemann looked for geographical clues in Homer to follow up.
07:22They placed Troy in the northwest corner of what is now Turkey.
07:27Schliemann believed they fitted the site of an ancient mound by the coast.
07:32He didn't hang around.
07:35Schliemann shows up at the site, hires a couple hundred workers, and puts a whacking great trench right through the
07:42middle of the mound.
07:43And that was archaeology.
07:4915 metres down, he found a walled palace, with a paved ramp leading to a gate.
07:58He found a great gate in stone with a great road leading through the gateway, wide enough so that two
08:06chariots could have driven through it side by side.
08:09And that is one of the clues that Homer gives.
08:17Schliemann thought he'd found Homer's Troy.
08:21The rest of the world wasn't so sure.
08:26But in this trench, he answered the doubters with a breathtaking discovery.
08:35Treasure.
08:38Gold diadems.
08:40Jewels fit for the most beautiful woman in the world.
08:45Here was evidence of a rich and advanced culture.
08:52He had found the very jewels, the very necklaces, bracelets, earrings that Helen had worn, or so he claimed.
09:00And so the world was absolutely entranced, especially when Schliemann put these necklaces, these jewels, on his wife, when he
09:08bedecked Sophie.
09:14Schliemann had brought the myth dramatically to life.
09:20He was certain he'd found the mythical city of Troy.
09:24And the world wanted to believe him.
09:30But in fact, he'd got something completely wrong.
09:43A site that has been inhabited for centuries poses a particular problem for archaeologists.
09:54Because each generation builds on the remains of its predecessors, forming a sequence of layers.
10:02So the deeper you dig, the farther back in time you travel.
10:09At Troy, there are nine layers, representing 4,000 years of inhabitation.
10:16Each layer, a different era in human history.
10:21Here we have a cake, a period, a sequence of layers.
10:26Down there, 2,500 BC, which means the pyramids in Egypt.
10:35Up there, layer six, the exodus of Egypt.
10:44The blue sign, the period of Jesus Christ.
10:52So we have a history of humanity and a wonderful sequence which we can control as archaeologists.
11:01But Schliemann didn't know how to date his layers.
11:06And as the science of archaeology evolved, it became clear that these jewels could never have been worn by Helen.
11:15They were more than a thousand years too old.
11:20Schliemann had dug down too deep.
11:22The late Bronze Age, the time of the legend, was four layers higher up.
11:30Now, if there was a Trojan War, we would look to the layer six, which is the fortification wall which
11:37you can see over there.
11:44A very different Troy emerged from that layer, with physical features that seemed to match some of Homer's descriptions.
11:58Here seemed to be his fine towers.
12:08His wide streets and lofty gates.
12:17The city was indeed well walled, as the myth described.
12:29The city that emerged seemed to be drawn from the pages of Homer.
12:47Here was a royal citadel, robustly defended.
12:56With imposing watchtiles dominating the land, as Homer described.
13:08But there was one feature that just didn't fit the myth.
13:14The city of legend had been mighty enough to withstand a siege for ten years.
13:21The city is probably too small.
13:23That it doesn't fit what Homer describes.
13:26Yes, it's wealthy.
13:28Yes, maybe powerful, maybe some trade.
13:30But there aren't enough people there.
13:32It's simply too small.
13:34Once again, doubters suggested that there might be nothing to the myth at all.
13:41That perhaps Homer's Troy never existed.
13:53But even if this was not Homer's Troy, it was a fascinating archaeological site in its own right.
14:00And in 1988, it drew a large international team to begin work again.
14:07In charge was the leading German archaeologist, Manfred Kaufmann.
14:12He was interested in science, not the myth.
14:17But his work was to lead to extraordinary new insights into the legend.
14:24It began when Kaufmann started to re-examine the citadel defences.
14:31We have here a fortification wall, in some places eight meters high, still standing.
14:42Now, the purpose of this tower is actually, I would say, to show power.
14:47And to make sure that this was a powerful residence.
14:55You see the greatness of this tower.
14:57You see the powerful thickness of these walls.
15:05But then, it appeared to him that whoever had constructed the defences had made an elementary mistake.
15:16It seemed there was no way of closing off the gateways.
15:21Any invading army could have just walked in.
15:25Now, this gate is open and it is inviting everybody to come in.
15:30And so, we went a hundred times through it and thought, how this was closed?
15:36How this was blocked?
15:37How could they defend themselves?
15:39Obviously, they did not defend themselves here on the gate.
15:43It just didn't make sense to him.
15:46No one would have built a city that was not defensible.
15:51So, he began to wonder.
15:54Perhaps, these weren't the outside walls.
15:58Perhaps, there was more to Troy than had so far been uncovered.
16:07Outside the city walls, Kaufman's team began to excavate.
16:16They began to unearth remains from the late Bronze Age.
16:21You have pitoy, which means storage jars.
16:25Quite a number of it.
16:27We have found here a hearth in the middle.
16:31So, it was warm.
16:33The back rooms were too storied.
16:36And we found in the corner something which we interpret as a kind of toilet.
16:45Kaufman began to speculate whether this was evidence that the city extended beyond the citadel walls,
16:52into the fields below.
16:55The big question is, is there a lower city?
16:58Now, is this the lower city?
17:00From the topographic point of view, this should be the lower city.
17:06But the area was too big to excavate with spades.
17:10So, Kaufman had to try a different technique,
17:13magnetic imaging, to look beneath the surface.
17:19What was revealed was a city hidden beneath the fields.
17:26A grid of wide streets and long avenues.
17:31It was immediately obvious that this belonged to a much later period.
17:36Classical Greek and Roman times.
17:40We find the Greek and Roman layout of the city with streets, with channels and so on.
17:46Wonderful to have such a city plan.
17:48But we were looking for the lower city of the Bronze Age and the end of the lower city.
17:53At first it seemed there was nothing here from the late Bronze Age.
17:58That later buildings had obliterated any remains.
18:06But then Kaufman spotted one feature, so faint, it could easily have been overlooked.
18:14Then we got alerted by a fine line, which alerted us.
18:21I just draw it here.
18:22It goes up and down.
18:24It goes inward and outwards.
18:26And there was a gate interruption.
18:29And it continued like this.
18:32So, by this we had the idea we should excavate what is this.
18:39The excavation revealed a section of a deep ditch.
18:45This magnificent ditch is cut into the rock and we can follow it up 700 metres just around this hill
18:52crop.
18:56Kaufman believes it was designed to stop enemy chariots.
19:01And so marked the outer limit of the lower city.
19:05He dated remains in the ditch.
19:07And it was from the late Bronze Age.
19:10And this means that we have now the southern limit and we know that this was quite a substantial place.
19:18Here, all over here and in the back over here.
19:22So, I think we are speaking of a considerable lower city and a lot of effort to fortify it with
19:32this ditch.
19:38A city of the late Bronze Age was now revealed.
19:44Kaufman believes it was a sizeable city, with a population of between 4,000 and 8,000.
19:52For the scientists not interested in the myth, it was an amazing breakthrough.
19:59Now, the people who believe that there was a Homeric Troy, that means a city of substantial size and population,
20:08will be happy with this result.
20:09The discovery of such a lower city is crucial and the fact that Kaufman has apparently discovered just such a
20:18lower town is wonderful.
20:21It may be what was necessary to put the finishing touches on the identification of this site as Troy.
20:32After 3,000 years, the legendary city of Troy seemed to have become a reality.
20:39It seemed there was some historical truth in the myth.
20:45But there was still no evidence that Troy had been destroyed, as Homer said, by an enemy army.
21:05Then Kaufman's team began to look for clues about the fate of Troy in the late Bronze Age.
21:14Soon they began to find evidence of violence.
21:23They began to uncover arrowheads in the lower city.
21:28It suggested close-quarter fighting.
21:34Kaufman began to build up a picture of what had happened.
21:38Now, the evidence is burning and a catastrophe with fire.
21:46Then there are skeletons.
21:49We found, for example, a girl, I think 16, 17 years old, half-buried.
21:55The feet were burned by fire.
21:59Half of the corpse was underground.
22:02This is strange.
22:03So a rapid burial was in a public space inside the city.
22:09And we found sling pellets in heaps.
22:14He believes these pellets had been assembled by the defenders of Troy
22:18and been abandoned after they lost the battle.
22:22It pointed to a clear conclusion.
22:25It was a city which was besieged.
22:29It was a city which was defended, which protected itself.
22:34They lost the war and obviously they were defeated.
22:42Kaufman had shown that Troy had been destroyed in a battle at the end of the Bronze Age.
22:49Just as the legend had said it was.
22:54But there was one thing Kaufman couldn't determine.
22:58Who the attackers had been.
23:01That evidence would have to come from elsewhere.
23:10Homer said that the army that sacked Troy came from Greece.
23:16That it was led by the king of Mycenae, Hagamemnon.
23:21And this whole era in Greek history has become known as Mycenaean.
23:28In the legend, a thousand Mycenaean ships sail for Troy to bring heaven home.
23:43Their army besieges Troy for ten years.
23:48But were the Greeks capable of mounting such an expedition together?
23:54And could it have been led by a king of Mycenae, like Agamemnon?
24:08These magnificent lions have guarded the palace at Mycenae for three thousand years.
24:21In the late Bronze Age, Greece was carved up into independent kingdoms.
24:27Each ruler had his own palace.
24:32The mighty wall suggested this was the palace of an important king.
24:39But for the myth to have substance, this one had to be the most important of all.
24:45Home to the Greek king of kings.
24:53Professor Spiros Iacovides has spent most of his career excavating Mycenae.
24:59He's part of a team that have just completed a ground-breaking study.
25:03An atlas that shows what Mycenae looked like during the Bronze Age.
25:08Including the road system that linked it to the rest of the country.
25:13We have the citadel of Mycenae here.
25:20This is the modern road, which goes up, the black one.
25:25And these are the remains of ancient, of Mycenae roads.
25:30These red things here.
25:37We have another road there.
25:40We have another road there.
25:40It goes across the riverbed.
25:49This one, it makes a turn and goes east.
25:57The roads lead to all directions.
26:03He believes that the road network that radiates out from the citadel suggests that Mycenae could have been at the
26:10political center of the Greek world.
26:14It was the center of Mycenaean civilization.
26:18Therefore, we assume that it was also the political center of the Mycenaean states.
26:26And it was certainly one of the most powerful states.
26:31So, it could very well have been in the middle of things, in the center of whatever expedition was mounted
26:40against the coast of Asia Minor, and therefore also against Troy.
26:47His work implies that Homer may have been right when he said Mycenae was at the center of Greek power.
26:57But was there evidence that these were the mighty warriors described in the legend?
27:13Evidence that the Mycenaeans were indeed great warriors came when these graves within the citadel walls were excavated many years
27:21ago.
27:24It was on this very spot here, in this circle of graves, within the citadel walls of Mycenae, that the
27:32discovery of the lost civilization of the Mycenaeans was first made.
27:37We're standing here in a great circle of graves, surrounded by massive slabs of stone, with the retaining wall of
27:45the great ramp that leads up to the Mycenaean palace behind us.
27:48Here were uncovered the rulers of this lost civilization.
27:53The men were found lying, wearing massive gold death masks and wonderful ceremonial armor.
28:08It was a sensational discovery.
28:12For the first time, the world looked at the face of a Mycenaean warrior chief.
28:23This is a face from the late Bruns age.
28:31Buried alongside it, weapons of war.
28:38We find Mycenaean warriors sometimes buried with up to as many as 40 or 50 swords that they probably collected
28:44and used during their lifetime.
28:46There's a whole sort of military strength and a military feeling to the civilization of the Mycenaeans.
28:57So from the artifacts we can see it's very much a warrior culture.
29:04This warrior culture that archaeology had revealed did seem to fit the warrior culture that Homer described in his story.
29:15But even so, there was nothing to link these great warriors to Troy.
29:26The myth says the Greeks sailed to Troy to win Helen back.
29:32That it was a war of love and vengeance.
29:37It makes a wonderful story, but it has never seemed very likely.
29:44Another possible motivation for a war began to emerge.
29:50From the stones of Mycenae.
30:01That motivation was greed.
30:10Archaeologists have discovered that the rulers of Mycenae had undertaken an epic task.
30:18To build mighty new walls.
30:23To transform their citadel.
30:27There's a massive rebuilding program.
30:30A whole new section of the citadel is added, almost doubling the size of the fortified area.
30:41To complete the work, Louise Scofield believes they would have needed great wealth.
30:48Supplies and food for an army of workers.
30:53And the latest technology to work with.
30:58Bronze.
31:00The sophisticated, heroic palace civilization that you see spread across the mainland of Greece would have demanded huge resources.
31:10You had a palace here with your dependents, you'd have your army to feed.
31:16These civilizations here really depended on wealth.
31:25But the problem the Mycenaeans faced was that they didn't have the natural resources that mattered.
31:33They had no tin to make bronze weapons and tools.
31:38Nor did they have gold.
31:41Their civilization was greedy for this wealth.
31:45And they had to get it, somehow.
31:50If these independent Mycenaean kingdoms were to band together to undertake an expedition like that to Troy,
31:57they're not going to be doing it for honour or for the love of a beautiful woman.
32:00They're going to be doing it because they want something.
32:04And what they're going to want over there, really, is access to wealth.
32:14So the archaeological record at Mycenae does find evidence of a rich warrior culture.
32:24And it suggests a likely motive for these warriors to join battle.
32:30The search for wealth and loot.
32:36So was there something about Troy that would have attracted a people like the Mycenaeans in their quest for riches?
32:56A discovery on the seabed further down the coast from Troy hints at an answer.
33:04In 50 metres of water, a shipwreck.
33:10Archaeologist Jamal Kulak was called to investigate.
33:14Going down there and seeing rows and rows of these copper ingots was just absolutely unbelievable.
33:24We were extremely excited.
33:26And the more we looked around, the more it was available.
33:29And it was quite apparent that we were dealing with a very, very large major wreck of the Bronze Age.
33:38There were enough metal ingots to make 11 tons of bronze.
33:46The cargo that the ship was carrying is by far the largest assemblage of Bronze Age goods found anywhere.
33:58On board the ship, a dazzling cargo from the late Bronze Age.
34:05Beautifully shaped gold.
34:10Ostrich eggs from Africa or Asia.
34:14Goods from all over the known world on this single ship.
34:19This gives us a clear idea of how intricate and how far-eaching the ancient trade network is.
34:25It's much, much more sophisticated than we would have initially thought.
34:31Pulak's discovery suggested the Late Bronze Age was a time of rich trade.
34:37Of great wealth being moved across the high seas.
34:41Ladened with bronze and treasure, ships like this could easily have called in at Troy.
34:49These ships were obviously sturdy enough and capable enough to be able to sail northward into the Aegean and onto
34:56Troy.
34:59Discoveries like these beg the question.
35:01Was there something special about Troy's position in these trade routes that might have attracted the attention of the Mycenaeans?
35:17Manfred Kaufmann believes that Troy was a very special trading port indeed.
35:23And it occupied a vital strategic position.
35:32It sits at the edge of the Dardanelles, a narrow channel that separates Europe and Asia.
35:41Today, it's a vital trade route.
35:47And Kaufmann believes it was important 3,000 years ago.
35:53Now, it is the straits which are so narrow here that everything you could expect of contact between Asia and
36:02Europe should have passed here.
36:07So, Troy could have benefited from this special geographic situation.
36:12And I think that's why it is so big in comparison to other sites.
36:16In this area, there is no site as important as Troy.
36:22Kaufmann believes that Troy became a wealthy city because of the strategic position at the gateway between two continents.
36:36So, it seems Troy was a very desirable city.
36:40Desirable to the Mycenaeans because of its wealth.
36:45But its position also made it desirable to someone else.
36:51Because Troy stood at the edge of another great civilization of the day.
37:01They were called the Hittites.
37:05Their empire covered much of the territory of modern-day Turkey.
37:10The Hittites were a superpower of the late Bronze Age.
37:17They'd sacked the ancient city of Babylon and fought the mighty army of the pharaohs to a standstill.
37:26But the Hittites have also left behind clues about what really might have happened at Troy.
37:37It is all contained in a vast collection of written tablets.
37:44Trevor Bryce has studied this astonishing collection.
37:50Remarkable accounts of what was happening to cities across the Hittite Empire more than 3,000 years ago.
38:00They have really unlocked the key to an understanding of the whole history and civilization of the Hittite world.
38:07They give us pictures of conflicts and tensions in that region.
38:12And that really provides us with an actual historical written record.
38:20So scholars began to look for references to Troy in the texts.
38:26It appeared to be a hopeless task, because no one knew what the Hittites had called the place.
38:34Then they started to discover references to battles over an important city.
38:43Its name was Wilucia.
38:47A name very similar to another ancient Greek name for Troy.
38:54Willios.
38:56Many scholars believed that a country called Wilucia in Hittite texts was in fact the name of Troy.
39:05The tablets described festering conflicts involving the Mycenaeans all along the coast by Wilucia.
39:13Conflict spread over 200 years.
39:18The tablets stated Mycenaean warriors had once fought at the gates of Wilucia.
39:31If scholars could show that Troy and Wilucia were the same place,
39:36they could then compare the legend against historical records.
39:40The tablets might at last reveal the real truth of Troy.
39:46But it wasn't to be a simple task.
39:49The problem was we couldn't really prove it because we didn't know exactly where Wilucia lay.
39:55This was the task for archaeology.
39:59To discover if Troy and Wilucia were the same city.
40:04A recent breakthrough has given us the answer.
40:08It involved a mysterious message on a mountain.
40:23The first clue came from a tablet that recorded that the military might of the Hittites was being unleashed in
40:31the Late Bronze Age.
40:33The Hittite army is on the move from its homeland.
40:36We know it's moving westwards.
40:38And we know that its final destination is the kingdom of Wilucia.
40:43But we didn't know precisely where Wilucia lay.
40:46In fact, it could have been anywhere along this coastline.
40:49At all events, we know that the Hittite army continued to move westwards.
40:55But then, did they go north or did they go south?
41:01Troy is situated in the north.
41:04So if Troy and Wilucia are the same place, then the Hittite army should have headed north.
41:12But the tablet offered no clue.
41:16The direction the army must have taken was finally revealed when the inscription on this mountain pass was deciphered.
41:25It marked the boundary between two kingdoms.
41:28And indicated the Hittite army had headed north.
41:36Once they reached close to the western coast, they then turned northwards, bringing them right up into the region of
41:46where Troy was located.
41:49So really, the conclusion now seems inescapable.
41:53The kingdoms of Wilucia and Troy Ilion are one and the same.
41:58The scholarly evidence was compelling.
42:01The mythical city of Troy and the Hittite city of Wilucia may well be the same.
42:09But what was missing now was supporting archaeological evidence.
42:20That evidence was to come from the water tunnel that Manfred Kaufmann had excavated at Troy.
42:29And the breakthrough was to do with dating the tunnel.
42:36Most people believed this tunnel had been built a thousand years after the Late Bronze Age.
42:41But Kaufmann was less sure.
42:46Outside there are basins of Roman period.
42:49So it is a Roman structure, a Roman tunnel system.
42:54But then we were suspicious that it is older.
43:00The reason the date of the tunnel mattered so much was because of this tablet.
43:06It contains a reference to a water tunnel at Wilucia.
43:12So if this tunnel at Troy was from the same time as the tablet,
43:18here would be archaeological evidence that Troy and Wilucia were the same place.
43:25Everything now depended on the date of the tunnel.
43:31But was there anything in it to date?
43:36Then Kaufmann noticed that over the centuries, water had seeped into the cave walls and left behind it layers of
43:44limestone.
43:50It's the same process that furs up your kettle.
43:56Here it's left slabs on the side of the cave.
44:01So here is the outer surface.
44:04That means the last time that water was coming, pouring through it.
44:10It's like a teapot, this calcareous matter, pouring through the rocks and accumulating here.
44:18This is the inside when it started.
44:21Kaufmann then realized that the limestone layers contained something he could use to date the tunnel.
44:28Tiny quantities of uranium.
44:35Back in the lab, Kaufmann's team analyzed the minute amounts of naturally occurring uranium in the cave limestone.
44:46The uranium undergoes radioactive decay at a predictable rate.
44:55They used a mass spectrometer to measure the decay.
44:59And so determine how old the tunnel was.
45:09When the result came back, it was astonishing.
45:16The tunnel had been started in 2600 BC.
45:23And it had been in use when the Hittite tablet was written.
45:32Science had delivered the supporting evidence.
45:38Troy and Volusia were the same city.
45:49We can now build up a likely scenario of what might have happened to Troy.
46:00The tablets show that the Mycenaeans had fought at Troy in the late Bruns age.
46:13The Hittite texts mention battles that took place.
46:17The Hittite records indicate furthermore that the Mycenaeans were not only interested in this region,
46:23but had been actively fighting on and off for more than two centuries.
46:29The tablets show that Troy was an ally of the Hittites.
46:36If Troy was attacked, the Hittites were likely to come and fight alongside them.
46:46So Homer's legend appears to have been based on a real conflict
46:50between two superpowers of the late Bruns age, the Mycenaeans and the Hittites.
46:56I believe that these conflicts were distilled into a tradition of a single war lasting ten years.
47:07It seems the war occurred because Troy was a wealthy city,
47:12in a vital strategic location,
47:15and that both superpowers wanted to control it.
47:19Was the Trojan War fought for love? No.
47:22Was it fought because of greed, for money, for territory, for ambition? Of course.
47:27It's what most wars are fought for.
47:29Troy was caught between two mighty empires, the Mycenaeans and the Hittites.
47:34It was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it was crushed.
47:40So there was no face that launched a thousand ships.
47:45The war, or wars, were not fought for love, but more likely for gold and loot.
47:54And what of the Trojan horse?
47:57There are no clues in the texts, nor in the archaeological record.
48:03Perhaps it just shows that Homer really was, above all, an amazing storyteller.
48:22Trying to solve the ancient mystery of King Solomon's Tablet of Stone,
48:27there's another tale from Horizon tomorrow morning at 10.30 here on BBC Two.
48:31And later in the week, the series returns for a new series.
48:33There's a sneak preview coming up shortly.
48:50There's a sneak preview coming up shortly.
48:53There's a sneak preview coming up shortly.
48:54You