Mark Whittington points out an interesting application of space imaging technology to archaeology.

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

Recovery of ancient texts via infrared scanning -- brought to you by the mad scientists of the dreaded Military Industrial Complex™!

(And is it just me, or is there a striking similarity between this story and the technical premise of James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars?)

Posted by T.L. James on April 17, 2005 11:36 AM