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An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

scrollprize.org

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Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#171

Post by EvanAnderson »

verditelabs wrote: post #161
EvanAnderson wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You brought up what I'm most curious about: Where does the ground truth come from for this work since you can't just to unwrap a scroll to tell if the model got it right or, presumably, make a facsimile scroll and wrap it up.

The ground truth comes from manual work. The scrolls can be unwrapped virtually, manually, through extensive pointing and clicking by a human on the boundaries of the scroll. This, in and of itself, is not particularly hard in sections of the scroll that are preserved well, but is extremely tedious and slow and error prone. We have a team of annotators who do manual annotation and refinement through custom software w…

I'm sure that process is described somewhere on the project's site and, being a lazy human (and unwilling to ask LLMs to summarize it for me), I leaned on you for a human answer. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer. Thank you.

I can see why you'd be attracted to this project from a "let's solve problems computationally" perspective (never mind the historical side). It sounds like there are some cool problems in there.

The eye toward automating the process that the project seems to be targeting is particularly cool, too. This kind of stuff that makes me have real enthusiasm for ML.

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#172

Post by kouru225 »

sapphicsnail wrote: post #132
kouru225 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah there was a lost Homer epic comedy about a bumbling fool named Margites?

There's also the Telegony. Odysseus has a son through Circe who winds up killing him and marrying Penelope. Odysseus son through Penelope, Telemachus, marries Circe. There's some wild stuff that doesn't survive.

Looking through these it’s crazy to find out that The Iliad is only 1 of like 5 original texts on the Trojan war. We’re reading book 2 of a 5 book series

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#173

Post by codeulike »

Lets reflect on Aristocreon, in about 200 BC, putting their thoughts down on a scroll. They would be aware that the scroll might be kept in a library for some time. Maybe they could have imagined it surviving for 300 years. But they never would have imagined that in 300 years a volcano might destroy the scroll, but in some way preserve it. And then that nearly two thousand years later future humans with machines made of materials unimaginable to Aristocreon, but related distantly to sand and lightning, would be able to read the scroll again and instantly transmit it to nearly the whole planet, a planet with many times more humans than existed in their time. (and speaking of 'planet', in Aristocreon's time, people had fairly recently been able to show that the world was spherical but much of it was still unknown).

Do we have better imaginations? Can our sci-fi writers come up with something equivalent that is as dizzyingly far from what we know now, as now is from what Aristocreon knew?

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#174

Post by fph »

verditelabs wrote: post #133
negergreger wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How fast is the process? Could it be automated to the point where it's faster to scan a book closed than opened?

We've been trying to automate since the beginning. A lot of it is automated but it's mostly the easier and less damaged parts of the scrolls. Scanning takes a few days for the biggest scrolls but the amount of human refinement is still a multi month process.

Random shower thought: I wonder if it would be better in the long term to stop digging out archeological findings. The more we excavate, the more damage we do for future archaeologists who will have the superpower of reading these texts without even needing to dig the scrolls free and open them.

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#175

Post by verditelabs »

Izmaki wrote: post #156
verditelabs wrote: post #2

I am on the vesuvius challenge team that did the segmentation, unwrapping, and ink detection, so feel free to ask any questions.

How awesome do you feel right now? This is HUUUGE! To think that a scroll was unreadable for so, so long, until we invented machines that let us read it slice by slice. It's such an unfathomable achievement - we made machines that let us read 2000+ year olds fragile scrolls without ever opening them - and you helped do just that. Hats off!

In March I went to Beam Line 18 at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. I had to swap out the scrolls on the xray pedestal. Scrolls that were presented as a diplomatic gift to Napoleon and Josephine by King Ferdinand. France has 2 of the 6 that they were given still in tact. I had to handle both of them. I have never felt more stressed in my life and have never and will probably never again handle such a priceless artifact.

I feel the opposite of that feeling and am immensely proud of everything that the core challenge team has accomplished

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#176

Post by flir »

fph wrote: post #174
verditelabs wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been trying to automate since the beginning. A lot of it is automated but it's mostly the easier and less damaged parts of the scrolls. Scanning takes a few days for the biggest scrolls but the amount of human refinement is still a multi month process.

Random shower thought: I wonder if it would be better in the long term to stop digging out archeological findings. The more we excavate, the more damage we do for future archaeologists who will have the superpower of reading these texts without even needing to dig the scrolls free and open them.

Modern archaeologists are painfully aware that theirs is a destructive science, and do their best to mitigate that. The most extreme example is probably the tomb of the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, where official policy on excavation can be boiled down to "not yet".

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#177

Post by verditelabs »

fph wrote: post #174
verditelabs wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been trying to automate since the beginning. A lot of it is automated but it's mostly the easier and less damaged parts of the scrolls. Scanning takes a few days for the biggest scrolls but the amount of human refinement is still a multi month process.

Random shower thought: I wonder if it would be better in the long term to stop digging out archeological findings. The more we excavate, the more damage we do for future archaeologists who will have the superpower of reading these texts without even needing to dig the scrolls free and open them.

We stand on the shoulders of those that came before us. People have been trying to unroll and read the scrolls for 250 some odd years now. Had they not laid the groundwork for all that time we wouldn't be making the progress we are now.

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#179

Post by Centigonal »

fph wrote: post #174
verditelabs wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been trying to automate since the beginning. A lot of it is automated but it's mostly the easier and less damaged parts of the scrolls. Scanning takes a few days for the biggest scrolls but the amount of human refinement is still a multi month process.

Random shower thought: I wonder if it would be better in the long term to stop digging out archeological findings. The more we excavate, the more damage we do for future archaeologists who will have the superpower of reading these texts without even needing to dig the scrolls free and open them.

There is an active debate on exactly this topic when it comes to whether or not to excavate the tomb of Qin Shi Huang.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausoleum_of_Qin_Shi_Huang

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#180

Post by verditelabs »

msuniverse2026 wrote: post #178
verditelabs wrote: post #2

I am on the vesuvius challenge team that did the segmentation, unwrapping, and ink detection, so feel free to ask any questions.

How many more scrolls exist?

That have been dug up? I think 600 or so still exist. Perhaps about 2000 or so have ever been excavated. We have scanned about 30 of them. Still underground? I've seen various counts. Maybe more than 10000?
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