62 Comments
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Tanya Coelho's avatar

This is beyond extraordinary (and one of the few uses of AI I can get behind). You historians must be fizzing with joy at these new finds.

Dr Jess Venner's avatar

It's seriously exciting. I honestly can't contain my excitement when I think of all the lost texts (and writers!) that we are likely about to find... Huge news for archaeology, technology, and for humankind.

Mr. Otto Waldengarver's avatar

Copies of The Odyssey, the Iliad….

Shadow's avatar

Fizzing with joy (writing that down)

Marcello Iori's avatar

The first word recovered from a scroll buried for two thousand years was disgust. Not wisdom, not beauty, not god. Disgust. Which tells you that Philodemus, writing about human vices, was already working on exactly the same problems we are still trying to solve today. Two millennia underground, and the conversation picks up where it left off. Awesome 😅

Ian's avatar

I believe the first word recovered from any of these scrolls in the Vesuvius challenge was "purple." As the color of royalty, perhaps it is a more auspicious beginning

Andrew's avatar

This is very exciting! Perhaps, perhaps there will be lost historical books?

James's avatar

This is why using "AI" for both useful machine learning tools and LLMs is a problem.

Tamar Shengelia's avatar

Such a breakthrough! Maybe they will find lost poems and plays!!! More Euripides, more Sophocles, More Homer?!!!

Erik Olson's avatar

Alas, the overdue books ledger indicates that Mercurius checked out all the plays and didn't return them in time to be carbonized. 🙃

Peter Gimpel's avatar

BS"D

A good laugh! Sorry it could not be included in my book!

Auri Nurmio's avatar

Wonderful. I can't wait to see if "new old" poetry will be discovered as well. What if some of what we know as Sappho's fragments will become whole poems to us? Odd and beautiful thought.

K.J. Wilsdon's avatar

This is amazing. We visited the Villa of the Papyri in the early 2000s. My late husband taught Latin in secondary schools, but he persuaded the authorities that he was a Classics Professor. So they let him behind the locked gates, and showed him the small amount of the villa that had be excavated. He would have been fascinated by this work.

Stosh Wychulus's avatar

It is absolutely staggering that they are able to do this; almost unbelievable.

Georg Elsner's avatar

Well if the technique, works - and it seems it does - then there’ll be rapid improvements to come as the technique is refined.

And who know what we might be able to read.

This was no small city in 70AD and no mean library.There mights so much literature that we know existed and which we know has been lost to us.

How exciting!

Graham's avatar

Thank you. I have long been fascinated by the potential of the charred library. Perhaps even the second book of poetics by aristotle will emerge. I hope for the 20 volumes of etruscan history by Claudius 🥰

Jeffrey G. Shapiro's avatar

As someone still angry about the burning of the Library of Alexandria I am loving this. I can’t wait for Livy’s complete history of Rome and new plays by Sophocles.

MIMO's avatar
Jun 26Edited

Thanks to this fascinating application - and, I hope, the medical and surgical applications that will soon follow- I’m beginning to come to terms with the advent of AI in our lives. This made my day. And much more, actually.

Yechezkel Sisler's avatar

I’m slightly dissapointed that its Epicurian philosophy. TO have the history of the Etruscans man… Or Manetho…

Peter Bugden's avatar

What books are you hoping for? I’d love Claudius’ History of the Etruscans or Agrippina the Youngers’s Memoirs

Christine Panas's avatar

This fantastic. As a student of all things Mediterranean, from the founding of Rome to the fall of the republic, this is beyond exciting

Cave Buckner's avatar

I lived and worked in Naples 10 years and have visited all the sites. This is fascinating work! Thanks for sharing.