Researchers use AI to decipher ancient scroll buried in ash by Vesuvius eruption

Ancient scrolls that were buried in volcanic ash during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius are now being deciphered two thousand years later thanks in part to artificial intelligence. Martin Stew of Independent Television News reports from Oxfordshire, England.
Amna Nawaz:
Ancient scrolls that were buried in volcanic ash during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius are now being deciphered 2,000 years later thanks in part to artificial intelligence.
Martin Stew of Independent Television News reports from Oxfordshire, England, on the scientific effort of researchers from around the world.
Martin Stew:
Buried under the volcanic ash from Vesuvius, Herculaneum, like Pompeii, is a perfectly preserved time capsule of Roman life. Some of its secrets were burnt to a crisp, scorched scrolls indecipherable, until now.
Unraveling the hidden history of these 2,000-year-old scrolls has required 21st century technology here, a Wembley Stadium-sized synchrotron called Diamond Light Source which fires beams of light 10 billion times brighter than the sun.
Adrian Mancuso, Director of Physical Sciences, Diamond Light Source: We have a bright beam of X-rays that comes out of the Diamond synchrotron. They travel downstream and hit a sample. That makes a picture.
Martin Stew:
The team started by scanning loose fragments.
Adrian Mancuso:
So, the scroll looks like something you might put on your barbecue, it’s so light and burnt. But the ink and the papyrus are almost made out of the same stuff. So you need a bright, very brilliant X-ray beam to be able to tell the difference.
Martin Stew:
So it’s like an extreme C.T. scan?
Adrian Mancuso:
It is like a C.T. scan off on a very, very, very other level.
Martin Stew:
Because the scrolls are too fragile to physically unroll, the unwrapping was done digitally. Scientists then set about decoding ink patterns using readings they’d taken from the fragments as a kind of cipher.
To process so many images, teams around the world joined in, running A.I.-powered programs. And Youssef was the first person to reveal a word: purple.
Youssef Nader, Vesuvius Challenge Winner:
I was really excited and just, like, zooming around the apartment while waiting for the experiments to finish.
And, yes, it felt really, really amazing to actually be one of the first people to actually do this.
Martin Stew:
So far, only a tiny portion of the scrolls have been deciphered. It’s believed they belong to a Roman statesman, potentially Julius Caesar’s father-in-law.
Brent Seales, University of Kentucky: We as humans are going to reconnect with a part of our history that’s incredibly difficult to connect to. And what I would like the scrolls to reveal is something surprising or even controversial that we don’t already know about that period.
Martin Stew:
This project has taken decades, but has proven futuristic technology can give us a glimpse of our forgotten past.