Updated: 23/04/2020
The northern peak is higher, 1,421 m, than the southern, 1,382 m (4,662 and 4,534 ft). Mount Lykaion was sacred to Zeus Lykaios, who was said to have been born and brought up on it, and was the home of Pelasgus and his son Lycaon, who were said to have founded the ritual of Zeus practiced on its summit. This seems to have involved a human sacrifice and a feast in which the man who received the portion of a human victim was changed to a wolf, as Lycaon had been after sacrificing a child. The altar of Zeus consists of a great mound of ashes with a retaining wall. It was said that no shadows fell within the precincts and that any who entered it died within the year. The sanctuary of Zeus played host to athletic games held every four years, the Lykaia.
Archaeologists made a breakthrough grim on top of a mountain in Greece, it could confirm the darkest legends of antiquity.
Excavations this year on Mount Lykaion (known as the birthplace of Zeus) have unearthed a 3,000-year old skeleton of a teenager who was in the ashes of other animals slaughtered over a thousand years.
The writers of antiquity, including Plato described the place as a shrine to make sacrifices in the name of Zeus, a practice that was rarely confirmed by archaeologists.
According to legend, a boy was sacrificed with other animals, their meat is cooked and then consumed. Anyone eating a piece of human flesh became a werewolf for nine years. ,, In some literary writings mentioned rumors of human sacrifices that took place at the altar, but until a few weeks ago was not any human skeleton discovered in the archaeological site, '' said archaeologist David Gilman Romano, a professor at the University of Arizona.
,, Even if the remains are traces of a human sacrifice or not, it is a sacrificial altar is not a place to bury someone, not the cemetery, '' he added. An unusual detail was missing the upper part of the skull, while the body was placed between two lines of stone with a row of stones that covered his pelvis.
Mount, in the Peloponnese region is the only area where Zeus was worshiped, even if the possibility of human sacrifice is removed, the area was practiced massive slavery. From the early sixteenth century BC by Alexander the Great, hundreds of millions of animals were killed in honor of the god.
Zeus was the god of sky and weather which later became the leader of the Greek pantheon. Ceramics found near the skeleton dating from the eleventh century BC.
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Source: Mail Online
