 into the former sea channel dividing Ithaca/ Paliki from Cephalonia. There is a moment of high excitement in the book when masonry, apparently of Mycenean age possibly forming a harbour wall at the southern end of the hypothesised sea channel between Ithaca and Cephalonia, is found to be overlain by later land slip material.
Raised beaches suggest that since approximately 1200BC there have been 4 catastrophic uplift events. Eye witness reports of the last of these in 1953 is included. The resulting death and destruction, following world and civil wars, lead to 90% of the population emigrating. Bittlestone suggests that Ithaca’s importance in the Mycenean period, as described in the Odyssey, could similarly have been brought to a catastrophic seismic end. The traumatised survivors moved from Western Greece to the area of Asia Minor, which became known as Ionia.
The epic poem combines passages taking place off Ithaca, in which people, objects, locations and events are exaggerated or imaginary, with those taking place in Ithaca where characters, objects, places and events are actual.
It is thus possible that the on Ithaca passages took place in something like real time. The 10 years, which Odysseus is said to have taken to return to Ithaca from the siege of Troy, may be exaggerated, poetically mirroring the 10 year siege itself. Bittlestone comments favorably on Tim Severin’s insight in his “Ulysses Voyage” that the Odyssey describes real voyages and places. As set in the late Bronze Age, the emphasis should be on small scale, rather than on long, sea crossings. For me as a sea kayaker this has real resonance.
Even on Ithaca there are interventions from the Gods. However the Odyssey describes the late Bronze Age when the distinction between the divine and real may have had little meaning. A modern interpretation is that listening to the Gods may be like listening to the voice of your conscience or being conscious of developing thought processes in a pre-self-conscious age. Poseidon, Odysseus’s divine foe, with his powers to create earthquakes and storms, is given the epithets “earth mover” and “earth shaker”. Bittlestone comments what could be a more obvious opposing force for a king living in such a seismically active area. Today we know him as plate tectonics.
Following publication of the book, research continued to test Bittlestone’s theory, which generally seems to have been confirmed. A geology doctorate found evidence for a rotation slump ending in a toe thrust, which could have blocked the marine channel between Paliki/ Ithaca and Cephalonia, pushing marine sediments up to 170m above sea level.
In 2015 Bittlestone sadly died. He left as a memorial his theory, which brought something genuinely new to the study of the classics, and this great book.