Posted on 09/27/2017 6:37:22 PM PDT by marshmallow
For more than 700 years the Friary of Folloni near Montella in Italy has protected and guarded some small fragments of textile.
According to the legend the textile fragments originate from a sack that appeared on the doorstep of the friary in the winter of 1224 containing bread sent from Saint Francis of Assisi, who at that time was in France. The bread was allegedly brought to the friary by an angel.
Ever since that cold winter's night the sack has been guarded by the friary, and today the last few remaining fragments are kept as a relic in a well protected shrine.
In line with the legend
A Danish/Italian/Dutch team of reseachers led by Associate Professor Kaare Lund Rasmussen from University of Southern Denmark has had the opportunity to conduct scientific studies of the alleged bread sack fragments. Their study is published in the journal Radiocarbon.
C-14 analysis revealed that the textile can be dated to 1220-1295.
"The age is in line with the legend," says Kaare Lund Rasmussen, a chemist, and specialized in archaeo-chemical analyses.
There was probably bread in the sack
The researchers also looked for traces of bread in the textile. They did this by looking for ergosterol, a sterol for the fungal kingdom and encountered in several types of mould. Ergosterol can be a potential biomarker for brewing, baking or agriculture.
"Our studies show that there was probably bread in the sack. We don't know when, but it seems unlikely that it was after 1732, where the sack fragments were inmured in order to protect them. It is more likely that bread was in contact with the textile in the 300 years before 1732; a period, where the textile was used as altar cloth or maybe it was indeed on the cold winter's night in 1224.....
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
So...
They found angel DNA on the sack pieces??
Thats fantastic!!
So, we can reconstitute an angel now?
I wonder what sauce goes with angel wings...
Yup. That there is some old textile.
Too bad we had to wreck the last two pieces.
There is also a good possibility that there are still a few water molecules in the Sea of Galilee, that were there when Jesus walked on it.
Can water be carbon dated?
Note: this topic is from . Thanks marshmallow.
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