Hundreds of years ago, in 79 AD in Italy A massive volcanic eruption destroyed the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae happened. This disaster, which occurred during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, is still talked about even today… But imagine a piece of parchment that survived that disaster and could still be read hundreds of years later, even if it was charred.

This situation arose as a result of a project that has been running for many years. Vesuvius Challenge An important threshold was recently crossed in a years-long competition to read the papyri in a gigantic library affected by the disaster.

It can shed light on the lost pages of history

It is believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law and was found after a volcanic eruption. Under a gigantic layer of 20 meters In a huge mansion there is also a library with hundreds of papyri. The papyri in this library are very valuable because, even though they are carbonized, they are preserved in a sense because they do not come into contact with air.

This naturally led researchers to develop new ways to read them. Many important steps have been taken so far in the competition called Vesuvius Challenge, which was held in this direction, but the good news came recently and the first word was read!

A participant named Luke Farritor from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln wrote in a few lines of the rolled papyrus: including expressions ”πορϕυρας” meaning ‘purple’ He developed a machine learning algorithm that detects Greek letters. The success achieved shows that hundreds of rolls can be scanned and read with even more advanced algorithms. Farritor will also receive a $40,000 reward for his success…

There are also participants who contribute to the process by identifying different letters in the context of the competition and achieving different successes in the scanning and analysis processes. If you want, you can view the details of all these projects and the exciting story behind the project here.