Eberhard Zangger - Life and Work

Life and Work

Eberhard Zangger studied geology and paleontology at the University of Kiel and completed a PhD program at Stanford University between 1984 and 1988. After this he was a senior research associate in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge (1988–91). In June 1991 he founded the consultant office Geoarcheology International in Zurich, Switzerland, from where he participated in about six archaeological projects in the eastern Mediterranean each year until 1999.

Zangger became specialized in geoarchaeology in 1982. His early research work and discoveries included the coastal situation of Dimini Magoula in Neolithic Central Greece, the extent of Lake Lerna in the Argive Plain, the age and function of the Mycenaean river diversion and extent of the lower town of Tiryns, the insular character of Asine, the artificial harbor of Nestor at Pylos, including its clean water flushing mechanism, and a human-made dam in Minoan Monastiraki in central Crete.

Zangger gained international recognition in 1992 with his interpretation of Plato’s Atlantis as Troy. According to Zangger, Plato used an Egyptian version of the story about Troy for his legendary report on Atlantis. Only towards the end of his writing did Plato realize that both stories spoke of the same city. Zangger based his argument on comparisons between Mycenaean culture and Plato’s account of the Greek civilization facing Atlantis, as well as parallels between the recollections of the Trojan War and the war between Greece and Atlantis. In 1992 Zangger arrived at the conclusion that Troy must have been much bigger than the archeological scholarship had presumed, and that the city must have had artificial harbors inside the modern floodplain.

In 1994, another book followed suit. This time, Zangger interpreted the legend of the Trojan War to be the memory of a momentous war which led to the collapse of many countries around the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BC. In contrast to the archaeological scholarship of the time, Zangger attributed greater importance to the states in Western Anatolia that are known from Hittite documents, including the Luwian kingdoms Arzawa, Mira, Wilusa, Lukka and Seha River Land. In Zangger’s view, if these petty kingdoms had stood united, they would have matched the economic and military importance of Mycenaean Greece or Minoan Crete.

In collaboration with the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Braunschweig, Zangger prepared a helicopter-based geophysical exploration of the plain of Troy to locate settlement layers and artificial port basins using ground-penetrating techniques. The Turkish Ministry did not grant permission to conduct this project; and, as a consequence, Zangger withdrew from science with a lecture before the Heidelberg Academy of Science.

Even though Zangger’s theories were rejected by the majority of scientists, his theses had an impact: the discussion can be considered as a prologue to the Troy debate that raged among German archaeologists in 2001/02. In particular, the prehistorian Manfred Korfmann directly and indirectly seized on several of Zangger’s ideas, especially the notion that Bronze Age Troy was much larger than previously thought and a center of commercial trade. The Luwian culture in western Asia Minor has also seen a surge in research interest in recent years.

In the fall of 1999, Zangger became a business consultant specializing in corporate communications and public relations. In 2002 he founded science communication GmbH, a consultancy firm for corporate communications.