By Esme StallardClimate and science reporter, BBC News4 hours agoImage source, Vesuvius challengeImage caption, The scrolls are so charred they are unable to be unravelledThree students have won a $700,000 prize after using AI to interpret a 2,000-year-old scroll that was burned during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The ancient text, which was previously unreadable due to charring caused by the disaster in the Roman town of Herculaneum, is believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law and discusses topics such as music and food. This breakthrough has been described by experts as a “revolution” in Greek philosophy, as the writing style is believed to be typical of the Greek philosopher Philodemus, who followed the teachings of Epicurus and may have been the philosopher-in-residence at Herculaneum. The scrolls were discovered in the 18th century in the library of a villa in the town. However, their contents remained a mystery as the volcanic debris had charred them to the extent that attempts to unroll them proved futile. Dr Federica, a papyrology researcher at the University of Naples, stated that this “curse” of charring also served as a blessing, as the high temperatures of the eruption carbonized and preserved the scripts that would have otherwise decomposed. Last year, a breakthrough occurred when Dr Brent Seales and his team at the University of Kentucky used high-resolution CT scans to unroll the texts. However, the black carbon ink used on the scripts was indecipherable from the papyrus itself. Dr Seales collaborated with tech investors to launch the Vesuvius Challenge, a $1m (£790,000) prize for anyone who could come up with a solution. A team of three students – Youssef Nader, a PhD student in Berlin, Luke Farritor, a SpaceX intern and student, and Julian Schillinger, a Swiss Robotics student – developed an AI model that could discern the lettering through pattern recognition. Dr Federica believes that this marks the beginning of a revolution in Greek philosophy in general. The AI model has managed to decipher 2,000 Greek characters written in one of the four scrolls scanned by Dr Seales’ team, which is only 5% of the text. Translated, the characters reveal the author discussing the sources of pleasure in life, including references to music and food. In one passage, Philodemus questions whether things in lesser quantities bring more pleasure, stating: “as too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant.” The team behind the Vesuvius Challenge hopes that the technology can be used to read 90% of all four scrolls scanned this year, and eventually decipher all 800.
