Writing seen in PHerc. 306B, for the first time in 2000 years (scrollprize.substack.com)

79 points by benbreen a day ago

11 comments:

by vessenes 5 minutes ago

I'm reminded of the human genome project here - in that case there was a geometric ramp-up that meant we went from 1 or 2% sequenced to 100% really quickly. This sort of doubling when you can get it is pretty magical.

I'd like to imagine that we'll get something similar here sometime in the next ten years -- I understand there are (tens of?) thousands of these scrolls still to be scanned much less unrolled. Just an incredibly cool thing to be doing.

by baoooooooooooo 2 hours ago

I love the human sense (or vision) that we could find these in the 1750s as carbonized logs and know that we should keep and protect them - that we miiiiight be able to read them someday.

by jiehong 2 hours ago

Actually, quite a few got partially destroyed while humans tried to physically unroll them.

I suppose they must have left the worse one to hope and to us

by runeb 2 hours ago

An unknown number of them were also allegedly burned for heat as they were mistaken for wood logs during early excavations

by quotemstr 16 minutes ago

Odds those were all just yet more Epicurean philosophy though?

by ldite 2 hours ago

"Sufficiently advanced technology" indeed

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws)

by embedding-shape 2 hours ago

I wonder how many many "experts" fell into the trap of calling the reading of those scrolls "impossible" through the years? ("When a distinguished but elderly scientist states [...] that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong")

by matt3210 an hour ago

While reading, I thought it might be a 306B parameter model until I say 2000 years ago

by jl6 an hour ago

Amazing work. Makes you wonder what else is out there holding a record of the past, with us too primitive to read it.

by efitz 3 hours ago

It’s amazing that they can reconstruct any text at all from those scrolls.

by v3ss0n an hour ago

Pherc 306B A12B when?

Data from: Hacker News, provided by Hacker News (unofficial) API