Long before Wite - Out was formulate , people still find ways to get a second chance at reprocess a airfoil .
Medieval scribesscraped the ink offsheets of animal pelt to reuse the pages . hatful of artist havepainted overone image with another .
And now scientists have an model from the Americas as well , as reported ina new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science : account .
An image from the study shows what the scans revealed beneath two pages (top), and what the reconstruction of those pages looks like (bottom).Snijders, Zaman, and Howell, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. Volume 9, October 2016, pp. 143–149.
There are onlya handfulof manuscripts remaining from before Europeans derive to the continent . They ’re made of leather strips coated with white plaster - like heart called gesso .
The one the researchers learn is called the Codex Selden , and scholars have been fishy for decades now that the book is hide something beneath its surface .
But the Mixtec masses who created the manuscript used inks made from plant life materials . That stand for there have n’t been any techniques that would give researchers the equivalent weight of go - re vision , countenance them see a hidden image without destroying the open of the ms as we know it .
A somewhat new technique calledhyperspectral imagingchanged that . It allow research worker take very high - resolution images at many different wavelength of light . Those figure can then be add together and subtract against each other to reveal the trace beneath a manuscript ’s surface .
The rare record book community has been using it for the retiring couple years on a range of texts like the Archimedes Palimpsest , a suffer manuscript of Archimedes hide out behind a13th - C religious text , andthe first mapto have the Bible " America " on it .
But this is the first pre - Columbian school text to be scanned with hyperspectral imagery .
An image from the study shows what the scans revealed beneath two pages ( top ) , and what the reconstructive memory of those pages looks like ( bottom).Snijders , Zaman , and Howell , Journal of Archaeological Science : report . intensity 9 , October 2016 , pp . 143–149 .
What the scans uncover
The researchers have n’t yet scanned all the varlet , and mention inthe paperthat interpretation ca n’t really happen until the entire holograph is scanned .
But they were still able to identify individual people in the original textbook . As they read more , they may be able to connect those fibre with historic figure .
While the schoolbook has n’t been translated , it ’s still exciting for a couple different reason . Of of course , when you have fewer than two twelve manuscripts from an entire region and period in history , any additions are exciting for scholars .
But from these early scan , the researchers were able to figure out that the hide holograph is a different trend from any of the others that have survived . That means it could offernew perspectiveon archaeologic see from the area . The hidden school text also flows sideways across varlet spread , rather than from bottom to top the way the manuscript on the surface does .
Now that they ’ve confirmed there ’s more to see under the surface , researchers are hoping the rest of the book of account can be scanned and even that these pages can be revisit with stronger visible radiation at different wavelengths to better understand the book and its history .
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