NAPLES, Italy — Scientists have revealed insights from ancient scrolls buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago, after an AI breakthrough helped uncover some of their secrets.Limited time: Save 25% on NBC News subscriptionGet exclusive reporting, live Q&As and ad-free reading.The trove of hundreds of scrolls was buried in Herculaneum by the famous eruption in A.D.79 that also destroyed nearby Pompeii.
Uncovering the contents of the fragile carbonized papyrus is a puzzle that has fixated researchers since their rediscovery three centuries ago, but only in recent years has AI-enabled “digital unwrapping” become possible.Researchers from the University of Kentucky and Naples on Thursday revealed recovered texts from authors previously lost to history, including philosophical takes on ethics, the arts, human behavior and theology.Pompeii with Mount Vesuvius in the backgroundSimon Skafar / Getty Images fileIn one text, an unknown author appears to warn against excessive impulse.Another key concept, researchers say, is phronesis, ancient Greek for “practical wisdom.” In another passage, the ancient author writes: “We will inquire into something, but we will not grasp it, if in some way we depart from ourselves and from our own nature.” “It’s been a long time since the classical period, and we feel a distance from that culture.
And then you read the words, and then the distance shrinks immediately,” Brent Seals, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky and one of the foremost experts in the digital restoration of cultural antiquities, told NBC News.“They were worried about living a good life and understanding the world,” he added.Previous attempts to unwrap the scrolls, discovered in the ruins of a Herculaneum villa thought to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, have produced mixed results.In the 18th century, an Italian monk, Father Antonio Piaggio, invented a device to gently unroll the...