According to a paper recently published by an archaeologist in the U.K. the Panathenaic Games, one of the most important festivals in ancient Greece, was timed to begin just when the constellation Draco appeared in the evening sky. Unreported Heritage News has the story.
One of the things I love most about archaeology is the incredible diversity of skills used: physics, geology, architecture, animal butchering, and just about anything else. In this case, Dr. Boutsikas needed a knowledge of both astronomy and mythology to figure out not just what the citizen of Athens were seeing in the night sky, but why it was important to them.
