ancient texts

13 Stories

We Have Our First Clue From 2K-Year-Old Vesuvius Scroll

Luke Farritor of University of Nebraska-Lincoln nabs Vesuvius Challenge's 'first letters' prize

(Newser) - Artificial intelligence and two students half a world apart have deciphered the first word from ancient scrolls that were turned to charcoal and buried for nearly 2,000 years following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79. Discovered in the 18th century in a luxury villa in Herculaneum, the carbonized...

Evidence of 'New' Whale Behavior Found in Ancient Myth

Dismissed as inaccurate, old texts hold evidence modern scientists have missed: study

(Newser) - In 2011, researchers described what they thought was a new phenomenon. They'd observed humpback and Bryde's whales opening their jaws, then waiting for prey fish to swim into their waiting mouths, in what's been dubbed trap fishing, per Smithsonian . The practice has been observed at least a...

Ancient Recipe for Bronze Is Finally Cracked
Ancient Recipe for Bronze
Is Finally Cracked
NEW STUDY
Aug 11, 2022 12:52 PM CDT

Ancient Recipe for Bronze Is Finally Cracked

Researchers say two alloys were key to early China's massive output

(Newser) - Researchers believe they've found the key to a thriving metal industry in ancient China in a 2,300-year-old recipe for bronze. Some 1.5 tons of bronze discovered in the tomb of a general from the Shang dynasty (1600BC to 1046BC) in 1976 helped show the "massive scale"...

Most Ancient and Medieval Literature Is Long Gone

There's little chance of recovering any of it, but we can estimate how much there was

(Newser) - For three centuries, the Ptolemaic Dynasty worked to gather all the books ever written into one library in Alexandria, Egypt. Then it all burned down. By one account, the untold thousands of manuscripts smoldered for six months. As Laura Spinney explains in the Guardian, nobody today even knows the library'...

Ancient Text Reveals Earliest Known Aurora Reference

Finding shows that Earth's magnetic pole has shifted since ancient times

(Newser) - Researchers may have discovered the earliest known record of an aurora. The reference to a "five-colored light" in the northern sky is nestled in the scrolls of the ancient Bamboo Annals, a chronicle of Chinese history written in the 4th century BCE. The event probably occurred around 1000 BCE...

Lost Chapter of World's First Novel Found in Chest

Family has been holding it for nearly 300 years

(Newser) - The chest was opened. And suddenly, a chapter has been added to the oldest known version of what's considered to be the world's first novel . The original manuscript of the Tale of Genji—telling of the political and romantic life of Genji, the son of an ancient Japanese...

Rare Copy of Forbidden Text on Jesus Found

Written centuries after the First Apocalypse of James was excluded from New Testament

(Newser) - A complete copy of a heretical biblical text that purports to describe conversations between Jesus and his brother James has been discovered in its earliest known form. The forbidden writing, dubbed the First Apocalypse of James, wasn't included in the 27-book New Testament established in 367. It was one...

World's Oldest Wooden Statue Twice as Old as Pyramids

New dating puts Shigir Idol at 11K years old, 1.5K years older than thought

(Newser) - When scientists first tried in 1997 to date the famous Shigir Idol wooden sculpture —originally found in a Siberian peat bog in 1890—radiocarbon dating suggested the art was so old the findings were widely disputed. Now, armed with better tech, scientists turned to one of the world's...

'Creepy' Doodles Emerge From Medieval Text

UV light reveals erased additions to the Welsh 'Black Book'

(Newser) - Experts have uncovered what LiveScience calls "ghostly" secrets hidden in a medieval manuscript, which happens to be one of the first to reference King Arthur and Merlin. "The Black Book of Carmarthen" was compiled around 1250, but contains poetry, religious verses, and other texts dating as far back...

Experts Cracking Oldest Undeciphered Language

5,000-year-old tablets may soon yield secrets

(Newser) - Experts trying to crack the world's oldest undeciphered language say they are close to making a breakthrough that could unlock a large cache of knowledge from the ancient world. The academics are using a high-tech imaging device to scan clay tablets and capture writing in the proto-Elamite language, which...

Behold: Oldest 'Yo Mama' Joke of All Time?

Ancient Babylonian tablet analyzed by researchers

(Newser) - At 3,500 years old, researchers may have deciphered the world's most ancient "yo mama" joke. Using images of a tablet discovered in 1976 but since lost, the pair dissected a series of jokes carved by a Babylonian student thousands of years ago, and their conclusions, originally published...

Dead Sea Scrolls Going Online, With Google's Help

21st-century technology meeting 1st-century texts

(Newser) - Google is teaming up with Israel's Antiquities Authority to make one of the world's most tightly guarded archeological treasures available to anybody with an Internet connection. The Dead Sea Scrolls will be made available in their entirety online in a project expected to take several years, CNN reports. The IAA...

Algorithm Can 'Fill in the Blanks' of Ancient Texts

Algorithm could also be basis of search engine for old docs

(Newser) - A new computer algorithm could soon take some of the guesswork out of deciphering ancient texts, Reuters reports. The program, developed in Israel and currently used with ancient Hebrew, works with digital copies of unreadable texts and uses pattern recognition to “fill in the blanks,” says one of...

13 Stories