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WHERE IS HELEN OF TROY NOW? If there is any figure of the ancient world who sticks in most people´s minds it is that of the legendary (or historical?) Helen of Troy. Not only for her assumed beauty but because of the disasters she brought in her wake for deserting her Greek husband and allowing herself to plead to King Priam of Troy for the hand and heart of his son Paris. The rest, few people can ever forget as the city burned and thousands perished as a result. Even the victors - the Greeks, carry her name forward, like a Goddess of plenty akin to Aphrodite, synonymous with Love, in The Hellenes. They are the Hellenic peoples and their land – the Hellenes. All because of the woman who launched a thousand ships. Helen´s face it would seem, according to the smitten writers,explained it all. Paris, her lover, obviously put duty well behind desire and assuming there was a genuine, irrepressible bond between them, those vivid descriptions could have been no more than a quest for an excuse. But are there scores of perfect duplicates today of our Helen, scattered across the face of the areas from which her genetic profile came from? Without doubt and perfect enough to go for the real thing, according to any basic, scientific opinion. And what is more, even mannerisms and seductive abilities could, in accordance with the discovery of mimetic genes, find themselves in one or another of all these copies. A physical reincarnation, bar the mind possibly, of the original thing is not only possible, but highly probable. Why do Bedouins look like Bedouins or Ecuadorians like Ecuadorians? Why can we often work out who is an Iranian or a Jordanian? Simply because of ancestral family traits. No all of course, depending on who married whom, but enough to see a resemblance across the board. The Basque people, so much talked about, are a case in points and the different strains of amalgamation from the early days of the Cro-Magnon forefathers can be clearly identified. The same with the Finns and the Icelandic people. And why is there such a thing across such a very large body of people, many have asked? The answer lies in boundaries and close circuitry of the genetic pool. In any closed society kept inbred by cultural laws and or political seclusion, a set number of genes will become dominant and in succeeding generations as animal breeders have found out, characteristics chosen will become obvious from across a number of descendants. Nature does it very well on her own. As similar facial and build characteristics find favour in the society, interbreeding between them gradually result in characteristics that can be defined as indicative of the society as a whole. Our Helen would be hidden among the masses of Greeks simply waiting to be found. The final mix after thousands of years would still show the characteristic Greek faces of the early settlers. Many not derived from the same sources as Helen herself came from, but in the mathematics and swirl of gene descent, there is a great likelihood that among those faces and bodies, a limited number would have easily passed in Helen´s days as a carbon copy of herself. Finding her of course is another matter, since genuine descriptions of her very looks can only be found in effigies which in themselves may be just as false as the very nature of her original existence. However, if she did exist and her line continued - not just from her but from her own ancestors if she died childess, that she would be there in the crowd, there is very little genetic doubt. In fact, if she had impressed her own generation to that extent and those who knew her had kept her memory and family descent alive by marrying their children into them, a tradition could have evolved, like royalty, that brought them within range of recorded artistic interpretations of what she might have looked like. From that alone, the search for her alter ego now or whenever in the future, would be just a question of perseverance and observation. Our eyes therefore must rest avidly on all the Greek contestants to Miss World, just in case she comes forth without warning - provided of course that contemporary standards of beauty coincide with classical concepts of this fascinating witch of the ancient saga. ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Michael Mifsud has written since he was 15 and worked at a lobby correspondent in the House of Commons at 16. He published Britain´s first trade journal for drivers and established the quality chauffeuring profession in London through an academy and agency just as the need became crucial. It made him a millionaire. He subsequently went into other pioneering and successful ventures and travelled at leisure with the British Royals as a camp follower for over 10 years. He published a book Al Andalus - a Trail of Discoveries as the first and very graphic appraisal of the people who have been called the last anarchists of Europe - the irrepressible and fun loving Andalucians. As a member of the only legitimate Order of Knights Templar in the world today, he had access to documents and researched beyond anything ever delved into - the symbols and meaning behind their existence.The final book will be published before the Spring of 2018.
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HELEN OF TROY, GREECE, TROY, PRIAM, MISS WORLD, MISS GREECE, BEAUTY CONTESTS, PARIS, HECTOR, ULYSSES, GREEK LEGENDS, MYTHOLOGY,
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