AI reads 2,000-year-old secret message buried by Vesuvius
Technology
Artificial intelligence
(Web Desk) - Artificial intelligence has been used to decipher a message on a mysterious 2,000-year-old scroll.
The charred papyrus has been described as one of the biggest mysteries in archaeology but student researchers have finally cracked the case.
The Herculaneum scroll in question went through a carbonization process during the infamous Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD.
As the scrolls are wrapped up and sealed in their delicate state, trying to open them up destroys them.
This is why the text on many of the scrolls has remained a secret for thousands of years.
A contest called the Vesuvius Challenge was created to see if scholars could come up with a way to decipher the rolled-up scrolls.
There were three winners who will share a prize of $700,000.
"The results of this review were clear and unanimous: the Vesuvius Challenge Grand Prize of $700,000 is awarded to a team of three for their excellent submission.
"Congratulations to Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor, and Julian Schilliger!" the Vesuvius Challenge website revealed this week.
The team trained AI to read rolled-up scrolls and applied this method to the fragile Herculaneum scroll.
Their entry into the competition was described as the "most readable submission."
You may be wondering what someone was writing on a scroll around 2,000 years ago.
It turns out the author was using it to complain about an unknown individual.
The deciphered text ""hrows shade at unnamed ideological adversaries—perhaps the stoics?—who 'have nothing to say about pleasure, either in general or in particular," contest organizer Nat Friedman explained.
"This is the start of a revolution in Herculaneum papyrology and in Greek philosophy in general.
"It is the only library to come to us from ancient Roman times," Federica Nicolardi from the University of Naples Federico II told The Guardian.
