Inside the high tech quest to decode the lost scrolls of Herculaneum | Casey Handmer

“These scrolls were buried by superheated mud that crushed them and carbonized them and buried them, and then 1,700 years later, they were dug up and mistreated, and in many cases we've just got these little fragments left, but some hundreds of them are still in the unrolled state.”

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In AD 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted in Italy, destroying not only the city of Pompeii, but also neighboring Herculaneum, a beachside town which was home to a vast library full of Ancient Roman text. Today, just 1% of the library remains, crushed, carbonized, and vulcanized.

These scrolls were left in the unrolled state by philologists, optimistic that we may one day be able to decipher them with technology. And now, we have tech that can enable this. So, The Vesuvius Challenge was born, an effort to crowdsource ideas and techniques from the smartest people around the globe to resurrect these ancient texts.

Physicist and founder of Terraform Industries Casey Handmer reveals how his efforts to solve The Vesuvius Challenge led to a major breakthrough, and why thinking about Ancient Rome more often could help us decode more of our lost history.

Timestamps:
0:00: The library of Herculaneum
1:17: The Vesuvius Challenge
2:30: A unique approach
3:49: Deciphering ‘crackle’
5:01: Solving an ancient puzzle

Watch on Freethink.com ► https://www.freethink.com/series/the-...

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Read more of our stories on ancient history:
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PhD student solves a mysterious ancient Sanskrit text algorithm after 2,500 years
► https://www.freethink.com/robots-ai/a...
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