Great Gla .

Great Gla .
Andre Willers
2 Jun 2011

Synopsis :
Gla (Arne in Homeric terms) was the greatest Fortress construction and irrigation works of the late Bronze Age .
After it's destruction , waves of devastation spread out all over the Eastern Mediterranean (Sea Peoples) . Trade partners in Western Europe and Britain also suffered decline .

Discussion :
The name :
"Gla" is proto-European , meaning Fortress . Remnants can be seen in "Glacis" and
"Glacier" .
"Arne" : See Appendix A .This was local and has vanished .

What happened to the Bronze Age ?
1.Population increased .
2.Trade increased pari-passu .
3.Elites increased even faster .
4.Climate started deteriorating .
5.Food supplies were under increasing pressure .
6.Twofold strategy to counter it:
6.1 Short term :Gla was constructed . Lake Kopais was drained .The area fed most of Greece. (See Appendix C)
6.2 Long term : Food was imported from cheaper production areas around the Black Sea .
7 .Pesky Trojans :
Troy was in a position to control food to humans and horses (military) in Greece
The choke-point through the Dardanelles .
Analogous to oil today .
8.Trojan War :
Homer is often criticized as having too large a number of combatants . The suspicion is that the actual number was much larger towards the end .
It was a resources war . To the knife .
What was supposed to be a short , sharp war ended up in a long , drawn-out affair as more and more resources were thrown into the fray . Think WW I .
9. Logistical Mutual Destruction (LMD)
A variant of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)
9.1 The Trojans bribed the Thessalians and Desmontes (the governor of Gla) to lay waste to the Gla foodbasket .
9.2 The Achaeans landed enough horses at Troy for cavalry to lay waste to the countryside around Troy . The Trojan Horse . Denying food .
10. Both sides collapsed , with refugees spreading out to all sides
11. Also called the Sea Peoples .
Thousands of veterans no longer had any homes to return to .
Odysseus was one of them . The suitors for Penelope were desperate refugees .And he was a pirate .
12.The Inverse Sea Peoples .
Every armed man at Troy meant one not at home , ensuring law-and-order .
The cessation of an assured food supply from Gla meant food riots .
Also plain revolution . Settlement of old scores (the Greeks were good at this) .
The major city-fortresses like Mycenae , Tiryns , etc were sacked , destroyed , burnt The surrounding peasants that supported the whole shebang skedaddled , and never returned to this day .
The self-styled rulers were not too popular . A peril of globalization , high interest rates and predatory banks (temples in those days) .
13.The Dorians
They moved into this power-vacuum , pushing the refugees even further out .
What we would call ethnic cleansing .
(Something similar happened when the Angles and Saxons moved into Romano-Britain after the Roman Legions left .)
14 . A suitably Dark Age ensued , enabling new things .

15. The old was not forgotten , just not given a veto .
This is true after any revolution .

16. Population levels :
The archeological evidence from graveyards in Greece indicate a 95% depopulation during this period . This seems excessive . Much more likely that they simply ran away , especially since they would have had ample warning . Refugees .
17 Written records :
Some die-hards would have carried written records . Look for Linear B in Canaanite countries . The Western and especially north-western shores of the Dead Sea should have the highest probability of old Linear B scripts . Refugees derived from the Sea Peoples would not hide things where religious sects would .

Think "Where would Odysseus hide it ?"
He would have hidden them on the South-eastern and Southern slopes of Crete .
The Thera tsunamis would have reached about 100 meters , so ; look for caves above this .

18. A clue : the Cyclops legend . The Greeks did love their legends . The stupid man-eating giant with one eye is a perfect metaphor for their view of civilization .
This is where he would have hidden the libraries of Troy and the Greek version of the war .
Homer's description of the site is fairly exact . The shorelines at the time is available .
Anybody want to do a Schlieman ?
The Library of Troy would be extremely valuable .Homer does not even mention it . Yet this was what the whole war had been about .
The Contracts and the Contacts .

19. Look at what did not happen : trade between Black Sea states and Europe did not resume . Why not ?
Because Odysseus had scarpered with the whole lot . The real Treasure of Troy .
And he hid it . But ,by the time he got home , there was no longer a single state capable of utilizing the knowledge . He tried the Phoenicians and Carthaginians (Dido did not get diddled) .
Hoist by his own petard .
So , somewhere on Crete , the whole Troy library is still intact . There has been no ripple effects of it's existence till now . Well hidden , as expected .

I give it away for free just to spite jocks of his persuasion .

A bunch of kraters .

Andre .


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Appendix A

Arne (mythology)
"In Greek mythology, Arne (Ἄρνη) or Melanippe (Μελανίππη) was a daughter of Aeolus and Melanippe (also Hippe or Euippe), daughter of Chiron. She was born as a foal as her mother had been transformed into a horse as a disguise, but was returned to the human form and renamed Arne. Aeolus entrusted her to the care of one Desmontes, however Poseidon fathered Aeolus and Boeotus with her while he was in the form of a bull. Enraged, Desmontes entombed and blinded her and placed her twin sons on Mount Pelion. She was later rescued by her sons and married king Metapontus of Icaria, and Poseidon restored her vision.
Through Boeotus, she was the ancestress of the Boeotians. A city named after her was recorded in
he Iliad's Catalogue of Ships which has been tentatively identified with the ruins of Gla."

Translate this from mythic terms
Arne was a Colony of mainly the Argos plains cities (Mycenae , Tiryns)
Betrayed by Desmontes (presumably a governor) , the city fell to the Thessalians (a rival nearby group) , then to the Dorians . The rich refugees fled east to the island of Icaria , while the poor ones became Boeotians . See Appendix B

Appendix B
"Sixty years after the capture of Ilium, the modern Boeotians were driven out of Arne by the Thessalians, and settled in the present Boeotia, the former Cadmeis.... Twenty years later, the Dorians and the Heraclids became masters of Peloponnese;" Thucydides

Appendix C
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gla
http://wikimapia.org/6872027/Gla-Mycenaean-Citadel
Gla (rarely Glas) (Greek: Γλα or Γλας) was an important fortified site of the Mycenaean civilization, located in Boeotia, mainland Greece

Location
The site is located on a limestone outcrop or hill that jutted into Lake Kopais (now drained) or formed an island within it. The flat-topped outcrop rises up to 38m above the surrounding area. It measures circa 900 x 575m (at the widest point). The ancient name of the site is unknown, it is unclear whether it is one of the Boeotian places named by Homer (some scholars suggest that Gla is Homer's Arne). The scholarly designation "Gla" is from the Albanian word for fortification, the modern local population calls the site Paliokastro (Greek for "ancient fortress").[1]
Size
Excavation revealed much detail about the fortification walls (which were always visible) and, on the interior, remains of buildings from the Mycenaean period. The fortification encloses an area of nearly 20 hectares, about 10 times as much as the Mycenaean citadels of Athens orTiryns.

Walls
The walls are built of medium-sized limestone blocks, mostly in theCyclopean masonry technique (ashlar masonry is employed at some of the gates). They have a total length of 2.8 km, are up to 6.75m wide and 3-5m high
Elaborate built ramps led to the gates. The fortification can be dated to early LH III B, that is, circa 1300 BC.
Draining of Kopais
Much of the area within the walls is vacant, leading archaeologists to believe that it served as a refuge for farmers in the area of Lake Kopais in the event of attack. It is suggested that the land dominated by the citadel of Gla served as the "bread basket" of the Mycenaean world. This is supported by the fact that Lake Kopais, the largest lake in southern Greece, had been drained by a system of dams and canals (one of the most astonishing achievements ofprehistoric engineering) at about the same time as the erection of Gla, producing a large fertile plain. The drainage system collapsed from destruction or neglect at or after the end of Mycenaean Civilisation; in Classical Antiquity, the lake existed again. It was drained a second time in the 19th century.

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