Classical Crowdsourcing BC

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Classical Crowdsourcing BC

May 25, 2011. By Peter Lloyd

When Alex Trebek says, “He wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey,” your response, of course, should be, “Who is Homer?” Nevertheless classical scholars still argue over the identity and even the existence of the legendary poet. A plausible and timely conjecture even suggests that the epics may have been crowdsourced.

Author Daniel J. Boorstin spelled out this idea, well before crowdsourcing emerged as all the rage, in his book The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination.

The ancient Greeks gave Homer the island of Chios as his birthplace. Since then other cities, including Athens, have claimed the honor. But Boorstin reminds us that the Iliad and Odyssey were created before the appearance of the Greek alphabet. Furthermore, writing in any form disappeared in that part of the world for about 500 years, including the period in which Homer’s works appear. Certainly the epics must have emerged and evolved in oral form. They did not appear as complete written works until the fifth century.

It’s no surprise, then, that some scholars assign authorship to the crowd of bards and storytellers responsible for passing the epic stories through those centuries. In the early 20th century, an American scholar discovered something that strongly supports the idea of a crowdsourced Iliad and Odyssey. Snooping around the mountains of Yugoslavia, he found illiterate bards still singing epic works. He noticed that the story-singers never sang their songs the same way. They improvised freely, while repeating certain phrases familiar to their listeners.

This method allowed them to respond creatively to their audience’s reaction and, at the same time, give listeners plenty of what they expected to hear. Not unlike a jazz group playing standards with freely interpreted solos.

If you find it difficult to imagine these paragons of classical literature evolving from crowds, consider what else crowds have given us: our language, our nation, and ourselves. Just to name a few.

Whether the product of a lone poet or improvising crowd, neither work has faded and both will continue to evolve at the hands of the crowd. In fact, I wonder, could the poet have a namesake in Homer Simpson? Consider the early episode, Homer’s Odyssey.

See also: Crowdsourcing’s Coming of Age? by Aminda, The IdeaConnection Blog

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen R. Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

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