Also, have you seen the Dwayne Johnson 'Hercules?' It might be less offensive than Troy (I'm guessing, I've never seen Troy but you're not making me too enthused to even consider watching it). But it was a so-so film, held back a bit by his acting (though I'm very glad he did not have a fake British accent). He's a favorite of mine (I was a fan of his dad as a child) but Hercules was not a great role for him.
Arp, I missed the Dawyne Johnson Herrcules. I'll check that out.
It's a fascinating question how the Greeks thought of the Trojans and who they would have been ethnically. The site of the Bronze Age city of Wilusa (Ilium = Troy) is in a non-Greek area mostly inhabited by non-Greek speakers, but it's also so close to Greece that it absolutely traded with Greek cities and probably had some kind of Greek population. Intriguingly, tne letter from a king in the area wrote to a guy named Alexander (another name for Paris in the Iliad) in Troy who apparently was in power.
Homer, for his part, gives the Trojans Greek names (e.g. Hector's son is named Astyanax, "King of the City" in Greek) and clearly in the Iliad they both speak Greek. There's no language barrier.
A couple centuries later, after the Greek run-in with the Persians, storytellers, especially in Athens, start to emphasize the foreign character of Trojans and all people dwelling east of Greece. So the Greeks develop a kind of prejudice against Trojans that Homer did not have.
But I personally would say that both the Greeks and Trojans would be considered people of color by northern Europeans, since they would have been darker-skinned and darker-haired.
The LBA eastern Mediterranean was a common cultural area. This applies all the more to Greece proper and western Asia Minor, especially the Luwian states, where a high degree of ethnic overlap had accumulated after several millennia of constant population migration.
You could argue (as the author does) that all people in the region were darker skinned than northern Europeans. But you cannot contrast them with "white" Greeks. That´s absurd.
Trojans were BIPOC?
Also, have you seen the Dwayne Johnson 'Hercules?' It might be less offensive than Troy (I'm guessing, I've never seen Troy but you're not making me too enthused to even consider watching it). But it was a so-so film, held back a bit by his acting (though I'm very glad he did not have a fake British accent). He's a favorite of mine (I was a fan of his dad as a child) but Hercules was not a great role for him.
(and yes, it should have been 'Heracles')
Arp, I missed the Dawyne Johnson Herrcules. I'll check that out.
It's a fascinating question how the Greeks thought of the Trojans and who they would have been ethnically. The site of the Bronze Age city of Wilusa (Ilium = Troy) is in a non-Greek area mostly inhabited by non-Greek speakers, but it's also so close to Greece that it absolutely traded with Greek cities and probably had some kind of Greek population. Intriguingly, tne letter from a king in the area wrote to a guy named Alexander (another name for Paris in the Iliad) in Troy who apparently was in power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaksandu
Homer, for his part, gives the Trojans Greek names (e.g. Hector's son is named Astyanax, "King of the City" in Greek) and clearly in the Iliad they both speak Greek. There's no language barrier.
A couple centuries later, after the Greek run-in with the Persians, storytellers, especially in Athens, start to emphasize the foreign character of Trojans and all people dwelling east of Greece. So the Greeks develop a kind of prejudice against Trojans that Homer did not have.
But I personally would say that both the Greeks and Trojans would be considered people of color by northern Europeans, since they would have been darker-skinned and darker-haired.
"Trojans were BIPOC?"
No, they were not.
The LBA eastern Mediterranean was a common cultural area. This applies all the more to Greece proper and western Asia Minor, especially the Luwian states, where a high degree of ethnic overlap had accumulated after several millennia of constant population migration.
You could argue (as the author does) that all people in the region were darker skinned than northern Europeans. But you cannot contrast them with "white" Greeks. That´s absurd.
Correct. Ethnically, Greeks and Anatolians of the era of the Iliad are very similar.