Geneticists Estimate Publication Date of The Iliad

Scientists who decode the genetic history of humans by tracking how genes mutate have applied the same technique to one of the Western world's most ancient and celebrated texts to uncover the date it was first written.The text is Homer's "Iliad," and Homer -- if there was such a person -- probably wrote it in 762 B.C., give or take 50 years, the researchers found. The "Iliad" tells the story of the Trojan War -- if there was such a war -- with Greeks battling Trojans.The researchers accept the received orthodoxy that a war happened and someone named Homer wrote about it, said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Reading in England. His collaborators include Eric Altschuler, a geneticist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, in Newark, and Andreea S. Calude, a linguist also at Reading and the Sante Fe Institute in New Mexico. They worked from the standard text of the epic poem.

Offerings Discovered at Base of Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun

One of Mexico’s largest and most famous pre-Columbian structures, the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan has yet to reveal its many secrets. Archaeologists have unearthed offerings inside a tunnel under the pyramid that likely predate its construction—and may even shed light on its significance.A trove of ceremonial offerings has been discovered at the base of Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun, archaeologists from Mexico’s National Anthropology and History Institute (INAH) announced yesterday. The items, which include a green stone mask, pieces of pottery and animal bones, might have been part of a consecration ceremony held when workers broke ground on the massive structure more than 1,900 years ago, they said.Founded by an as-yet-unidentified group around 100 B.C., the ruined city of Teotihuacan features some of the largest pyramids built in the pre-Columbian Americas, along with temples, palaces, apartment-style complexes and remarkably preserved murals. At its height the settlement may have been home to some 200,000 people. By the time the Aztecs discovered the once-thriving hub around 1300, however, it had been abandoned for centuries, perhaps as a result of famine, drought or warfare.