Imagine trying to read a 2000-year old scroll from an ancient civilization. Now imagine that scroll is rolled up, and in a delicate, charred, carbonized form, having been engulfed by the fiery eruption of a volcano. The task would seem virtually impossible, and the information in the scroll lost forever. Right?|
As it turns out, new developments are changing that. Modern scanning techniques and machine learning tools have made it possible to read fragments of the heavily-damaged Herculaneum scrolls. Hopes are now that more of the ancient writings will be salvaged, giving us a new insight into the ancient past.
Library Fire
The Herculaneum scrolls stand as a haunting reminder of the catastrophic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE, which entombed them. For centuries, these scrolls have been deemed “unreadable” due to the damage sustained from the eruption, leaving the wisdom contained within their tightly wound rolls inaccessible to the modern world. The scrolls were part of a library that is the only one to have survived from ancient times.
The bundles of scrolls were quickly carbonized due to the intense heat of volcanic matter from the eruption. Turned into delicate, charred blocks, they were then effectively preserved in this damaged state by the layers of rock that formed around them. They sat silently in their carbonized state, waiting for someone to unlock their secrets, until being discovered in 1752. A variety of methods were attempted over the years to unroll the scrolls and recover the information within. Whether mechanical, chemical, or otherwise, these methods often damaged or destroyed the scrolls entirely.
More recently, attempts have been made to decipher the remaining scrolls via a safer, non-contact method. Bren ..
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