Ancient tablet cracks asteroid mystery
Scientists claim to have solved the mystery of a giant asteroid
impact on Austrian Alps more than 5,000 years back, by deciphering an
ancient clay tablet.

The tablet, discovered 150 years ago in Iraq, contains drawings of
constellations and pictogram-based text known as cuneiform. Using a
computer programme that can reconstruct the night sky thousands of
years ago, the British scientists have cracked the cuneiform code.

The tablet is actually a Sumerian astronomer's notebook recording
events in the sky on June 29, 3123 BC. Its symbols include a note of
the trajectory of a large object travelling across the constellation
of Pisces which, to within one degree, is consistent with an impact
at Kfels, a town in the Austrian Alps.

Ancient Roman Temple Reconstructed

Sara Goudarzi
for National Geographic News

March 14, 2008

Experts have digitally reconstructed one of Rome's earliest major temples, the Temple of Apollo, built by the first Roman emperor, Augustus.

The temple dates to 28 B.C., and its ruins stand adjacent to the emperor's imperial palaces on the city's famous Palatine Hill. Empire, from about 43 B.C. to A.D. 18, saw a flowering of activity in science, politics, technology, and architecture.

The Temple of Apollo was Augustus' first temple project and may have played a role in the emperor's effort to secure his power.

"The new reconstruction closes a substantial gap in our knowledge on the architectural history of the time and … opens up possibilities for reassessing many aspects of Augustan culture," Zink said.

He presented his findings at the January meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Then and Now

Zink conducted summer fieldwork at Palatine Hill from 2005 through 2007. He studied the temple's surviving foundation and marble fragments found scattered around the site.

All that remains there today are massive and seemingly unshaped blocks of Roman concrete, which once formed the nucleus of the temple's podium—its base or platform—Zink explained.
The parts of the foundation that once supported the columns and walls, built in blocks of compacted rock called tuff, have been entirely lost.