A couple months ago I posted about efforts to read the carbonized scrolls excavated from Herculaneum. This is an update on that - progress is being made shockingly fast. First up, a video that gives an easily digestible introduction to the efforts being made.
Groundbreaking efforts by the University of Kentucky team, but there are a lot of teams working toward solving the Vesuvius Challenge Prize. This article highlights some of those efforts but essentially what has happened is that teams started with what was a brick of charcoal and found this:
There very well may be ancient lost texts that can be recovered here.
4 comments:
UK, UK, UK, I'm thinking Britain. Wasn't until I got to the end that I realized it was University of Kentucky.
Makes one wonder if any scroll remnants were ever found in the ruins of the great library of Alexandria. Even if it was burned to the ground, this methodology could work an such artifacts as well.
Absolutely ASTOUNDING work! Fantastic results, too!!
That is super cool Borepatch; thanks for sharing. Lives of Eminent Philosophers lists so many works that never survived; it would be wonderful to see some come to light.
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