Bournarbashi and the topography of Troy. In 1822 Charles Maclaren suggested that Hisarlik was the site of Homeric Troy, but for the next 50 years his suggestion received little attention from Classical scholars, most of whom regarded the Trojan legend as a mere fictional creation based on myth, not history. Those who believed in the existence of a real Troy thought it to be at Bournarbashi, a short distance south of Hisarlik. It took Frank Calvert, a scholarly amateur archaeologist, until 1860 to begin exploratory work on Hisarlik. It was he who persuaded the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann to work at Hisarlik, though Schliemann soon took full credit for adopting Maclaren's identification and demonstrating to the world that it was correct.