Writing seen in PHerc. 306B, for the first time in 2000 years

67 points by benbreen 22 hours ago on hackernews | 8 comments

efitz | an hour ago

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

ldite | an hour ago

"Sufficiently advanced technology" indeed

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

embedding-shape | 27 minutes 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")

baoooooooooooo | 50 minutes 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.

jiehong | 44 minutes 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

An unknown number of them were also allegedly burned for heat as they were mistaken for wood logs during early excavations
Amazing work. Makes you wonder what else is out there holding a record of the past, with us too primitive to read it.
Pherc 306B A12B when?