6 ms·

Ancient Scrolls Blackened by Vesuvius Are Readable at Last

105 points by Vigier 11y ago

rwl4 11y ago
This is wonderful to read. I really sincerely hope this technology can open up hundreds of more scrolls to be read. It grieves me to think of how much knowledge has been lost due to scribes not getting around to copying texts.
bobbles 11y ago
Wow this is crazy, they're reading the rolled scrolls, compensating for the layers, curvature, etc. (not to mention the.. you know.. volcano.. damage)
gloriousduke 11y ago
If existence is deterministic in a Laplaceanly demonic way, we should be able to unravel etiology more and more effectively as our technology improves. Perhaps this is a harbinger of the possibilities of the forensics of ontology.
- robin_reala 11y ago
  …and for laypeople?
  - runj__ 11y ago
    Basically that technology might allow us to extrapolate way more information than we are able to today. Maybe ALL information? Based on where every atom (in a limited space) is placed we might be able to guess where they were a picosecond ago, what about a second ago? What about a year ago? The Total Perspective Vortex sort of work by that mechanic.
    - ajuc 11y ago
      Even if rules are fully deterministic it doesn't mean you can "extrapolate back". Update function would need to be reversible for that to always work (you shouldn't be able to get the same state starting from different states). And I think it's not the case, at least localy (heat one corner of a metal plate slightly, wait till it equalizes, guess which one it was).
      - mattlutze 11y ago
        Imagine a computer powerful enough to look at a kind-of closed system like the Earth, and walk backwards through a simulation that allows you to see what "actually" happened, listen to conversations, all of that. Who would look out for the poor historians? It would make for a sweet game show actually, have a panel of historians make their best predictions on what really happened at an event, then "roll the footage!"
  - gjm11 11y ago
    Laplaceanly demonic: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon. Laplace's demon was a hypothetical being able to see the entire present state of the universe and extrapolate the future from it. (Laplace himself never called it a "demon".) etiology: causation; how things got how they are. harbinger: forerunner; advance warning. (The etymology is interesting. Originally a harbinger was someone who provides accommodation -- compare the French word "auberge". Then it came to mean someone sent ahead by, e.g., an army to prepare lodgings so that the troops would have somewhere to sleep when they arrived. And then, metaphorically, it came to mean any sort of forerunner. forensics: = forensic science, meaning the application of science to answering the sorts of questions that come up in criminal trials. (Same origin as "forum"; in ancient Rome trials took place in the public square.) I think gloriousduke really just means something like "scientific investigation into past events" here. ontology: actually means the study of what exists. (I.e., answering questions like "what kinds of things exist?".) I suspect gloriousduke meant something else, perhaps something as mundane as "the study of actual things that exist". In any case, his second sentence doesn't really add anything much to the first. So I would translate gloriousduke's comment as follows. "If the universe is deterministic, like a big mechanical machine, then with better and better technology we will be able to do better and better at deciphering the past from its present remains: this thing with the scrolls is just the beginning. Also, I know some long words." (Note that actually determinism isn't quite the issue. What matters is what you might call "backward determinism", where you extrapolate the future from the past. But it looks as if the laws of nature are kinda reversible, so the two are closely related.)
    - mcherm 11y ago
      Thank you for giving us this splendid translation and analysis! The original comment was not worthy of the attention you lavished on it.
  - verytrivial 11y ago
    "Let's aim this tech at other junk. It looks promising for messes like this."
- ams6110 11y ago
  "Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able."
userbinator 11y ago
Data recovery from nearly 2000-year-old damaged media. I wonder if we'd be as successful with trashed storage devices today, 2000 years from now.
- ajuc 11y ago
  I doubt it. Text on paper is much more redundant medium, and has much smaller information density.
  - kristopolous 11y ago
    I've had this weird theory that generally, the more sophisticated the record keeping technology, the less the shelf-life. If I was to do this writing in clay tablets for instance versus paper versus the fragile digital tech we have now. If this is true, then the corollary is that given say, some ancient civilization of say 3,500 years ago - perhaps the more sophisticated ones used record keeping technology that would become total dust a mere 2,000 year ago - while the less sophisticated ones have records which have survived.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      I love reading such old documents specially in what concerns the available technology and ways of society back then. Regarding your statement, maybe Atlantis was such a case. :)
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Hard disks are simple enough that recovery might be practical. Ditto for optical media, assuming the materials are intact. SSDs on the other hand won't last 6 months without power, let alone 2000 years.
  - userbinator 11y ago
    SSDs on the other hand won't last 6 months without power, let alone 2000 years. Source on that? Has flash memory really gotten that bad in terms of data retention? I have flash memory in (rather small) USB drives that still work after a decade.
wazoox 11y ago
Roman scrolls as old as these being extremely rare, this could alter significantly our understanding of ancient texts and their transmission across centuries.
- gadders 11y ago
  I hope they find some works that were mentioned in antiquity but are lost to us now. EG Some of this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work#Classical_world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work#Classical_world
  - sramsay 11y ago
    Some of those would be absolutely staggering. Epicureanism and Stoicism, for example, were among the most popular philosophies of the ancient world, but our written record of them is extremely fragmentary relative to what we know was written. Same goes for drama. Discovering any additional ancient play would be completely staggering. We possess only one complete trilogy (Aeschylus' Oresteia) and only one complete satyr play -- an important genre, since it may represent a holdover from earlier forms of the worship of Dionysius that led to what we think of as ancient drama. It's an awfully good time to be a classicist!
    - gadders 11y ago
      Whilst googling this topic, I read that there is a missing first book from Homer called Margites. Imagine finding that?
fit2rule 11y ago
Heh. And here I am trying to work out how I'll get the data off a stack of 5.4" floppies I just found in my own personal archives. Wish I had access to a particle accelerator and some scientists right now ..
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I doubt a particle accelerator would be of much use but with some clever scanning using a GMR head from an old harddrive and some analog trickery to amplify the signal and a couple of geared down stepper motors you might be able to build up a picture of the magnetic fields on the floppy without contacting it at all. Those heads are designed to track patterns much smaller than those on a floppy so you should be able to piece together the lines of the scan.
stavrogin 11y ago
Here is the announcement from the research team (in French, 2015-01-20), with one more photo and a 3D video of the scroll. (fr) http://www2.cnrs.fr/presse/communique/3871.htm http://www2.cnrs.fr/presse/communique/3871.htm The French mainstream media had many articles on this, notably Le Monde, with added pictures, see (fr) http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2015/01/20/des-papyrus-antiques-carbonises-dechiffres-a-la-lumiere-des-rayons-x_4559918_1650684.html http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2015/01/20/des-papyru...
Keyframe 11y ago
This is an extraordinary news. History surrounding those scrolls (after unearthed) is as interesting, if not more, than what probably lies in the scrolls themselves.
- ryan_j_naughton 11y ago
  The history surrounding the scrolls is undoubtedly interesting, but I would argue it is much less interesting or valuable than the content of the scrolls themselves. The reason is that the volume of text from the ancient Greco-Roman world was orders of magnitude larger than the surviving texts. To put it in perspective, the library of Alexandria likely had 500K scrolls [1]. In contrast, the Loeb Classical Library from Harvard (which is generally considered one of the most complete collections of surviving texts) "can all fit in a bookcase or two"[2]. Given that the Loeb texts contain both the original and translations, the volume of surviving texts would fit in even less space if it was only in the original Greek or Latin. Thus, we can surmise that we have less than 1/2 of 1% of all the works from the Library of Alexandria. Therefore, there is a very good chance that some of the scrolls from the Herculaneum library will be new texts. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria [2] http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1031 http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1031
  - Keyframe 11y ago
    Of course that possible new discovery would be more interesting, what are the chances though? Since I'm in film/animation backgorund I am rooting for a possible recovery of a lost Sophocles play :) From what I remember (it's been awhile), wasn't the villa that scrolls were found in not completely unearthed - with a possibility of more scrolls inside? I think, from what I remember, that these 1800 or so were found in a crate (in a part of said villa) people were trying to rescue while Vesuvius was doing its thing, leaving the possibility of more crates or even a full library still buried. Getty, I think, build a replica of that villa in Malibu.
    - sophacles 11y ago

105 points by Vigier 11y ago

rwl4 11y ago

This is wonderful to read. I really sincerely hope this technology can open up hundreds of more scrolls to be read. It grieves me to think of how much knowledge has been lost due to scribes not getting around to copying texts.

bobbles 11y ago

Wow this is crazy, they're reading the rolled scrolls, compensating for the layers, curvature, etc. (not to mention the.. you know.. volcano.. damage)

gloriousduke 11y ago

If existence is deterministic in a Laplaceanly demonic way, we should be able to unravel etiology more and more effectively as our technology improves. Perhaps this is a harbinger of the possibilities of the forensics of ontology.

robin_reala 11y ago
…and for laypeople?
- runj__ 11y ago
  Basically that technology might allow us to extrapolate way more information than we are able to today. Maybe ALL information? Based on where every atom (in a limited space) is placed we might be able to guess where they were a picosecond ago, what about a second ago? What about a year ago? The Total Perspective Vortex sort of work by that mechanic.
  - ajuc 11y ago
    Even if rules are fully deterministic it doesn't mean you can "extrapolate back". Update function would need to be reversible for that to always work (you shouldn't be able to get the same state starting from different states). And I think it's not the case, at least localy (heat one corner of a metal plate slightly, wait till it equalizes, guess which one it was).
    - mattlutze 11y ago
      Imagine a computer powerful enough to look at a kind-of closed system like the Earth, and walk backwards through a simulation that allows you to see what "actually" happened, listen to conversations, all of that. Who would look out for the poor historians? It would make for a sweet game show actually, have a panel of historians make their best predictions on what really happened at an event, then "roll the footage!"
- gjm11 11y ago
  Laplaceanly demonic: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon. Laplace's demon was a hypothetical being able to see the entire present state of the universe and extrapolate the future from it. (Laplace himself never called it a "demon".) etiology: causation; how things got how they are. harbinger: forerunner; advance warning. (The etymology is interesting. Originally a harbinger was someone who provides accommodation -- compare the French word "auberge". Then it came to mean someone sent ahead by, e.g., an army to prepare lodgings so that the troops would have somewhere to sleep when they arrived. And then, metaphorically, it came to mean any sort of forerunner. forensics: = forensic science, meaning the application of science to answering the sorts of questions that come up in criminal trials. (Same origin as "forum"; in ancient Rome trials took place in the public square.) I think gloriousduke really just means something like "scientific investigation into past events" here. ontology: actually means the study of what exists. (I.e., answering questions like "what kinds of things exist?".) I suspect gloriousduke meant something else, perhaps something as mundane as "the study of actual things that exist". In any case, his second sentence doesn't really add anything much to the first. So I would translate gloriousduke's comment as follows. "If the universe is deterministic, like a big mechanical machine, then with better and better technology we will be able to do better and better at deciphering the past from its present remains: this thing with the scrolls is just the beginning. Also, I know some long words." (Note that actually determinism isn't quite the issue. What matters is what you might call "backward determinism", where you extrapolate the future from the past. But it looks as if the laws of nature are kinda reversible, so the two are closely related.)
  - mcherm 11y ago
    Thank you for giving us this splendid translation and analysis! The original comment was not worthy of the attention you lavished on it.
- verytrivial 11y ago
  "Let's aim this tech at other junk. It looks promising for messes like this."
ams6110 11y ago
"Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able."

userbinator 11y ago

Data recovery from nearly 2000-year-old damaged media. I wonder if we'd be as successful with trashed storage devices today, 2000 years from now.

ajuc 11y ago
I doubt it. Text on paper is much more redundant medium, and has much smaller information density.
- kristopolous 11y ago
  I've had this weird theory that generally, the more sophisticated the record keeping technology, the less the shelf-life. If I was to do this writing in clay tablets for instance versus paper versus the fragile digital tech we have now. If this is true, then the corollary is that given say, some ancient civilization of say 3,500 years ago - perhaps the more sophisticated ones used record keeping technology that would become total dust a mere 2,000 year ago - while the less sophisticated ones have records which have survived.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    I love reading such old documents specially in what concerns the available technology and ways of society back then. Regarding your statement, maybe Atlantis was such a case. :)
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Hard disks are simple enough that recovery might be practical. Ditto for optical media, assuming the materials are intact. SSDs on the other hand won't last 6 months without power, let alone 2000 years.
- userbinator 11y ago
  SSDs on the other hand won't last 6 months without power, let alone 2000 years. Source on that? Has flash memory really gotten that bad in terms of data retention? I have flash memory in (rather small) USB drives that still work after a decade.

wazoox 11y ago

Roman scrolls as old as these being extremely rare, this could alter significantly our understanding of ancient texts and their transmission across centuries.

gadders 11y ago
I hope they find some works that were mentioned in antiquity but are lost to us now. EG Some of this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work#Classical_world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work#Classical_world
- sramsay 11y ago
  Some of those would be absolutely staggering. Epicureanism and Stoicism, for example, were among the most popular philosophies of the ancient world, but our written record of them is extremely fragmentary relative to what we know was written. Same goes for drama. Discovering any additional ancient play would be completely staggering. We possess only one complete trilogy (Aeschylus' Oresteia) and only one complete satyr play -- an important genre, since it may represent a holdover from earlier forms of the worship of Dionysius that led to what we think of as ancient drama. It's an awfully good time to be a classicist!
  - gadders 11y ago
    Whilst googling this topic, I read that there is a missing first book from Homer called Margites. Imagine finding that?

fit2rule 11y ago

Heh. And here I am trying to work out how I'll get the data off a stack of 5.4" floppies I just found in my own personal archives. Wish I had access to a particle accelerator and some scientists right now ..

jacquesm 11y ago
I doubt a particle accelerator would be of much use but with some clever scanning using a GMR head from an old harddrive and some analog trickery to amplify the signal and a couple of geared down stepper motors you might be able to build up a picture of the magnetic fields on the floppy without contacting it at all. Those heads are designed to track patterns much smaller than those on a floppy so you should be able to piece together the lines of the scan.

stavrogin 11y ago

Here is the announcement from the research team (in French, 2015-01-20), with one more photo and a 3D video of the scroll. (fr) http://www2.cnrs.fr/presse/communique/3871.htm http://www2.cnrs.fr/presse/communique/3871.htm The French mainstream media had many articles on this, notably Le Monde, with added pictures, see (fr) http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2015/01/20/des-papyrus-antiques-carbonises-dechiffres-a-la-lumiere-des-rayons-x_4559918_1650684.html http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2015/01/20/des-papyru...

Keyframe 11y ago

This is an extraordinary news. History surrounding those scrolls (after unearthed) is as interesting, if not more, than what probably lies in the scrolls themselves.

ryan_j_naughton 11y ago
The history surrounding the scrolls is undoubtedly interesting, but I would argue it is much less interesting or valuable than the content of the scrolls themselves. The reason is that the volume of text from the ancient Greco-Roman world was orders of magnitude larger than the surviving texts. To put it in perspective, the library of Alexandria likely had 500K scrolls [1]. In contrast, the Loeb Classical Library from Harvard (which is generally considered one of the most complete collections of surviving texts) "can all fit in a bookcase or two"[2]. Given that the Loeb texts contain both the original and translations, the volume of surviving texts would fit in even less space if it was only in the original Greek or Latin. Thus, we can surmise that we have less than 1/2 of 1% of all the works from the Library of Alexandria. Therefore, there is a very good chance that some of the scrolls from the Herculaneum library will be new texts. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria [2] http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1031 http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1031
- Keyframe 11y ago
  Of course that possible new discovery would be more interesting, what are the chances though? Since I'm in film/animation backgorund I am rooting for a possible recovery of a lost Sophocles play :) From what I remember (it's been awhile), wasn't the villa that scrolls were found in not completely unearthed - with a possibility of more scrolls inside? I think, from what I remember, that these 1800 or so were found in a crate (in a part of said villa) people were trying to rescue while Vesuvius was doing its thing, leaving the possibility of more crates or even a full library still buried. Getty, I think, build a replica of that villa in Malibu.
  - sophacles 11y ago