History
A retired businessman dug up Homer's 'myth' and found a real city
Most 19th-century scholars treated Troy as pure legend from Homer's Iliad. Heinrich Schliemann, a wealthy amateur archaeologist, used clues from the text to identify Hisarlik in modern Turkey and began excavating in 1871. He uncovered a genuine ancient city with multiple destruction layers, though his crude digging methods also destroyed evidence later scholars badly needed.