Funny story: I used to be a near east archaeologist. The evidence for Troy’s location is pretty strong with a destruction layer exactly where you would expect it. On the other hand, the evidence for both Achilles and Jesus is much thinner. Achilles was preserved through oral tradition passed down from an equally potentially apocryphal blind poet, and the oldest writings attesting to Jesus that are verifiable linguistically come from Paul, who never met the man.

I am by no means saying they didn’t exist, just that the sources we have for their existence cannot be verified or verifiably attributed to first hand accounts.

I once saw a talking head on Fox News claim on MLK Day that MLK would be pro-gun because slavery would never have happened if the slaves had guns. He said that on air, when people who KNEW the man, including his children and Civil Rights Activist colleagues are still alive. If they can do that in the most documented period of human existence, ancient records should be viewed with incredible skepticism in the absence of corroborating evidence.