Latest news with #MladenPopović
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Some Dead Sea Scrolls may be even older than archaeologists thought, new study finds
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the most widely known archaeological finds of all time, may be older than once thought, according to a new study. The fresh analysis, which paired radiocarbon dating with artificial intelligence, determined some of the biblical manuscripts date to about 2,300 years ago, when their presumed authors lived, said Mladen Popović, lead author of the report published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One. Bedouin shepherds first spotted the scrolls by chance in the Judaean Desert, near the Dead Sea, in 1947. Archaeologists then recovered thousands of fragments belonging to hundreds of manuscripts from 11 caves, all near the site of Khirbat Qumran in what is now the West Bank. 'The Dead Sea Scrolls were extremely important when they were discovered, because they completely changed the way we think about ancient Judaism and early Christianity,' said Popović, who is also dean of the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. 'Out of around 1,000 manuscripts, a bit more than 200 are what we call biblical Old Testament, and they are the oldest copies we have of the Hebrew Bible. They gave us a lot of information about what the text looked like back then.' The scrolls are like a time machine, according to Popović, because they let scholars see what people were reading, writing and thinking at the time. 'They are physical, tangible evidence of a period of history that is crucial — whether you're Christian, Jewish or don't believe at all, because the Bible is one of the most influential books in the history of the world, so the scrolls allow us to study it as a form of cultural evolution,' he said. Almost none of the Dead Sea Scrolls — which were written mostly in Hebrew on parchment and papyrus — have dates on them. Based primarily on paleography, the study and deciphering of ancient writing and manuscripts, scholars have believed the manuscripts range from the third century BC to the second century AD. 'But now, with our project, we have to date some manuscripts already to the end of the fourth century BCE,' he said, meaning that the earliest scrolls could be up to 100 years older than previously thought. 'That's really exciting because it opens up new possibilities to think about how these texts were written and how they moved to other users and readers — outside of their original authors and their social circles,' Popović added. The findings will not only inspire further studies and affect historical reconstructions, according to the authors of the report, but will also unlock new prospects in the analysis of historical manuscripts. Earlier estimates of the manuscripts' age came from radiocarbon dating conducted in the 1990s. Chemist Willard Libby developed this method — used to ascertain the age of organic materials — in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago. Also known as carbon 14 dating, a chemical analysis of a sample, such as a fossil or manuscript, determines the quantity of carbon 14 atoms it contains. All living organisms absorb this element, but it starts to decay as soon as death occurs, so looking at how much is left can give a fairly accurate age of an organic specimen as old as about 60,000 years. Carbon dating has downsides, however. The analyzed sample is destroyed during the process, and some results can be misleading. 'The problem with earlier tests (on the scrolls) is that they didn't address the issue of castor oil,' Popović said. 'Castor oil is a modern invention, and it was used in the 1950s by the original scholars to make the text more legible. But it's a modern contaminant, and it skews the radiocarbon result to a much more modern date.' The study team first used new radiocarbon dating, applying more modern techniques, on 30 manuscripts, which revealed that most of them were older than previously thought. Only two were younger. The researchers then used high-resolution images of these newly dated documents to train an AI they developed, called Enoch after the Biblical figure who was the father of Methuselah. The scientists presented Enoch with more documents they had carbon-dated, but withheld the dating information, and the AI correctly guessed the age 85% of the time, according to Popović. 'In a number of cases, the AI even gave a narrower date range for the manuscripts than the carbon 14 did,' he said. Next, Popović and his colleagues fed Enoch more images from 135 different Dead Sea Scrolls that were not carbon-dated and asked the AI to estimate their age. The scientists rated the results as 'realistic' or 'unrealistic,' based on their own paleographic experience, and found that Enoch had given realistic results on 79% of the samples. Some of the manuscripts in the study were found to be 50 to 100 years older than formerly thought, Popović said. One sample from a scroll known to contain verse from the Book of Daniel was once believed to date to the second century BC. 'That was a generation after the original author,' Popović said, 'and now with the carbon 14, we securely move it (further back) to the time of the author.' Another manuscript, with verses from the Book of Ecclesiastes, also dates older, Popović added. 'The manuscript was previously dated on paleographic grounds to 175 to 125 BCE, but now Enoch suggests 300 to 240 BCE,' he said. Eventually, artificial intelligence could supplant carbon 14 as a method of dating manuscripts, Popović suggested. 'Carbon 14 is destructive,' he said, 'because you need to cut off a little piece of the Dead Sea Scroll, and then it's gone. It's only 7 milligrams, but it's still stuff that you lose. With Enoch, you don't have to do any of this. This a first step. There are all sorts of possibilities to improve Enoch further.' If the team pushes forward with Enoch's development, Popović believes it could be used to assess scripts such as Syriac, Arabic, Greek and Latin. Scholars who were not involved with the study were encouraged by the findings. Having both AI and an enhanced carbon 14 dating method allows a level of calibration across both methodologies that is helpful, according to Charlotte Hempel, a professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. 'The pronounced pattern seems to be that AI offers a narrower window within the Carbon 14 window,' she said via email. 'I wonder whether this suggests a higher level of precision, which would be extremely exciting.' The study represents a first attempt to harness AI technology to extend existing scientific knowledge from carbon 14 dating of certain manuscripts to other manuscripts, said Lawrence H. Schiffman, Global Distinguished Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. 'To some extent, it is not yet clear whether or not the new method will provide us with reliable information on texts that have not yet been Carbon-14 dated,' he added via email. 'The interesting comments regarding revision of the dating of some manuscripts that may be expected through further development of this approach or new carbon-14 dating, while not new to this study, constitute a very important observation about the field of Dead Sea Scrolls in general.' Commenting on the computational aspects of the study, Brent Seales, the Alumni Professor of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky, said the approach taken by the authors seems rigorous even if the sample sizes are small. Using AI to completely replace carbon dating may be premature, however. '(AI) is a useful tool to incorporate into the broader picture, and to make estimates in the absence of Carbon-14 based on the witness of other similar fragments,' Seales wrote in an email. 'Like everything with machine learning, and like a fine wine, it should get better over time and with more samples. The dating of ancient manuscripts is an extremely difficult problem, with sparse data and heavy constraints on access and expertise. Bravo to the team for this data-driven contribution that takes a massive step forward.'
CNN
5 days ago
- Science
- CNN
AI analysis of ancient handwriting gives new age estimates for Dead Sea Scrolls
Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the most widely known archaeological finds of all time, may be older than once thought, according to a new study. The fresh analysis, which paired radiocarbon dating with artificial intelligence, determined some of the biblical manuscripts date to about 2,300 years ago, when their presumed authors lived, said Mladen Popović, lead author of the report published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One. Bedouin shepherds first spotted the scrolls by chance in the Judaean Desert, near the Dead Sea, in 1947. Archaeologists then recovered thousands of fragments belonging to hundreds of manuscripts from 11 caves, all near the site of Khirbat Qumran in what is now the West Bank. 'The Dead Sea Scrolls were extremely important when they were discovered, because they completely changed the way we think about ancient Judaism and early Christianity,' said Popović, who is also dean of the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. 'Out of around 1,000 manuscripts, a bit more than 200 are what we call biblical Old Testament, and they are the oldest copies we have of the Hebrew Bible. They gave us a lot of information about what the text looked like back then.' The scrolls are like a time machine, according to Popović, because they let scholars see what people were reading, writing and thinking at the time. 'They are physical, tangible evidence of a period of history that is crucial — whether you're Christian, Jewish or don't believe at all, because the Bible is one of the most influential books in the history of the world, so the scrolls allow us to study it as a form of cultural evolution,' he said. Almost none of the Dead Sea Scrolls — which were written mostly in Hebrew on parchment and papyrus — have dates on them. Based primarily on paleography, the study and deciphering of ancient writing and manuscripts, scholars have believed the manuscripts range from the third century BC to the second century AD. 'But now, with our project, we have to date some manuscripts already to the end of the fourth century BCE,' he said, meaning that the earliest scrolls could be up to 100 years older than previously thought. 'That's really exciting because it opens up new possibilities to think about how these texts were written and how they moved to other users and readers — outside of their original authors and their social circles,' Popović added. The findings will not only inspire further studies and affect historical reconstructions, according to the authors of the report, but will also unlock new prospects in the analysis of historical manuscripts. Earlier estimates of the manuscripts' age came from radiocarbon dating conducted in the 1990s. Chemist Willard Libby developed this method — used to ascertain the age of organic materials — in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago. Also known as carbon 14 dating, a chemical analysis of a sample, such as a fossil or manuscript, determines the quantity of carbon 14 atoms it contains. All living organisms absorb this element, but it starts to decay as soon as death occurs, so looking at how much is left can give a fairly accurate age of an organic specimen as old as about 60,000 years. Carbon dating has downsides, however. The analyzed sample is destroyed during the process, and some results can be misleading. 'The problem with earlier tests (on the scrolls) is that they didn't address the issue of castor oil,' Popović said. 'Castor oil is a modern invention, and it was used in the 1950s by the original scholars to make the text more legible. But it's a modern contaminant, and it skews the radiocarbon result to a much more modern date.' The study team first used new radiocarbon dating, applying more modern techniques, on 30 manuscripts, which revealed that most of them were older than previously thought. Only two were younger. The researchers then used high-resolution images of these newly dated documents to train an AI they developed, called Enoch after the Biblical figure who was the father of Methuselah. The scientists presented Enoch with more documents they had carbon-dated, but withheld the dating information, and the AI correctly guessed the age 85% of the time, according to Popović. 'In a number of cases, the AI even gave a narrower date range for the manuscripts than the carbon 14 did,' he said. Next, Popović and his colleagues fed Enoch more images from 135 different Dead Sea Scrolls that were not carbon-dated and asked the AI to estimate their age. The scientists rated the results as 'realistic' or 'unrealistic,' based on their own paleographic experience, and found that Enoch had given realistic results on 79% of the samples. Some of the manuscripts in the study were found to be 50 to 100 years older than formerly thought, Popović said. One sample from a scroll known to contain verse from the Book of Daniel was once believed to date to the second century BC. 'That was a generation after the original author,' Popović said, 'and now with the carbon 14, we securely move it (further back) to the time of the author.' Another manuscript, with verses from the Book of Ecclesiastes, also dates older, Popović added. 'The manuscript was previously dated on paleographic grounds to 175 to 125 BCE, but now Enoch suggests 300 to 240 BCE,' he said. Eventually, artificial intelligence could supplant carbon 14 as a method of dating manuscripts, Popović suggested. 'Carbon 14 is destructive,' he said, 'because you need to cut off a little piece of the Dead Sea Scroll, and then it's gone. It's only 7 milligrams, but it's still stuff that you lose. With Enoch, you don't have to do any of this. This a first step. There are all sorts of possibilities to improve Enoch further.' If the team pushes forward with Enoch's development, Popović believes it could be used to assess scripts such as Syriac, Arabic, Greek and Latin. Scholars who were not involved with the study were encouraged by the findings. Having both AI and an enhanced carbon 14 dating method allows a level of calibration across both methodologies that is helpful, according to Charlotte Hempel, a professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. 'The pronounced pattern seems to be that AI offers a narrower window within the Carbon 14 window,' she said via email. 'I wonder whether this suggests a higher level of precision, which would be extremely exciting.' The study represents a first attempt to harness AI technology to extend existing scientific knowledge from carbon 14 dating of certain manuscripts to other manuscripts, said Lawrence H. Schiffman, Global Distinguished Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. 'To some extent, it is not yet clear whether or not the new method will provide us with reliable information on texts that have not yet been Carbon-14 dated,' he added via email. 'The interesting comments regarding revision of the dating of some manuscripts that may be expected through further development of this approach or new carbon-14 dating, while not new to this study, constitute a very important observation about the field of Dead Sea Scrolls in general.' Commenting on the computational aspects of the study, Brent Seales, the Alumni Professor of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky, said the approach taken by the authors seems rigorous even if the sample sizes are small. Using AI to completely replace carbon dating may be premature, however. '(AI) is a useful tool to incorporate into the broader picture, and to make estimates in the absence of Carbon-14 based on the witness of other similar fragments,' Seales wrote in an email. 'Like everything with machine learning, and like a fine wine, it should get better over time and with more samples. The dating of ancient manuscripts is an extremely difficult problem, with sparse data and heavy constraints on access and expertise. Bravo to the team for this data-driven contribution that takes a massive step forward.'
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Many Dead Sea Scrolls may be older than experts thought, AI analysis suggests
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls may be older than experts thought, according to an artificial intelligence (AI) analysis. Consisting of about 1,000 ancient manuscripts etched onto animal skin, papyrus and copper, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain the earliest known versions of texts from the Hebrew Bible — including copies of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, Kings and Deuteronomy — and date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D. Now, scientists have used an AI program, dubbed Enoch, to analyze the handwriting patterns on the scrolls, revealing that they may be older than experts thought. The study authors say their findings, published June 4 in the journal PLOS One, are a significant step in dating some of the earliest versions of the Bible. However, not all experts are convinced. "With the Enoch tool we have opened a new door into the ancient world, like a time machine, that allows us to study the hands that wrote the Bible," lead study author Mladen Popović, director of the Qumran Institute at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said in a statement. "Especially now that we have established, for the first time, that two biblical scroll fragments come from the time of their presumed authors." Discovered by Bedouin shepherds inside the West Bank's caves of Qumran from 1946 to 1947, the ancient manuscripts range from legal documents and calendars to sections of the Hebrew Bible and psalms, written mostly in Hebrew but also in Aramaic and Greek. Previous dating of the scrolls relied on paleography — the study of ancient writing systems — with some undergoing radiocarbon dating in the 1990s. However, castor oil had been applied to some of the manuscripts in modern times to improve their legibility. This oil is also a contaminant that can disrupt radiocarbon dating, so the results from these techniques remain a topic of debate. Related: Ancient 'curse tablet' may show earliest Hebrew name of God In an attempt to clear things up, the researchers first cleaned 30 samples from different manuscripts to remove the castor oil, before successfully radiocarbon-dating 27 of them. They found that two of these scroll fragments were younger than past analyses suggested but that other fragments were older. Then, the scientists set about creating their Enoch AI model. Enoch was trained on the handwriting of 24 of the newly dated manuscripts and their radiocarbon dates. After verifying the model with 13 further selected images from the same manuscripts, the researchers presented it with 135 undated manuscripts. They found that it agreed with the estimates made by scholars 79% of the time. Yet the results for the remaining 21% of the scrolls point to a mystery, with Enoch giving them a range of dates that could make them older, hard to determine, or even a century younger than initial estimates. They also suggest that two different writing styles, known as the Hasmonean and Herodian scripts (named after the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty and Herod, the Roman client king, respectively), could have overlapped for longer than previously thought. Nonetheless, Enoch also corroborates earlier paleography, notably for a scroll titled 4Q114, which contains three chapters from the Book of Daniel. Analysts initially estimated 4Q114's writing to have been inked during the height of the Maccabee uprising in 165 B.C. (a part of the Hanukkah story) due to its description of Antiochus IV's desecration of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The AI model's estimate also falls within this range, between 230 B.C. and 160 B.C. But for some paleographers, the results are hardly surprising. RELATED STORIES —2,700-year-old archaeological site in Jordan may be a biblical place visited by King David —20 of the most bizarre stories from the Bible —Ancient Yahweh worshipper's jar bears Hebrew script in biblical city "The results of this study are very interesting, and presumably important, but not Earth-shattering," Christopher Rollston,a professor and chair of biblical and Near Eastern languages and civilizations at The George Washington University, told Live Science in an email. "Most of the conclusions of this article also dovetail with what the great palaeographers in the field, such as the late Frank Moore Cross, had already stated more than 60 years ago." Rollston also criticized the notion that the new tool could enable researchers to "study the hands that wrote the Bible" as "at the very least, gross hyperbole." No manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible date to the First Temple period (circa 1200 to 586 B.C.), when it was originally composed, or to the early parts of the Second Temple period (538 B.C. to A.D. 70), he said. He noted that AI can be useful, but it should only be one of many techniques used to study ancient texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls. "Enoch could and should never be the only tool in the toolbox of someone wishing to determine the date for the writing of a manuscript. After all, human handwriting, and all of its variations and idiosyncratic features, is a deeply human thing," Rollston added. "Machines can be helpful in isolating features of a script, but the presence of a gifted palaeographer is at least as valuable as a machine-learning tool."
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Dead Sea Scrolls aged decades older by AI-powered discovery
'The implications are profound,' said Dr. Maruf Dhali, assistant professor of AI at Groningen and co‐author of the study. An international team led by the University of Groningen has combined radiocarbon dating, paleographic analysis and artificial intelligence to assign more precise dates to individual Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts, showing many are significantly older than previously believed. Using a deep‐learning model called Enoch, researchers input digitized images of 135 scroll fragments and trained the system to recognize microscopic ink‐trace patterns, such as curvature and character shape, alongside new radiocarbon results for 24 samples. By correlating these handwriting features with empirically established dates, the team narrowed dating uncertainty to roughly ±30 years, outperforming conventional radiocarbon ranges for the period of 300–50 BCE. Until now, most Dead Sea Scrolls had been broadly placed between the third century BCE and the second century CE based on paleography alone, a method that lacked solid empirical markers. 'There simply were no securely dated Hebrew or Aramaic manuscripts from the late Hellenistic era against which to compare,' explained Professor Mladen Popović, director of the Qumran Institute at Groningen. 'Our approach bridges that gap by using 24 radiocarbon‐anchored examples to give an objective timecode for handwriting styles.' BiNet, an earlier neural network that the Groningen group developed to detect handwritten ink traces, formed the foundation of Enoch's architecture. Once trained, Enoch produced date predictions that aligned remarkably closely with radiocarbon results—and, in some cases, suggested scrolls written in 'Hasmonaean‐type' script may date to decades earlier than the approximate 150–50 BCE range. Similarly, Herodian‐style fragments appear to have emerged in the late second century BCE rather than the mid‐first century BCE, indicating concurrent script traditions rather than a simple evolutionary sequence. 'The implications are profound,' said Dr. Maruf Dhali, assistant professor of artificial intelligence at Groningen and co‐author of the study published this week in PLOS One. 'With empirical evidence now anchoring paleographic analysis, scholars can revisit longstanding questions about when particular biblical texts circulated—and how these scripts relate to political and cultural shifts in ancient Judea.' Indeed, two biblical fragments—4QDanielc (4Q114) and 4QQoheleta (4Q109)—were shown by Enoch and new radiocarbon dates to originate roughly in the early 160s BCE and third century BCE respectively, matching the eras their anonymous authors likely composed the Books of Daniel and Ecclesiastes. 'This is the first tangible proof that portions of Daniel and Qohelet were penned contemporaneously with their presumed scribes,' noted Popović. 'It opens a window into the production of biblical literature at its very source.' Researchers stressed that Enoch does not replace human paleographers but augments their expertise with quantitative, explainable AI inferences. 'Within a few decades, we could use this model to date more than a thousand additional scroll fragments,' said Popović. 'The resulting new chronology will reshape our understanding of literacy, script development, and textual transmission in the eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and early Roman eras.' Buddy Christ, an associate curator at the Israel Antiquities Authority who was not involved in the study, praised the advance: 'Marrying radiocarbon science with AI‐driven handwriting analysis represents a major leap forward. We now have a roadmap for dating unlabeled manuscripts across the Judean Desert corpus—and beyond.' The Enoch method could also be applied to other partially dated collections, such as Greek papyri or medieval European codices, providing a template for empirically grounded paleography. As the next step, Popović's team plans to make Enoch publicly accessible so that scholars worldwide can upload digitized manuscripts and receive probabilistic date estimates. For now, the Dead Sea Scrolls—drawing renewed attention thanks to this breakthrough—remain as historically vital as ever. With a precise 'timecode' now embedded in their script, the scrolls promise fresh insights into the political upheavals, theological debates, and cultural transformations that shaped the Jewish and early Christian worlds.
DW
04-06-2025
- General
- DW
AI finds Dead Sea Scrolls are older than first thought – DW – 06/04/2025
An AI trained on radiocarbon dating suggests some Dead Sea Scrolls might be older than previously thought. The findings could reshape our understanding of Judaism and early Christianity. An AI program trained to study the handwriting styles of ancient manuscripts suggests many of the Dead Sea Scrolls might be older than previously thought. The study is the latest in a new era of antiquity studies which use AI to reveal the secrets written on frayed and crumbling scrolls. The new method combines AI, radiocarbon dating, and handwriting analysis to more accurately estimate an ancient text's age. The proposed redating of some scrolls could reshape our understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and of Judaism and early Christianity, the authors say. "It is very exciting to set a significant step into solving the dating problem of the Dead Sea Scrolls and also creating a new tool that could be used to study other partially dated manuscript collections from history," said study author Mladen Popović from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. The study appeared today in the journal Plos One. Radiocarbon dating and AI analysis of handwriting The Dead Sea Scrolls, the first of which were discovered in a cave in Israel in 1947, are the most momentous manuscript discovery of the past hundred years. There are around 1,000 manuscripts in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Among them are some of the oldest known copies of texts from the Hebrew Bible. Studies of these manuscripts have profoundly changed understanding of the origins of Christianity and the formation of post-biblical Judaism Dating these manuscripts with paleography — the study of ancient handwriting — reveals them to have been written over several hundred years between 250BCE and 100CE. However, scholars have struggled to analyze ancient texts, particularly distinguishing one writer's style from another, meaning dating isn't very reliable. The researchers aimed to improve analytical methods by using AI to study handwriting and cross reference this data with radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating estimates the age of materials by measuring carbon-14 isotopes that slowly disappear over time. "The advantage of the [AI] model is that it provides quantified objectivity to palaeography, reducing the method's subjectivity," the authors write. An AI model was first trained on 24 manuscripts with reliable radiocarbon dating. The authors then used this AI model to analyze the handwriting style of 135 scrolls with unknown dates spanning three centuries from around 200BCE to 100CE. This created a better way of dating written manuscripts with 79% accuracy, according to the analysis. "This novel approach allowed [the researchers] to combine historical expertise with technical precision," said Thea Sommerschield and Yannis Assael, who previously developed AI tools for the study of ancient texts at the University of Oxford, UK. Sommerschield and Assael were not involved in the study. Tomorrow Today — The Science Show To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video New Dead Sea Scroll chronology The authors believe their analysis could lead to a new chronology of the scrolls. If verified, it would change understanding of the history of ancient Judea and the people who wrote the texts. The AI analysis found the manuscripts are older than previous estimates overall, suggesting dates in the early second century BCE, and sometimes slightly earlier. Scholars often assume that the rise and expansion of the Hasmonaean kingdom from the mid-second century BCE onward caused a rise in "literacy scribal intellectual culture." The authors say their findings suggest that scribes were copying multiple literary manuscripts before this period. Sommerschield and Assael say the new study shows AI could be used to provide more accurate dating of other ancient texts. "This new study shows that computational tools don't diminish the role of human expertise, they enhance it, opening new paths for discovery in even the most well-studied texts," they said in a joint email to DW. Antiquity scholars believe they are on the brink of a new era of because of AI. Other researchers have been using AI to translate ancient texts that have been vexing ancient scholars for decades. Edited by: Matthew Ward Agius
