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The burial spot was found in one of the Herculaneum scrolls charred by Mt. Vesuvius. Greek philosopher Plato played a huge role in shaping Western thought, particularly around politics, and even though he died more than 2,300 years ago, his “Republic” is still one of the most studied books at top US colleges. Despite Plato’s wide and lasting influence, though, there’s still a lot we don’t know about him, including his final resting place. Historians had been able to narrow it down to the garden of the school he founded in Athens, but where exactly in the expansive gardens was...

The papyrus had been buried under metres of ash at the house, believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, after Vesuvius erupted in AD79 and scholars have spent the last 250 years painstakingly trying to find a way to read its contents, The Times reports. Now Professor Graziano Ranocchia of the University of Pisa and his colleagues have used techniques, including shortwave infrared hyperspectral imaging, which picks up variations in the way light bounces off the black ink on the papyrus, to decipher the document. Professor Ranocchia described the scroll as 'the oldest history of Greek philosophy in our...

A £560,000 prize was on offer for scholars who could read the ancient Roman texts buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. Scrolls cocooned in volcanic ash that consumed the Roman city of Pompeii have been deciphered for the first time in 2,000 years. Using AI researchers were able to discern some meaning from the writings which were discovered in the doomed ancient Italian city that was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. ...In a statement the Vesuvius Challenge revealed some of the information hidden until now in the scrolls which appear to be philosophical treatises concerning...

Most of us are familiar with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, which destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Stabiae. But did you know that this was not the first time that Vesuvius unleashed its fury on the surrounding lands? Centuries before, around 2000 BC, another massive eruption buried a Bronze Age village in Italy, preserving it in volcanic ash and mud. This village is known as Afragola.In this video, we will show you how archaeologists and scientists uncovered the secrets of this fascinating site.You will discover how ancient plants helped reveal the season of...

What are we usually missing from the ancient world? Wood! Fortunately, the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 preserved a lot of wooden objects- ranging from a bed and crib, to a table, bench, and shrine, and more! Usually, these items are not on display, but on the occasion of a new exhibit, we are now able to examine the world of carpentry through these objects of everyday life- and many other artifacts- rarely preserved from Antiquity. A truly unique collection of artwork from ancient Herculaneum.0:00 Introduction2:00 Fabri2:43 small boat3:15 Telephos relief wooden coffered ceiling (recently discovered)3:57 bed, table, crib,...

Chapters:0:00 Formerly lost cities2:30 Ekster3:32 Suburbs of Pompeii5:01 Tripergole5:45 Helike and other drowned cities6:44 Tigranocerta7:12 Ptolemais Theron and Muziris7 Lost Cities (that could still be found) | 8:35toldinstone | 444K subscribers | 69,473 views | December 8, 2023

Twenty years ago, Brigham Young University engineers and classical scholars pioneered the use of multispectral imaging technologies to read ancient documents, including the charred and fragile Herculaneum papyri. In the case of the Herculaneum papyri, which were carbonized and buried by the same eruption that destroyed the ancient city of Pompeii in AD 79, the BYU team had miraculous results. Black ink on blackened pages of papyri suddenly became readable, to the amazement of scholars. The BYU images would lead to dozens of new publications and forever changed the world of papyrology.Out of the Ashes: Recovering the Lost Library of...

Researchers used artificial intelligence to extract the first word from one of the first texts in a charred scroll from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum, which has been unreadable since a volcanic eruption in AD 79 — the same one that buried nearby Pompeii...The Vesuvius Challenge, a contest with $1,000,000 (£821K) in prizes for those who can use modern technology to decipher the words of these scrolls, has awarded a 21-year-old undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska $40,000 (£32.8K) for being the first to read a word from one of the ancient Herculaneum scrolls.Luke Farritor, who is at...

Chapters:0:00 Introduction1:09 Toothpicks and tooth powders2:49 Dealing with bad breath and toothache3:47 Established Titles5:13 Roman dentistry6:28 Dentures7:05 The evidence from Pompeii8:25 Worn enamel and plaqueWhy the Romans had Better Teeth than Modern Europeanstoldinstone | September 2, 2022

Clues to Roman Illnesses in 2,000-Year-Old Cheese Oct. 9 — By E. J. Mundell NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A tiny piece of cheese, carbonized in the volcanic eruption that killed the citizens of Pompeii, is yielding up secrets as to how ancient Romans ate, lived and died. Using an electron microscope, anthropological researcher Dr. Luigi Capasso of the State University G. d'Annunzio in Chieti, Italy, has been able to pinpoint goats' milk cheese as a prime source of brucellosis--a debilitating joint disease that ravaged the ancient world. "Roman cheese was an important and continuous source of possible infectious...

Oct. 18 — Bacteria found in a 2,000-year-old piece of cheese could be the final evidence that this food was a continuous source of infectious disease in the ancient Roman world. According to a study published in a recent issue of the Journal of Infection, a tiny piece of cheese containing disease bacteria was carbonized in the volcanic eruption that one night in late August, 79 A.D. covered Pompeii and the nearby towns of Herculaneum and Stabiae with nine to 20 feet of hot ash and pumice. About 250 people fled to the beach, trying in vain to escape the...

Hear from experts about the challenges of unraveling and reading hundreds of carbonized papyri scrolls buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79. Classicists David Blank of the University of California Los Angeles and Richard Janko of the University of Michigan discuss early and current attempts to open the fragile layers and decipher their texts, and computer scientist W. Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky shares how advances in technology and machine learning might allow the still unopened ancient book rolls to be "virtually unwrapped" and read. October 19, 2019, The Getty Villa, Malibu, California.Reading the Herculaneum...

...A century later, the Italian military historian Flavio Russo suggested that the attribution should be settled by scientific investigation. Might an isotopic examination of the teeth reveal where the skull’s owner had spent his childhood? A campaign led by La Stampa eventually raised funds for a study of the relic at the hands of a scientific team fronted by popular historian Andrea Cionci. The results, released in January 2020 at the Museo dell’ Arte Sanitaria, were somewhat ambiguous. Isotopic examination of the lower jaw indicated a childhood consistent with the early life spent by the Elder Pliny in his north...

Archaeologists excavating the Roman coastal retreat of Herculaneum have unearthed the remains of a victim from the Vesuvius eruption in AD 79... During the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the town was buried under thick layers of ash and pumice, followed by pyroclastic material that carbonised organic remains...Previous excavations in the 1980’s of the towns shoreline discovered skeletons on the beach and in the first six so-called boat sheds. Archaeologists at the time suggested that these victims were waiting for rescue, when they were killed instantly from the heat generated by a pyroclastic flow att temperatures of around 500 °C.For the...

In the video, Pompeii Archaeological Park Director Massimo Osanna narrates a tour of two Pompeiian homes that were entombed in ash alongside the rest of the city when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. The director's Italian remarks are translated into English in a statement and can also be read using YouTube's auto-translate feature, according to HeritageDaily. Osanna takes viewers inside two domus dwellings, or private residences, on either side of Vicolo dei Balconi, or Alley of the Balconies. In the first home, dubbed the House With the Garden, researchers were able to make casts of the roots of plants...

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius turned an ancient victim’s brain into glass, according to Italian anthropologists. The finding, dubbed as “sensational” and published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, marks the first time that scientists have verified such a phenomenon. […] The remains of a man found lying on a wooden bed were discovered in Herculaneum in the 1960s. He is believed to have been the custodian of the College of Augustales, a place of worship that was at the center of the cult of Roman Emperor Augustus. The glassy substance found inside of the victim’s skull...

A pair of 2,000-year-old Roman scrolls believed to have belonged to the family of Julius Caesar, and were buried and charred during Vesuvius’ eruption, have been virtually “unwrapped” for the first time ever. The scrolls, known as the Herculaneum Scrolls, are too fragile to be handled by hand, so researchers needed to use the X-ray beam at Diamond Light Source, as well as a “virtual unwrapping” software to detect the carbon ink on them. “Texts from the ancient world are rare and precious, and they simply cannot be revealed through any other known process,” University of Kentucky professor Brent Seales,...

About 400 years ago, a throng of dusty workmen laid down their shovels and huddled around an ancient painted wall -- a fresco, technically -- unearthed in a tunnel near Italy's Bay of Naples. The men were at work on a massive construction project, burrowing through a hill to build a canal for a local armament factory and mill. No one expected to find fine art. But as the workmen dug deeper into the hill, they encountered wonder upon wonder -- house walls painted blood red and sunflower yellow, fragments of carved inscriptions, pieces of Roman statues. The architect supervising...

An ancient port in Naples, believed to be the harbour 25 centuries ago when it was called Palepolis by the Greeks who ousted the Etruscans, has been discovered in the sea off the iconic Castel dell'Ovo, archaeologists said Thursday. Underwater archaeologists have found four submerged tunnels, a three-metre-wide street with cart-furrows still there and a long trench for soldiers, six meters down to the right of the castle, Neapolitan archaeologist Mario Negri said... The first settlements in the area were made in the ninth century BC, nearly 3000 years ago, when Anatolian and Achaean merchants and travellers arrived in the...

The inscription discovered in the new excavations is nothing more than a scrawl in charcoal, likely made by a worker renovating a home. But it is dated to 16 days before the "calends" of November in the old Roman calendar style - which is 17 October in our modern dating method. "Since it was done in fragile and evanescent charcoal, which could not have been able to last long, it is highly probable that it can be dated to the October of AD 79," the archaeology team said in a statement. They believe the most likely date for the eruption...