This is an imaged parchment document from Yarburgh Muniments Lancashire Deeds YM. D. Lancs Jan. 13-14, 1576/7.
Posted on 12/13/2014 5:59:17 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The new technique of analyzing DNA found in ancient parchments can shine a focused light on the development of agriculture across the centuries.
Millions of documents stored in archives could provide scientists with the key to tracing agricultural development across the centuries...
Amazingly, thanks to increasingly progressive genetic sequencing techniques, the all-important historical tales these documents tell are no longer confined to their texts; now, vital information also comes from the DNA of the parchment on which they are written.
Researchers used these state-of-the-art scientific techniques to extract ancient DNA and protein from tiny samples of parchment from documents from the late 17th and late 18th centuries. The resulting information enabled them to establish the type of animals from which the parchment was made, which, when compared to genomes of their modern equivalents, provides key information as to how agricultural expansion shaped the genetic diversity of these animals...
To conduct their research, geneticists at Trinity extracted DNA from two tiny (2x2cm) samples of parchment provided by the University of York's Borthwick Institute for Archives. Meanwhile, researchers in the Centre for Excellence in Mass Spectrometry at York extracted collagen (protein) from the same parchment samples.
The first sample showed a strong affinity with northern Britain, specifically the region in which black-faced breeds such as Swaledale, Rough Fell and Scottish Blackface are common, whereas the second sample showed a closer affinity with the Midlands and southern Britain where the livestock Improvements of the later 18th century were most active.
If other parchments show similar levels of DNA content, resulting sequencing could provide insights into the breeding history of livestock - particularly sheep - before, during and after the agricultural improvements of the 18th century that led to the emergence of regional breeds of sheep in Britain.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
This is an imaged parchment document from Yarburgh Muniments Lancashire Deeds YM. D. Lancs Jan. 13-14, 1576/7.
Cool!
The only part I could make out is where it says "drink your Ovaltine."
A page from the Red Book of Westmarch?
Well I looked......:o)
I lost my decoders and that plastic to put on the TV screen to follow the scratchings.
Obama is eager to have a few sheets of 24 inch x 28 inch parchment pulped for genetic analysis.
Might this process be applied to the Shroud of Turin? That might prove interesting.
Damn, I was hoping this headline meant that the scientific community had finally succeeded in retrieving the info from the charred and burnt scrolls found in Pliny’s library after being buried by the eruption of Vesuvius.
There’s hope that many of the lost books of ancient times are there.
Pliny the Elder was killed by fumes from Vesuvius while helping to rescue people fleeing the eruption but he didn’t have a library there. The library found at Herculaneum may have belonged to Caesar’s last father-in-law. Some of the rolls have been unrolled (mostly writings of the philosopher Philodemus). Advances in technology may permit more of the rolls to be read. For more information see the Wikipedia article “Herculaneum papyri.”
Wow! How cool is this!
That’s fabric, not parchment, but regardless that’s not a topic I’d enjoy participating in, at least, I haven’t in the past. :’)
As VR said, the villa — which was reproduced full-scale as the Getty Museum out in California — is believed to have belonged to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesonius. There has been speculation in recent years that there is at least one other storey to the house, and that the library itself may be continued there. It’s probably a pipe dream.
Given the vandalism done to scroll after scroll by the various parties involved, I’d just as soon have CAT-scanning to read them while still rolled up, before anyone puts another spade to the Earth, as it were.
http://www.getty.edu/museum/programs/lectures/roman_villas_lecture.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri
Knew it started with a P. Piso instead of Pliny.
It would certainly establish the origins of the fabric in terms of how the fabric and/or (not to mentioned the patched and repaired segments) and then where on the globe the Shroud may have originated. I don't see any important distinction for DNA testing between fibers of cloth woven from plants vs. fibers of parchment made from plants.
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