In 2016, archaeologists digging at the Phaleron cemetery on the coast near Athens uncovered one of the most unsettling finds in Greek archaeology, a mass grave holding nearly 80 adult men, many still shackled at the wrists with iron restraints. The men, known as the Esplanada group, had been laid out in orderly rows and appeared to have died violently, sparking a decade of debate over who they were. Some researchers argued they were foreign fighters or mercenaries brought into Attica during a period of political turmoil, while others suspected they were victims of an early Athenian state exercising new powers of collective punishment. A fresh scientific study has now reexamined their remains using chemical analysis of tooth enamel, and the results overturn the outsider theory entirely, showing that the shackled men were almost certainly locals who grew up in the very region where they were later executed and buried.
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