- The date of the first ever marathon - thought to have
been run 2500 years ago by a single sprinter who died after reaching the
finish line - has been identified by a team of astronomical sleuths.
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- Historians originally misinterpreted the date of the
run, says a team from Texas State University in San Marcos. The researchers
believe their new analysis may explain the runner's untimely death.
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- The discovery also comes a month before modern athletes
retrace the celebrated run from the city of Marathon to Athens during 2004
Olympic games in Greece.
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- According to Greek legend, the first run saw a lone Athenian
race to Athens, 42 kilometres away, to warn of an imminent attack by Persian
soldiers.
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- Previously, historians thought the run took place on
12 September, based references to the Moon in ancient texts. They determined
the date using the Athenian calendar, which begins on the first New Moon
after the summer solstice.
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- But Donald Olson and Russell Doescher of the physics
department and Marilynn Olson of the English department recomputed the
date using the Spartans' own calendar, which starts on the first New Moon
after the autumn equinox, they arrived at a date of 12 August.
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- Heat stroke
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- If that is so, the runner was subjected to temperatures
as high as 39 degrees Celsius - not the 28 degrees C common in September.
Heat stroke is likely to have killed him, the team concludes.
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- "It seems plausible that someone running for all
he's got, trying to save his fellow citizens, could keel over and die,"
Doescher told New Scientist. The team describe their investigation in the
September 2004 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine.
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- The story of the celebrated run begins in 490 BC, when
the king of Persia sent a fleet of 25,000 soldiers to punish the Athenians
for revolting. The troops landed in the coastal town of Marathon, 42 kilometres
from Athens, where they were met by 10,000 armed Athenians.
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- The outnumbered Athenians dispatched a professional runner
named Pheidippides to Sparta to ask for help in the coming battle. He made
the 240-km trip in one day but arrived only to discover that a religious
festival prevented the Spartans from fighting until the Full Moon six days
later.
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- 'Patently improbably'
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- The Athenians battled the Persians in Marathon alone
- and won. But some of Persian soldiers set sail for Athens, so the Athenians
hurriedly sent a runner - by some accounts Pheidippides again - back to
Athens to warn of the attack. The messenger ran the 42 kilometres without
stopping. But just after he arrived with the news, he died.
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- That has previously made some professional runners suspicious.
The "story is so patently improbable," writes Jim Fixx in a 1978
book on running. "Ask yourself: How likely is it, given the fact that
thousands of modern marathon runners compete every weekend without mishap,
that a trained runner would not have just collapsed but died."
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- But the new date, provided by the Texas team, may provide
a plausible explanation.
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- Modern athletes will retrace the famous event from Marathon
at the end of summer 2004's Olympic games in Greece. To avoid the same
fate as the original marathoner, the participants will set out at 6 pm
and run under the cool light of a Full Moon.
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