Webinars

Fiction: Homer’s Iliad depicts the narrative of an epic saga of a war fought between the Achaeans (Greece) and the Trojans (who were not Turks, but lived in what is now Turkey) during the late Bronze Age circa 1250 BC.  The catalyst for the war is the abduction – or some say voluntary elope – of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world and wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, by Paris, prince of Troy and son of King Priam, on a trade envoy to Sparta.  Menelaus urges his brother King Agamemnon of Mycenae and high king of the Achaeans, to enforce a pact all the suitors of Helen swore to protect her marriage to Menelaus.  Agamemnon issues the ‘Call to Arms” and, after sacrificing his own daughter Iphigenia for fair winds, a thousand Greek ships set sail for the shores of Ilium/Troy. There ensues a war that lasts for ten years, as the walls of Ilium were built by Poseidon and Apollo and are impenetrable. Troy is breached and burnt to the ground, the king and princes killed, the women raped, and the queen enslaved and so ends the war… but not the legend.

Facts: In 1870 self-styled archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann began digging at a site in Turkey called Hisarlik. Schliemann had his lifelong dream fulfilled when he uncovered the citadel of Troy and a golden treasure he believed belonged to King Priam. He dug a trench which revealed nine layers of human occupation spanning from 2700 BC to 500 AD Roman time, but in his eager enthusiasm he amateurishly destroyed many artifacts and evidence.  Archaeologists generally attribute level VI to Homer’s Troy. Some of the layers show destruction by fire – such as the first circa 2700 BC, and some by earth quake, some even of a long siege, but can any of these concretely prove that the Trojan War, actually happened?

Petros Koutoupis, independent historical researcher, conducts an investigation whether we can safely say if the Trojan war was indeed fact—or fiction.

Petros Koutoupis is an author and an independent historical researcher, focusing predominantly on the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age periods of the Eastern Mediterranean and general Near East. Fluent in modern Greek, Petros has additional knowledge in languages that include ancient & Biblical Greek, Biblical Hebrew, and a good fundamental understanding of Aramaic, Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Akkadian. He has always relied on the original sources for interpreting some of our most misunderstood historical and mythological texts.  His most recent book is: Biblical Origins: An Adopted Legacy.

www.petroskoutoupis.com

You can also follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pkoutoupis

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Where do we come from? What are the origins of modern civilization? Can we credit ancient gods?

Do the world's pyramids, the Nazca Lines, Easter Island statues, and other enigmatic structures, archaeological wonders, and geographic anomalies contain evidence of ancient deities?

Sifting through the historical and archaeological evidence, Jim Willis probes the myths, stories, history, and facts of ancient civilizations, lost technologies, past catastrophes, archetypal astronauts, and bygone religions to tease out the truth of our distant past and modern existence. In his thought-provoking second Ancient Origins webinar, Jim will take an in-depth look at the facts, fictions, and controversies of our ancestors, our origins, who we are as a people—and who might have come before us. He will tackle nagging stories of ancient gods, ancestors, alien visitors, theories and potential explanations.

Existential questions with insightful and hopeful answers are in the mix as we’re joined by Ancient Origins contributor and author Jim Willis for an exploration into an ancient conspiracy of silence.

Having earned his master's degree in theology from Andover Newton Theological School, Jim Willis is the author of eleven books on religion and spirituality. He has been an ordained minister for over forty years while working part-time as a carpenter, hosting own drive-time radio show, as well as being an arts council director and adjunct college professor in the fields of World Religions and Instrumental Music. His current residence in the woods of South Carolina inspired his books Supernatural Gods: Spiritual Mysteries, Psychic Experiences, and Scientific Truths, and Jim digs deep into this essential topic with Ancient Gods: Lost Histories, Hidden Truths and the Conspiracy of Silence.

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The busts of the dead historians were a clue. But would the path to solving the mystery change history?

Rennes-le-Château is a small hilltop village in Languedoc in southern France that become famous internationally after the 1982 worldwide bestseller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. A 19th-century priest, Father Bérenger Saunière, allegedly followed landscape alignments measured between village churches leading him to a valuable sacred treasure and while this story has always had its skeptics, when Dan Brown retold it in his 2003 bestseller The Da Vinci Code, Rennes-le-Château saw over 100,000 mystery seeking tourists in the first year.

This tale of mystery and intrigue reflects many of the clues and components that have made Rennes-le-Château famous. It revolves around a French hilltop village church that is located amidst mysterious landscape alignments. What is more, an inner circle of famous French historical figures all shared a secret about the village—a secret of great and ancient astronomical significance.

Join historian Ashley Cowie as he examines a set of similar landscape alignments around the French village of Alaise, including one rare alignment of eight village churches. What does this incredible alignment point towards? Why are the busts of two prominent Frenchmen located upon the alignment? And, is the alignment a monument to one of the most seminal battles in European history? All of these questions and many more will be answered in this exclusive Ancient Origins Premium webinar.

Ashley Cowie is a Scottish historian, author, and filmmaker exploring and investigating  myths and legends, ancient cultures and kingdoms, science and psychology, artifacts, iconography, and architecture.

Visit AshleyCowie.com and find out more in his in-depth books, A Twist in Time, Secret Viking Sea Chart, and others.

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The reign of the Great Goddess was stable enough to endure for thousands of years - but then something went wrong…

In the 19th century, when Swiss scientist Johann Jakob Bachofen showed that a matrifocal age once existed in Europe where the mother, not the father, was as the head of the family or household, this notion was vehemently resisted. Today, “feminine” and “feminism”, with their many variations, has become somewhat of a loaded word. This distaste of femininity started long before the rise of the religions known to us today. In fact, it started with the rebellion against the Great Goddess.

The myths and attributes of the Great Goddess are remarkably similar all over the world. Her nature all-encompassing, she can be empowering and terrifying for men and women alike. The reign of the Great Goddess was stable enough to endure for thousands of years - but then something went wrong. In the new myths, Tiamat, the Great Mother of the ancient Mesopotamians who had been the “mother of all beings” and hence a primary source of creation, came to symbolize chaos. Marduk then dismembered Tiamat to then rebuild and reorder the cosmos out of the pieces of her lifeless body. However, Tiamat was not the one who was supposed to be sacrificed.

The oldest discernible signs of rebellion against the Goddess culture have been found in Anatolia and Mesopotamia. The tradition had been that the semi-divine king, high priest, and consort of the goddess, was supposed to be sacrificed, but by the time the Gilgamesh epic was written down, around 2800 BC, the situation had changed drastically and, thousands of years later, no one recognized the Great Goddess anymore.

What happened to the Great Goddess? How did she become replaced by goddesses such as Demeter and scary ladies such as Medusa?

We’re joined by special Ancient Origins Premium contributor and author of Time Maps: Matriarchy and the Goddess Culture, Martini Fisher who investigates the fate of the Great Goddess in history.

 Martini Fisher is a Mythographer and Author.

Her first published work is “Wayang: Stories of the Shadow Puppets,” a look at the ancient stories of Javanese creation myths from a traditional performing arts standpoint. With Mathematician Dr. R.K Fisher, Martini wrote another series of books, “Time Maps.” Combining both their expertise, they revisit world history from the beginning, reviewing and questioning facts with mathematical precision and historical curiosity.

Martini continues to gather myths and legends around the globe to present them in a relevant and approachable way for modern audiences.

See Martini’s work at MartiniFisher.com and her books can be found on Amazon.  

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