05/02/2024 – 20:46
Human Sciences have a new ally: artificial intelligence (AI).
A batch of papyrus scrolls almost 2,000 years old had their contents finally revealed for the first time after researchers used AI to decipher the material, charred and deteriorated over the centuries. For the area, the discovery could unlock gaps that archeology and historiography were unable to uncover – a revolution.
The announcement was made this Monday, 5th, as a result of the Vesuvius Challenge award, created by computational scientist Brent Seales, from the University of Kentucky, and by supporters in Silicon Valley, in California, USA. Launched last year, the objective is to call on scientists to develop algorithms to scan papyrus parchments and transform them into high-resolution images using computed tomography.
The winner of the prize was the trio of young researchers Youssef Nader (Germany), Luke Farritor (United States) and Julian Schillinger (Switzerland), receiving US$700,000, according to American executive Nat Friedman, one of the sponsors of the challenge.
The trio created software that read 2,000 letters from Ancient Greece. The lot was kept in a luxurious Roman villa in Heculaneum, but it was burned in 79 AD, when Vesuvius devastated Pompeii and carried ashes to neighboring cities. Excavations in the 18th century recovered more than a thousand parchments from the lot, whose ownership is attributed to the father-in-law of the Roman emperor Julius Caesar – and, until then, the contents of the parchments were hidden from researchers, due to the carbonization of the material.
The trio came together in an unusual way. Last October, Farritor created software that was able to identify the Greek word “purple”, which won him a prize of US$40,000 in a similar challenge. In November, he teamed up with Nader and, days later, Schillinger, who developed an algorithm that reveals computed tomography (CT) images. The trio's registration was made within the deadline for registering the project, on December 31st.
“This is the beginning of a revolution in the papyrology of Herculaneum and in Greek philosophy in general. It is the only library that has come down to us from ancient Roman times,” he told the newspaper The Guardian papyrologist Federica Nicolardi, from the University of Naples Federico II.
What comes after discovery
Now, papyrologists and historians must pore over the transcription of the parchments and decipher the contents. In a preliminary reading, the drafts indicate that it is a text by the philosopher and poet Philoderm of Gadana (110-35 BC), a follower of Epicurus and teacher of Virgil.
“Epicureanism says hello, with a text full of music, food, senses and pleasure!”, says Federica, after analyzing the drafts.
Creator of the Vesuvius Challenge, scientist Brent Seales, from the University of Kentucky, in the USA, says he will build a portable computed tomography scanner and train AI algorithms to carry out the work. According to him, the objective is to avoid removing the parchments from their collections.
“We are entering a new era,” Seales told The Guardian.
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