Geotimes January 2007
By Managing Editor Megan Sever
Researchers are several steps closer to finding Homer’s Ithaca, thanks to new results released today from geologic tests that support the hypothesis that the ancient kingdom of Ithaca may in fact be on western Kefalonia, not the modern-day Greek island of Ithaki, as has been suggested for several centuries.
The hypothesis – put forth by businessman Robert Bittlestone, classicist James Diggle and geologist John Underhill in their 2005 book Odysseus Unbound – suggests that a channel once separated Kefalonia from its western peninsula, called Paliki, creating two separate islands. Paliki is Ithaca, as described in the Bronze Age 3,200 years ago, according to the hypothesis.