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An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

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

#301

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ricardobayes wrote: post #280
codeulike wrote: post #173

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…

We came a long way in mere 2000 years but I don't think the growth will be exponential or even linear from now on.

I'm inclined to agree, but then, it may be impossible to predict sudden breakthroughs. A lot of where we are today is from the early 1900s, I'd argue that most developments since then have been iterative and building on top of the things discovered and proven then.

And in our industry, a lot of big steps were done in the 60's and 70's with the semiconductor, computers, and everything that came with it.

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

#302

Post by melicerte »

Did anyone notice that anonymous donators[1] have the picture of Larry David, and the link points to the Curb Your Enthusiasm - Anonymous Donor Pt2[2] episode?

So geeky, so cool !

- [1] https://scrollprize.org/#sponsors

- [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqrJ4wGid4Y

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

#303

Post by benj111 »

ricardobayes wrote: post #281
nbardy wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first bit was interesting and then you flipped right to generic cynicism. They would be impressed with our technology even if it has downsides. Wisdom is knowing humans and technology and imperfect tools.

What good is something that only looks good from afar? Most new tech is exactly that, for posturing to gain shareholder value - very few innovation in actually useful things that make peoples lives better. It's all self-serving, to consume more and get people hooked on digital experiences.

Define "good from afar". We romanticise the notion of the wild west, while ignoring the poverty death and disease. Would you rather live in the wild west or today, where the issue is AI which at this point is more a #SVproblem than even a #firstworldproblem.

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

#304

Post by benj111 »

tialaramex wrote: post #186
codeulike wrote: post #173

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…

> Do we have better imaginations? Maybe, humans aren't very different, so it depends whether imagination is informed which seems plausible, or whether it is somehow fixed - modern humans don't have different eyesight than in that period, but almost all of them can read whereas back then almost nobody would have been reading these scrolls. > Can our sci-fi writers come up with something equivalent that is as dizzyingl…

Sci fi tends to be about extrapolation and or cool things/things that improve the story.

I don't think humans have changed, I don't think a human could begin to image a world so far away from their own.

Humans tend to image faster horses. A few might imagine a steam engine. But then you have the social reality of everyone having a car. Of the environmental downsides. I don't think you can extrapolate all that.

So yes, an ancient Roman might appreciate fibre optic cables. But that's still missing out the context of global communications, etc etc etc.

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

#305

Post by TychoCelchuuu »

charcircuit wrote: post #164
kridsdale3 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trust a lifelong dedicated Ancient Greek Papyrologist to do a better job here than ChatGPT.

And I don't. Humans are notoriously subjective / opinionated in the translations they make.

[dead]

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

#306

Post by wolfi1 »

pestatije wrote: post #282
wolfi1 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we already know that a blind Italian monk burnt it to ashes, at least, that's what Eco wrote and he was a learned scholar

but that was a copy

well the other existing copy (or original) was destroyed with the library of Alexandria

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

#307

Post by throwaw12 »

snickerbockers wrote: post #273
codeulike wrote: post #173

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…

Im sure that recovering fragments of text from 2000 year old charred embers would be absolutely incredible to them, but in general the ability to preserve books for thousands of years would not. Before the Gutenberg press, scribes were surprisingly efficient at copying manuscripts by hand. For many of the most significant works of the ancient world the oldest surviving manuscript was written hundreds or even thousand…

I think OPs point wasn't specifically about how to preserve and recover the books, but about how something unimaginable, can happen and can our sci-fi writers come up with such unimaginable now, but possible in the future plot.

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

#310

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

skew-aberration wrote: post #267
verditelabs wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The process of trying to read the scrolls has been going on for about 275 years or so, now. Doing it nondestructively via CT scanning and virtual unrolling and reading has been in the works for 25 years or so, so it's a lot of building on previous work. Virtual unrolling and reading are not terribly hard to do manually, they are just not feasable on a large scale. Like years and years of human time spent tediously cl…

Where can we read about the xray setup? e.g the type of sensor, if/how the target and/or beam is scanned, any fancy gratings/etc, what kind of CT algorithms are used

Parent comment says "Beam Line 18 at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility"

so https://www.esrf.fr/home/UsersAndScience/Experiments/BM18.ht...

https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/pr/2022/20221031_bm18.html

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