This is not a "discovery"; it is a hypothesis, and although it is an intriguing and attractive one I am sorry to say that I find it very implausible. All the geological argument in the book is directed to convincing readers that, if the channel postulated as separating Paliki from the rest of Cephallonia did once exist, then seismic activity could have filled it in and produced the present-day landform. Yet there is no argument to explain how such a channel could have come to exist in the first place: more than four miles long, narrow, and level. Erosion via rainwater runoff from the high land to east and west would have created a valley higher immediately between the ranges of hills than towards the bays to north and south. That would not have yielded the channel described in "Odysseus Unbound" when sea-level later rose.

I have expanded on this point in a page on my website (www.grsampson.net/CIthaca.html), and I invite those interested to read that and see whether they agree. I am no more an expert on these issues than Robert Bittlestone is, and my scepticism may be ill-founded; but the problem seems so obvious that I am surprised it is not touched on anywhere in a 600-page book, if there is a good answer to it.

Geoffrey Sampson

This is a very interesting geological issue and one which was by no means clearly understood by the project team when the book was published in October 2005.

However, since the conclusion of the Fugro sponsorship agreement in March 2007 (see Research-Sponsorship), industry-scale resources have become available to penetrate below the surface of the Thinia isthmus and this has broadened the team's understanding of this issue.

The Research Update published on June 18 2008 in the News section explains that further details of this research will be announced in the September 2008 issue of Geoscientist magazine.

John Underhill will also be speaking on Oct 2 2008 at the Geological Society (see Events) and he welcomes questions on this and other topics there.

I've been reading Tim Severin's book "The Ulysses Voyage." It's a fascinating record of Severin's attempt to follow in Ulysses wake in a replica of a Bronze Age twenty-oared galley. He finds convincing geographic locations for all the scenes of Odysseus's travels except for Calypso's island. All of these sites lie within the range of a galley, and do not conform to accepted wisdom that Odysseus ended up on the western coast of Italy! Severin's adventure places The Odyssey within the Aegean, Libyan, and Ionian Seas. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... map-en.svg

Severin found a narrow, twisting, shallow, but navigable for galleys, channel between the island of Levkas and the mainland. In the last 3,000 years, erosion and siltation, tectonic lifting and sinking may well have erased others.

The Dalmatian Islands are separated from the mainland and from each other by narrow channels. For example, http://www.travel-design.com/croatia/ra ... _about.htm Then there are the Scottish Hebrides and the Norwegian islands, similarly separated by narrow channels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_Straits
http://www.norwegiancoastalvoyage.ca/dy ... 6eec7b69ea
http://smartin.bol.ucla.edu/caledonia/caledonia.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... desmap.png

The key to survival of these narrow channels is probably the absence of rivers draining into them, and the presence of dense macchia vegetation to bind the soil on the adjacent slopes, thus preventing siltation. Of course, huge earthquakes and/or landslips could obliterate a channel in a few minutes.

Severin makes the excellent point that Bronze Age galleys were small. Argo, his replica, is 54 feet long and with a beam of around nine and a half feet. Despite weighing about 8 tons, Argo's draught was less than 3 feet of water.

http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Voyage-Se ... 201&sr=1-1

Thank you for putting this resource together, Mr. Sampson. I enjoyed reading it, and thinking over your questions. As devil's advocate, I am impelled to point out that "low-lying" is not necessarily equivalent to "flat land." I looked at the elevation map of Paliki http://www.odysseus-unbound.org/images/ ... vation.jpg
and many photos on the web, and Paliki is indeed mostly jagged and steep.

Check out the youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEssFK5cEnY

Looking at the topography of Paliki, as an ex-owner of a horse, I'd concur that this was NOT a land for horses. "Eat like a horse" is not just a figure of speech; horses are coarse grazers who eat a LOT of grass. A chariot horse would have been a solid, muscular animal needing not only grazing but grain if it were to run with a chariot, warrior, and driver/groom. From the photos of ancient images, it seems that the driver handled the horse and chariot, leaving the warrior's hands free to wield spear, sword, and shield. http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/gaddis/H ... hariot.jpg

That's a lot of weight for a horse to pull at speed! It might even take two or more horses per chariot.

This link discusses the feeding of a light pleasure horse. http://www.acreageequines.com/HorseCare/horsecare1.htm
My 56 acre smallholding north of Pretoria in South Africa had a recommended carrying capacity of 5 cows; that's a little over 10 acres per cow. I mention this only to show how much land is needed to feed one large animal! I spend as much time as I can squeeze out in Dalmatia, on a small island near Dubrovnik. It's also harsh limestone country, rising steeply from the sea, with one large and one small polje. I would think that in this region, and probably the Paliki area too, you'd need 15 - 20 acres per horse.

Even today, in Greece and Turkey, the donkey or mule is used as a draft or pack animal rather than the horse. Donkeys/mules keep condition on grass alone, and their hooves tend to be harder than those of horses, requiring less care. It's interesting to note that Nestor, in his ramblings, speaks of how he first went abroad to regain his father's stolen mares and their fine mule colts.

Mr. Sampson makes the point that Athene told Telemachus to order his crew to land him at the "first coast" of Ithaca, and that this should have been in the southeast. However, again I find a counter-argument. Athene told Telemachus to go FIRST to the hut of Eumaeus the swineherd. There would have been a long, rocky hike for Telemachus had he landed at the southern point, with the indications that the settlement and palace probably lay at the northern end of Ithaca, as shown by the widespread sherds found in the area.

Pigs thrive to this day in Italy and the Istrian region of Croatia. They range in the woods, guzzling acorns, which lays on very healthy fat in pigs! Homer had that right too. The fatty acid profile of the meat and lard of acorn-fed pigs is very different to that of the corn/soy stuffed confined hog. Iberian ham is a much sought-after delicacy. Here's more than you ever wanted to know about pigs eating acorns: http://www.google.com/search?client=fir ... gle+Search

This link is particularly interesting. http://woolypigs.blogspot.com/2008/05/k ... tened.html