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Everyone, with the exception of Perlave Chisholm a look of pure disbelief

"The skepticised "The world has been misled for a hundred and twenty-six years, when a German merchant named Heinrich Schlie Houide He claimed that the ancient mound called Hisarlik was the perfect location for the fortified city of Troy"

"Don't ists and historians back Schliemann's case?" Gunn queried

"It's still a hotly debated subject," said Boyd "Horeat end tells us is that a reat war that had been passed down orally for hundreds of years, and recorded them in a series of adventure tales in what became the world's earliest written literature Was he one roup, who over the centuries refined the poereatest classics? The truth will never be known Besides the enigreat puzzle he left behind is whether the Trojan War was fable or fact And if it really occurred in the Early Bronze Age, were the Greeks the true enemies of the Trojans, or did Homer write about an event that took place more than a thousand miles away?"

Perl what he had always believed "What no one considered until Wilkens was that, instead of being Greek, Hoendary battle that occurred four hundred years earlier, not in the Mediterranean but in the North Sea"

Gunn looked adrift "Then the epic voyage of Odysseus"

"Took place in the Atlantic Ocean"

Su that Helen's face didn't launch a thousand ships?"

"What I was about to suggest," Boyd countered with a tired smile, "is that the truth behind the e for revenge over the abduction of his wife by her lover Hardly an excuse for thousands of ht and die for a pro of Troy, would never have risked his kingdom nor the lives of his people merely to alloard son to live with a woly left her husband for another man Nor was it a quest for the treasures of Troy Rather, realistically, the conflict was fought over a soft crystalline metallic element called tin"

"St Julien gave Summer and me a lecture about how the Celts ushered in the Bronze and Iron Ages," said Dirk, looking up fro notes

Chisholreement "To be sure, they launched the industry, but no one can say with any degree of certainty who actually discovered that ed aknown before Even the exact dating is hazy The best guess is that it appeared around two thousand BC"

"S copper was known as far back as five thousand BC in central Turkey," said Boyd "Copper was in abundance throughout the ancient world Mining took place on a grand scale in Europe and the Middle East But when bronze ca, there was a probleold rushes, prospectors and traders spread throughout the ancient world in search of the ore They eventually found the largest deposits in Southwest England The British Celtic tribes quickly cashed in and built an internationalin tin that they hout the ancient world"

"Due to the high demand, the ancient Brits quickly developed a n traders," added Chisholypt could afford to trade in expensive goods, the Celts of Central Europe had only handmade objects and an abundant supply of amber to offer Without a bronze industry, they had little hope of going beyond an agricultural society"

"So they decided to band together and seize the tin er anticipated