Murders and a coup in ancient Greece – how forensics is digging the dirt

More than 2,500 years ago, an Athenian nobleman named Cylon, the first recorded Olympic champion, tried to take over the city of Athens and install himself as sole ruler.

Thucydides and Herodotus, Athenian and Greek historians who wrote about the coup bid, said Cylon enticed an army of followers to lay siege to the Acropolis in Athens. They were defeated but Cylon escaped.

Now archaeologists in the Greek capital believe they have found some of the remains of his army in a mass grave at a cemetery in Phaleron, 6 kilometres south of Athens.

The discovery of the 80 male skeletons is unequalled in Greece, site project director Stella Chrysoulaki said.

The men, young and wellfed, were found lying in the unmarked grave in three rows, some on their backs while others were tossed facedown .

All had their hands in iron chains and at least 52 had their hands tied above their heads.

They died from blows to the head, victims of a “political execution” that dates between 675 and 650BC, Ms Chrysoulaki said.

At the time, Athens was being formed and the city was moving towards democracy, said Eleanna Prevedorou, a bioarchaeological researcher on the project.

And it was happening “against a backdrop of political turmoil, tensions between tyrants, aristocrats and the working class”.

Bioarchaeological scientists use forensic research, such as DNA profiling, to investigate how humans lived and died by examining skeletons.

“We are going to use, roughly speaking, the methods made famous by television series on forensics crime science,” said Panagiotis Karkanas, laboratory director and geoarchaeologist at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.

Whatever clues they gather will give them an idea of how old the men were, whether they were related, where they came from, how healthy they were, and where they stood on the socio-economic ladder of the times.

But this murder cold case will probably not be solved for five to seven years.

Researchers say the cemetery measures about 4,000 square metres, and all of its 1,500 skeletons will eventually be taken to the laboratory’s facilities for in-depth study.