Who Were the Odyssey’s Cimmerians?

[00:00:00]Hi everyone. Who were the Chamarans in the Odyssey? Well, this is one of the most fascinating questions in the Odyssey, I think, because the Chamarans are a known historical nation and yet they appear in the Odyssey in a setting which seems to completely contradict everything that we know about them. So, historically, the Camarans are known to have been a a fierce nation of nomads like the Cyians and closely related to them. and they swept down from north of the Black Sea through Anatolia and caused massive devastation there. They managed to successfully bring down the kingdom of Friia and almost did the same with the kingdom of Lydia. And that was all taking place more or less in Homer's time. Yet in the Odyssey, we find a completely different description of them. We find a description of them in the context of the oracle of the dead that Adysius goes to after spending some time at the island of Cersei. So in the Odyssey there's a description of how Adus went from the island of Cersei to go to the river Aaron where there was the Oracle of the dead. The description is as follows. after describing how he set sail from the island of Cersei to go to the nearby mainland. Regarding his ship, he says, "She reached deep flowing oceans boundary. The kingdom and the city of Camaran men are there covered in mist and cloud, and the shining sun never looks down on them with his rays.

[00:01:24]Neither when he goes to starry heaven, nor when he heads back from heaven to the earth. But pericious night spreads over wretched mortals." As you can see, that's quite a different description of the Camarans. It associates them with a land beyond the ocean as in beyond oceans's current and it also refers to them in the context of a land surrounded by mist and darkness. And of course this all takes place to the west of Greece rather than the east of Greece. The Camarans historically were active in Anatolia and they came from just north of the Black Sea coming down from the eastern side of it. So they were thoroughly to the east of Greece. And yet here in this narrative, this part of the narrative of the Odyssey is set firmly to the west, not the east of Greece. So how can we have the Camarans appearing in this setting and they are a historical nation? So it's not like this this is just a mythological people who you could place anywhere. This is a historical nation. The Camarans, how could they be placed in such a different setting to where they historically were in the time of Homer? And obviously he would have known about them. I mean, Homer would have not necessarily had any direct contact with them, but he certainly would have known of them because they were well, they were big news in Anatolia around the time that Homer was living. So, it's inconceivable that he wouldn't have known who they were. And yet, we have this description which doesn't seem to match anything that we actually know about them historically. Depending on which specific reconstruction of the route in the Odyssey you follow, these Camarans would be placed either in Italy or potentially as far west as Spain. So in either case, they are far far outside the bounds of the historical area of activity of the Camarans. So how can we make sense of this? Well, in my opinion, there's a very simple and very satisfying explanation. To me, the key to this is just understanding where the island of Cersei really was and where the river Aaron was. As I've explained in previous videos, the island of Cersei can be identified, in my opinion, following Tim Sever's uh route with the island of Paxos. Now, Paxos is indeed just next to a real historical river Aaron. And that river Aaron did historically have an oracle of the dead.

[00:03:47]So to me that seems like a very logical identification of the island of Cersei with the river Acaron next to it. And when we go from there towards Ithaca following the obvious logical route that Adysius would have taken while trying to get home because that's the point of the Odyssey then we do come past a sequence of locations which match remarkably well with the sequence of locations that Adius encounters on his journey from Cersei's island all the way over to Ithaca. So to me, the evidence for this particular sequence of locations in the Odyssey, this match of locations, is about as concrete as anyone could reasonably expect. Far more concrete than any of the other suggested routes, which identify these locations with places far over to the west and not in any coherent logical order. Now that of course would mean that the description that I read in the Odyssey is a description of the journey from Paxos over to the coast of Greece where the river Acaron is. It's not a long journey but there is a key issue. In the Odyssey we see that it says she reached deep flowing oceans boundary. That would mean logically that if if these locations are right, if Paxus was the island of Cersei and they really did go to the river Aaron on the Greek mainland, that would mean that ocean is in that particular gap. Well, how does that make any sense?

[00:05:14]That's not the ocean, is it? Well, in fact, I believe that it is not obviously the ocean as we understand it, but the Greeks didn't mean that when they referred to the ocean or Oceanianis.

[00:05:26]That was the world encircling river. And when I say river, that doesn't necessarily mean river in the way that we understand it. Because in the narrative in the Odyssey, it does actually confirm that it's connected to the sea, the Mediterranean Sea. It's not like an inland river or anything like that. They call it a river just because of the fact that it had a current, but it was part of or or connected to the sea in the Mediterranean. But we can go beyond that because there's actually a detail in the Odyssey later on in the Odyssey which basically confirms that it that it's the water just next to Greece itself. Later on in the Odyssey there's a description of a journey to the afterlife. Now the journey starts off in Ithaca. That's where the journey starts from. It starts from Ithaca and it goes off towards the west because that's where the Greeks believe the afterlife was. Now with that in mind, going from Ithaca to the west, the description is as follows. They went past the streams of ocean and the white rock, which could also be rendered Learda or some translations I've seen render this Learda rock. Now Learda rock is Cape Learda. It's the southernmost tip of Learda, which is a prominent cape in that region. Whether you translate this as the Learda rock or just Learda, the point is they they go past Lefkarta on this journey, which makes sense because it's a journey from Ithaca to the west.

[00:06:49]And so heading off from the northern part of Ithaca, you would go past Cape Learda. But the point is that here in this narrative, it associates that area immediately after leaving Ithaca with the current of ocean or Oceananis, the encircling river. In fact, it actually refers to that before it mentions Lefkarta. So that would suggest that the the current of ocean actually refers to the water immediately next to Greece and then beyond that you have the the normal sea, the Mediterranean Sea. And interestingly, when we look at a map of the the surface currents of the waters around Greece, we do in fact find that the water flows all around Greece almost like a river. There's one consistent current that flows all around it. So we can understand why the Greeks especially in an early era before they had extensive knowledge of the world around them they could easily have this concept of this world encircling river but in reference to the current of the sea that that flowed around their land and then beyond that you have the normal sea which is why as I said the Odyssey does show that the ocean's current is a stream which actually is connected directly to the sea itself. It's not something in land that flows into the sea. It's just a body of water that's immediately that immediately adjoins the sea. So that connects very nicely with this concept here that we see in Greek mythology in the Odyssey in this reference to the stream of ocean or ocean's current being just next to Ithaca. In fact, before you even get to Lefkarda. Now with that in mind, that makes a lot of sense of what we see in this narrative about the journey from the island of Cersei to the Aaron River.

[00:08:38]They pass the stream of ocean because that stream or that current refers to the water that flows just next to Greece itself. So they do in fact sail through that. They sail through ocean as it were, which doesn't mean the Atlantic Ocean. It means the flow of water that goes right past Greece itself. So that makes sense. But yet that still doesn't explain the Camarans. It just explains how this journey makes sense in terms of the real world geography. But it still doesn't explain what's up with the reference to the Camarans there on that part of Greece. So this would mean that the Camarans were the people living there just next to the Aaron River on the western coast of Greece. Now obviously we know historically that the Chamarans didn't live there. How can we explain that? Well, again as I said this has a very simple explanation. The fact is in that area of Greece there was an ancient settlement called Chimerium. To me it seems like the easiest thing in the world that the reference to the Chimearans in the Odyssey in this area is just a garbled corrupted reference to the settlement of Chimerian. And you may be thinking, well, how does this match the the concept of them living in perpetual darkness? Remember the description is that it's covered in mist and cloud and the shining sun never looks down on them with his rays, neither when he goes to starry heaven nor when he heads back from heaven to the earth. So what could explain that?

[00:10:10]Well, this too has a very simple explanation. This area is notoriously stormy. And that's not just me saying that. The very name Chimerian actually refers to the idea of wintry storms.

[00:10:23]That's what the very name means. So we know for a fact through this name that this area was recognized as being a particularly stormy area. So this description of them living in perpetual darkness and that area being covered in cloud and mist and the sun not shining on it, that's all just an exaggerated description of what it really is like there. It's nothing more than that. So for me, this is a very satisfying explanation. The area around Paxos and and the Akaron River. This matches the location described in the Odyssey. And the reference to the ocean is just a reference to the the flow of water that goes past Greece itself. And the reference to the Chimearans is just a reference to the city of Chimerian in that area. And this concept of them being covered in perpetual darkness is just an exaggerated description uh based on the fact that it was a notoriously stormy area.