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70 ancient books hidden in a cave for nearly 2,000 years
Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 2:01 pm
by High Lord Tolkien
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-137274 ... books.html
Interesting article.
Lots of pics so I'm just posting the link.
Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 3:34 pm
by Hashi Lebwohl
Right now there seem to be many unanswered questions about the authenticity of the books, including "exactly when were they found?" and "by whom were they found?". Still...the guy that currently owns several of them doesn't appear to be motivated by money--he has been offered tens of millions of pounds sterling for them but has turned down the offers.
Curiously, samples of the metal have been sent to two independent and world-renowned metallurgical laboratories. They have both confirmed that the metal is consistent with other metallic objects known to be from that era, that the metal also seems to originate from that area (you can tell a metal's place of origin by the trace elements in it), and that the corrosion doesn't appear to be modern.
So...on the surface it doesn't appear that these are fakes but it will take years before enough experts agree that the items are authentic. After that, it will take more years before enough experts agree about the translation of the characters and the meaning of the images.
The next step is for them to start taking high-resolution photographs of the metallic plates under various light wavelenghts (pure white light, natural sunlight, near-infrared, far-infrared, ultraviolet, and even x-ray).
Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 4:36 am
by Avatar
That is pretty interesting. Would love to know what they say.
--A
Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:01 am
by Worm of Despite
Avatar wrote:That is pretty interesting. Would love to know what they say.
--A
"Invent toilet paper soon. Thanks."