#VesuviusChallenge

💡 The Light: The "Digital Rosetta Stone" AI is doing what human eyes cannot: seeing the invisible and connecting the impossible. Virtual Unwrapping: This is the tech used on the Herculaneum scrolls. We use particle accelerators (synchrotrons) to scan the scrolls, and AI maps the distorted layers of paper, flattening them out mathematically. We can now read books that were considered lost forever (new poems by Sappho? Lost plays of Sophocles?). Cracking Unknown Codes: There are languages like "Linear A" (Ancient Minoan) that no human has deciphered. AI treats language like a giant math puzzle. By analyzing patterns in known languages, it can predict the meaning of unknown symbols with startling accuracy. Preserving Endangered Dialects: It's not just about the dead. AI is being used to record and learn indigenous languages spoken by only a few elders, creating a "digital ark" before they vanish.

Resurrecting Dead Languages: How AI Deciphers Unreadable Scrolls

🏛️ The Scene The year is 79 AD. Mount Vesuvius erupts, burying the library of Herculaneum under 20 meters of volcanic ash. Thousands of papyrus scrolls are instantly carbonized—turned into lumps of charcoal. For 2,000 years, they sat in a museum. If you try to open them, they turn to dust. They are unreadable, silent, dead. Now, cut to 2024. A 21-year-old computer science student sits in his dorm room. He isn't an archaeologist. He downloads a 3D X-ray scan of the charcoal s

📜 Foundations & History of AI