The Future of the Past: Archaeology in the twenty-first century by
Eberhard Zangger, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 拢20, ISBN 0297643894
EBERHARD Zangger鈥檚 snappy title suggests that this geoarchaeologist, an
expert on the reconstruction of ancient landscapes, is about to discuss
cutting-edge techniques in archaeology. Alas, what little there is, in a book
which is aimed at nonspecialists, is merely a springboard for some bizarre
historical speculations.
In the early 1980s, Zangger鈥檚 work revealed that, near the end of the Late
Bronze Age in around 1200 BC, parts of the Mycenaean city of Tiryns had been
buried by a massive mud-slide. This startling discovery backed the long-standing
suspicion that LBA civilisation had collapsed at a time of earthquake and other
natural disasters. Zangger used this to some effect, in The Flood from
Heaven (1992) to argue that the simultaneous fall of Troy was the basis for
the Atlantis story.
Advertisement
In The Future of the Past the equation that Troy is Atlantis takes
over completely: there was no flood or earthquake at the end of the LBA. The
Trojans, recast as a technically advanced though frustrated world power, ran
amok as the 鈥淪ea Peoples鈥�, creating a catastrophe by destroying Mycenaean dams.
Then they founded Iron Age civilisations around the Mediterranean. Among others,
the Phoenicians are revealed as refugees from Atlantis/Troy. The jacket blurb
states that 鈥渋n 1999 Zangger ended his career in science鈥�. They said it, not
me.