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Nature Geoscience 2, 455–458 (1 July 2009) | doi:10.1038/ngeo562

Relocating Odysseus' homeland

John R. Underhill

Until the late nineteenth century, it was widely believed that the people and places described in Homer's epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey were entirely fictional, with no historical or geographical basis. However, when Heinrich Schliemann rediscovered Mycenae and Troy in the 1870s, and Sir Arthur Evans subsequently unearthed Knossos, opinions had to be revised.