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Archimedes' Lost Words Yield To RIT Scientists
cCranium writes: "Scientists at Rochester University have apparently restored the only known copy of Archimedes' original text, describing his theory of floatation of bodies."
From the article: "They're able to do this because every mark the Greek mathematician made on the vellum parchment, a writing surface made from animal skin, left a residue that can be uncovered even a millennium later." Now if you had some of Archimedes' writings around the house, would you erase them so you could resuse the paper?! Priorities sure change, I guess. [Updated 12 July 3:44GMT by timothy] As many people have pointed out, the submission's phrasing is incorrect; Rochester University is a different school. The ongoing work on Archimede's manuscript is being done at Rochester Institute of Technology, as per the headline. [Updated 12 July 17:01 GMT by timothy] Sigh. As even more people have pointed out, that's "University of Rochester," not "Rochester University." All set? :)
How will we ever preserve things for future generations with our current technologies?
This is a very interesting question indeed. We're spending enourmous amounts of resources on restoring old paper records, yet we store much of our current data on media that degrades even faster than paper. Very few organizations consider this at all, unless they actively need the data on a regular basis. I'll bet a lot of data is currently archived on tapes that will degrade before anyone needs them again.
Another thing that can keep data accessible is increased storage needs: At the Danish Meteorological Institute where I sysadmin'ed at one point, they need to access their terabytes of old weather data for research projects. More importantly, they store more and more weather data, and so their storage needs grow fast enough that they actually migrate all existing data to a new tape system every 10 years at the very least. This is unfortunately rare.
An ironic thing about this whole data preservation problem: With privacy being such a hot topic, it's interesting to note that the data being compiled by DoubleClick and their ilk is exactly the kind of data that future historians would love to get their hands on! Is our privacy more important than future generations? I know, a spurious question, but it leads to an important point: Historians are increasingly focusing their efforts on discovering how the common man/woman lived. Data about these things is as important to preserve as headlines and politics. This kind of data is currently being collected (and massively, at that), but is it preserved? Will anyone want to make that data live on when DoubleClick dies, if the data isn't personally identifiable?
Also, somewhat off-topic, current IP legislation means that copyright lasts longer than most media. This is definitely not helping us preserve our cultural heritage.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
Many ancient Greek writings would be lost to history if not for Arab scholars. Because there were no printing presses a few thousand years ago, maintaining the writings of Hippocrates, Archimedes, and other ancient Greeks required that their texts be rewritten by hand from time to time. Once the Greek civilization began it's decline there simply wasn't anyone with the time, inclination, or resources to devote to the maintenance of these great texts. Luckily for us today many of these texts were taken to the Middle East, where Arab scholars recognized their lasting value and maintained them for centuries.
By the time historical interest in ancient Greece began to resurface (a few hundred years ago), the Arab copies were the only sizeable collection of ancient Greek literature left in existence. Because of that, practically all of the Greek literature we read today has gone through several langage translations which can, unfortunately, distort the original meaning of the texts(eg. Greek>Arab>Latin>English).
Finding an original Greek text (or Greek language copy) is a GREAT find for historians because it will allow us to examine the writings without worrying about misinterpretations and other unintentional distortions.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
I'm not sure which connotations you mean, but you may have misunderstood my stance. I fully believe that people are capable of great leaps and momentus thoughts. I simply don't believe that many of the "great men" history credits with changing the world were actually nessaccary or sufficient to do so.
For instance, I spent one semester studying the life and writings of Martin Luther, generally credited with most of the protestant reformation. I certainly would say that he was a great thinker, and had made great intellectual/faith leaps. However, my final paper argued that he was not nessaccary or sufficient for the reformation. That is, the reformation would have happened without him (several other theologins had similar ideas in the same 50 year time period) and had he lived a few hundred years earlier, his ideas alone would not have brought about the reformation (technological, economic and political developments all made his heresey possible.)
So rejecting the "great man" view of history doesn't mean that I don't believe in great men (or women) it just means that in most cases where history gives one man or woman credit for a major change, I find that a careful examination shows that without that great person, another equally as great would have emerged, and had that great person been born 100 years earlier or later, they would not have had the impact they did.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
"Fell behind a copier"
Agreed, and I wasnt holding up one over the other, thats not my place since I'm a member of neither :) - it was simply that one religion lent itself to reactionary behaviour of one kind and the other to a different emphasis. In both cases it was not the faith that encouraged the reactionary behaviour but the politics associated with it. The reason I found it interesting was that whilst both cultures had their reactionary episodes, the results in each one were very different.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
This is a big worry of mine, too. I've spent the last several years keying in several thousand pages of manuscript. How do I preserve this file now?
CDR's have limited lifespans -- not much better than floppies for the cheaper varieties -- and laser printer output is heat sensitive. (Doubt me? Put a hundred pages of printouts in a car on a hot summer day -- the toner melts and sticks the pages together.) Inkjet is actually a bit more reliable than you suggest. Sure, it's water soluble and not lightfast, but the same is true of 5,000-year-old Egyptian papyri. The paper, on the other hand, may disintegrate because of acid content, and who knows about the acidity of all those secret ink formulas?
IMHO, this is a very big problem as we rush to move everything over to digital media. I can't think of a single commonly-available digital format that doesn't have a much shorter shelf-life than traditional media. Your vinyl records will still be playable centuries after your CDs oxidize. Even acid-rich greenbar printouts will outlast their magnetic-media sources by decades.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
To pick even more nits, Archimedes integrated volume of sphere, though he didn't prove any theorems about it. He was so proud of it he asked to make a relevant drawing on his tomb (an ancient equivalent of FIRST POST, or something). Newton and Leibnitz were great, but Archimedes 0wnz them both.
The inverse, differentiation, came much later (generally attributed to Fermat or Barrow, early - mid C17th). The two ideas were then related and developed into a unified theory calculus independently by Newton and Leibniz. The grudge developed because both wanted to claim to have been the first to 'invent' it - evidence now indicates that Newton did the work first, but Leibniz pulished first.
What we now term calculus uses methods based primarily on Newton's theory and notation based on Leibniz's work.
Source for text
Other links of interest.....
Where link was located
More info
My point was that other sources exist, I know the arabic scholars created a vast wealth of knowledge, but translations from the greek were made at much later dates than that which we base our work on.
HTH
Working for the (other) man
"I wonder how much more would be left of the great library at Alexandrea hadn't been the worlds greatest book burning
party."
I'm betting that the whole contents of that library would fit on a CD-ROM.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
What we now term calculus uses methods based primarily on Newton's theory and notation based on Leibniz's work.
Actually, from what I have been told, we use primarily Leibniz for both theory and notation. From my understanding, Newton didn't really have a grasp of the infintesimal, he obviously used it to a degree but his notation doesn't lend itself to the introduction of it, where as Leibniz notation does.
To clarify for those who have had calculus but don't know the difference, Newton used the "prime" notation.
x - variable
x' - first derivative
x'' - second derivative
Leibniz used the d/dx notation.
f(x) - variable with respect to x
df(x)/dx- first derivative
etc...
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Hey, I've been out of school over ten years...you can't expect me to get all the details correct ;) I did break out my old history books though, and you are indeed correct. For a period of time the Arabic scholars were the sole source of ancient Greek texts, but that is no longer true today. I guess I should stick to code and quit quoting history :)
Note to moderators: If there are any moderators still reading this discussion, please feel free to moderate my original post back down to 2. While I appreciate the occasional karma point or four, I really don't deserve points for a factually incorrect comment, no matter how well written it might have been. Chris Lovell and Nicomachus probably deserve a couple points themselves for setting the record straight.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Thank goodness for permenent markers, eh?
Jaeger
http://334.se2600.org
http://jump.to/jaeger
Well, the Colosseum in Rome, along with many
other buildings, had its marble stripped for
recycling into churches etc.
-- You've got to get a hat if you want to get ahead.
Some things change, some stay the same: I just erased my pr0n collection to compile 2.4.0-test3. There's always something you never have enough of.
Now I need more bandwidth to get my pr0n back... ;)
Someone ought to fix that.
...the math demonstrated "the roots of the gravitational theory and modern calculus."
Newton's work on gravitational theory, although started on his own, was fueled by letters from Hooke (the spring man). Acording to a lecture givin by an expert on Newtons life, Hooke was working on gravitational theory, trying to solve Keplers laws, by use of geometry and was hitting some problems and sent some letters to Newton. Newton at the time was only considered the greatest geometrist around (he hadn't published calculus yet), Hooke was asking for some help with his math. Apparently Newton sent back a letter with a few calculations of his own on gravitational theory, almost mocking Hookes attempts to create a theory of gravity. Hooke continued to ask for help, sending more letters with more of his work, and apparently Newton used some of his ideas. If Hooke had been a better mathematician, it might have been Hookes theory of gravity.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
I followed the link from the news page to a site about Archimedes and they had this pretty cool Cattle Puzzle that Archimedes created.
Well if I was a Greek monk and my choices were hang on to an old Math book or write a prayer book, I'm sure my priority would be the prayer book
It's more likely that the text was wiped because writings by Archimedes and others were considered unacceptable at the time. They were either viewed as naive attempts to understand the world (which contemporary thinking claimed was all God's doing), or dangerous sources of heresy.
For a fictional, but highly thought provoking account of what ideas were prevalent at the time check out 'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco. For a more fact based but drier account see any books on the treatment of 'heresy' by the churches of the Middle Ages. I'm a particular fan of books on the Baltic crusades - although it's not very well documented.
Chris
What you have to remember is that books of the time where written on vellum which is prepared from calf skins. Trying to compare values with 1000 years ago isn't easy but cattle where a very valuable resource. Slaughtering them when they're still juvenile just to write something down would be costly. Basically if paper was $100 a sheet, you'd be wanting to reuse it to.
Reuse of vellum was so common, (overwritten documents are called palimplests) it's probably best to think of a monastic library as the monastery's hard drive. Files that are no longer wanted are just erased to make space for new ones.
Hi,
My name is Archimedes. A few moons ago I was nearly in debtors prison, until I came across this simple formula. Now, I am awash in drachma, copper ingots, silver, gold and other precious materials.
If you follow these simple steps, you too can have the wealth of Croesus
I knew I should have posted the whole quote:
They're able to do this because every mark the Greek mathematician made on the vellum parchment,
a writing surface made from animal skin, left a residue that can be uncovered even a millennium later.
Actually, I am wrong though. I originally thought this was a quote from the scholar, but it looks like the reporte can't count his millennia.
That is highly doubtful since they were copied by another Monk just 200 years earlier
The views of the Papacy changed over time just like the views of any other political institution. It just happens that by the Middle Ages the Papacy had started to view it's pagan heritage as a bit of a liability - especially so when their arch-enemies the Muslims were keen on the writings of Greek philosphers, etc.
Chris
If it was considered unacceptable, then why did they make the manuscript in the first place
The lists of authors censured by the Papacy weren't fixed, so the teachings of Archimedes just fell out of favour over time.
Chris
That's an excellent point you make about personal information.
I think it would be perfectly acceptable for the bulk of a persons personal information to be made public at some point in the future.
In the UK all our census details go completely public after 100 years, and as such my parents have a 50 cd set with all the records from the 1881 census.
Whilst the advances in medicine are pushing lifespans beyond 100 years now, I wouldn't be the slightest bit concerned if in 2130 (150 yrs after my birth) all my now confidential details were turned over to historians.
A slight concern could be that in the future details will become more and more accesible. Whilst anyone doing enough research could quite correctly conclude that one of my ancestors was stoned as a witch, it's not the sort of thing people at school would ever research or tease me about.
However with advances in AI etc.. it may soon be possible to just dig up dirt on a person and this is a more frightening concept.
More important is format obsolescence. We may be able to read a 2K-year-old parchment, but how many of us can read a 20-year-old 8" floppy, even if it's in perfect condition? How many CD drives will be around in 20 years? Probably very few, as some new whiz-bang medium will replace CDs a few years from now and some even more whiz-bang medium will make that obsolete in short order.
It's not surprising that it was re-used as a manuscript. Manuscript writing was a great art and a worthwhile hobby for bored monks, practised widely up to the middle of the millenium. A lot of the works were of religious/Christian content, and some were historic (generally sponsored by rich patrons). Vellum, or processed calf skin, was written on using pigments and natural minerals which varied from crushed beetles to lapis lazuli. Frequently, gold leaves were used to emboss ornamental designs.
Perhaps the most famous lost and found manuscript is the book of Kells. Written by Irish monks in the 8th century, it was lost during viking attacks on monastaries, found buried underground and unearthed, and today resides at Trinity College, Dublin. It's regarded as Ireland's national treasure. (BTW, the word "miniature" used to describe these manuscripts has nothing to do with size, but indicates drawn inline images, from Latin miniatus, past participle of miniare, to color with minium, from minium red lead.)
If you get a chance to see manuscripts at a nearby exhibition, don't miss it. They are fabulous. And simply looking at words written centuries ago in ink on parchment is quite an indescribable feeling.
(In related news: one of the greatest wonders of the ancient world was completely recycled. The bronze Collossus of Rhodes was sold as scrap metal.)
Check out this link to look at some of the old manuscripts of mathematics.
w/m
For what it's worth, I believe we're rapidly entering a Dark Ages of our own.
The Internet had the potential to be the greatest tool ever invented for the sharing of knowledge and ideas.
The current governments are hellbent on restricting its use. Look to Britain's RIP, USA's Carnivore, Singapore's and China's filtering, Australia's restrictions and so on.
Look at the use of patents to repress development of competing technologies.
Look at the use of lawsuits to destroy information-sharing, including music, business reporting and political reporting.
Our newspapers are public mindset manipulation tools for big business, television is a pacifier for the masses, and Hollywood is hellbent on rewriting history.
The public, and the American public in particular, is becoming massively misinformed and ever more ignorant of history, business practices and the proper role of government.
If this isn't a Dark Ages, what is?
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
This has been said before, but I feel it needs to be reiterated as previous posters have left out important information.
RIT, where this progress is being made, is the Rochester Institute of Technology.
The University of Rochester, (U of R), is not where this is being done.
The University of Rochester (about 4,000 undergrads) is a higher ranked school than RIT, since it is a national university. It consistently ranks in the top 30 in the oh-so-wonderful US News and World Report. RIT is a regional school (about 8,000 undergrads) but it is one of the top-ranked schools in the northeast. To call it an IT school is being rather harsh, RIT is a technical institute, along the same lines as Caltech and MIT, though RIT isn't as rigorous or demanding as either of those institutions. Contrary to what a previous poster said, RIT does have a computer science degree program. RIT also has a software engineering degree program. There is a large difference, and the school acknowledges this. Both schools are in the same town. They are also practically right next to each other in Rochester (I would know, I've lived in Rochester my entire life).
More on-topic, RIT is able to do such advanced imaging work because Kodak is based in Rochester. The George Eastman house is a historical landmark here in Rochester, and Kodak contributes a great deal to RIT and the U of R, allowing both of them to be at the front of their fields in a great deal of imaging technology. I work with an optical engineer who graduated from the U of R two years ago. RIT has a large film and imaging department. They are both good schools, neither deserves to be slighted.
Course, neither is as good as Caltech. And about U of R students being mad because they're confused with RIT students...don't bitch. I say I go to Caltech and people think I mean ITT tech.
well, now you are changing your premise. Before you were worried that the technologies were not long lasting, but now you are worried that too much stuff will last. I presume that you are looking for a technology that will only keep the good stuff. Hint: don't look on Slashcode :)
I think people wring their hands too much. Sure, we lose a lot from the past as we move forward. What makes this story interesting is that Archimedes stuff is rare. If we kept absolutely everything from the past, in the future this story would read:
That would be a boring world. Much better to treasure rare treasures than banning all throwaways. Imagine: everybody runs yardsales all the time as we shuffle all our old stuff around.Seems appropriate. A lot of information about the lifestyles of early "common people" was retrieved by sifting through piles of garbage where the lack of oxygen to objects deep inside the pile preserved them. I think it would be perfect for the future to learn about our p0rn viewing habits from Doubleclick- the modern equivalent of a massive garbage pile ;)
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
So, where can I get acid-free printer paper (or, vellum that'll fit my printer :-) and an inkjet printer that uses non-water-soluable ink? I'll just make hardcopy backups of everything...
And for binary data, there's mylar tape (like paper tape only on mylar (or some similar tough plastic) so it won't tear. Or perhaps punched cards onto thin sheets of e.g. stainless steel.
Mind, the problem with any storage technology is that durability tends to be inversely proportional to density and read/write time. Hieroglyphs carved on granite may last a long time, but where do I find a SCSI or USB equipped engraver/reader for those?
-- Alastair
"It lies in the Castele..... aghhhhhhhh"
All the more reason to carry on and finish the restoration - Ancient greek science is something we have only dimly been able to view through the distorting lens of several translations preceding the earliest documents in our posession and through the well-intentioned manipulations of monastic editors.
There is abundant evidence that ancient greek society had a far greater understanding of many aspects of the world they lived in that the societies that followed them. Whilst crude by todays standards greek medicine was at a level that was not matched until long after the dark ages. Mathematics in ancient Greece was sufficiently advanced to be the realm of philosophical research and a fundamental tool in their analysis of their world - a level that was not matched in western societies until the time of Galileo.
In contrast the arabic world gladly absorbed all the knowledge the greek philosophers produced and combining it with their own insights went on to build upon it. Why do you think that most of the named stars have names derived from arabic languages?
So why the divergence in the way these societies researched and used their knowledge? The only answer I can come up with is the question of religion. I have to say in advance that I am only commenting on the political aspects of the dominant religions rather than the principles on which they are based - after all I cant expect you to respect my faith if I dont respect yours, right? The catholic church dominated western societies and strongly discouraged questioning the fundamental mechanisms by which the world operated, punishing those who attempted to interfere with "the natural order of things" very harshly. Islamic culture on the other hand whilst it had rigid frameworks of its own was not barred from this kind of investigation. This being the case it was inevitable, purely on political grounds, that the two cultures would collide and the social debris of that collision are still being cleaned up today.
Just as ever more powerful telescopes and particle accelerators are being used to more finely analyse the world we live in, documents such as this allow a closer look at the history of scientific thought and a greater understanding of the forces that shape us socially, along with the physically shaping forces that we are getting so good at describing.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
Every few months someone posts a scare story to Slashdot, concerned that current magnetic and optical media has a shorter lifespan than the more traditional 'pen and ink' methods of archiving information. Although there may be some truth to this, I believe that the fact that data in a digital format can be so easily duplicated and distributed actually gives the data a better chance of survival. For example, consider a hypothetical work of literature which is distributed both in the traditional dead-tree format and in a (free to copy) electronic format. The fact that the printed version of this information has a physical presence in meatspace will reduce the chance that it can be widely distributed - books take time to print, cost money to print, and are bulky and expensive to transport around the world. However, the electronic format of the information can be quickly, cheaply and easily shared between people and international boundaries provide no obstacle to the transfer of the information. This more widespread distribution of the digital information gives it a very good chance of survival.
People have also wondered what will happen if the medium onto which the data is archived becomes obsolete. Again, I wonder if this is really an issue. Although my Sinclair Spectrum computer and its Microdrive (a 4cm x 3cm x 0.5cm tape cartidge, which was actually pretty fast, in case you're interested) no longer work and my original Spectrum games cassettes have long since rotted away, emulators allow me to relive the glorious golden age of Spectrum computing. With emulators and tape images of software, the spirit of the hardware and software lives on by making use of today's superior technology.
Provided the data is wothwhile, I am sure that people will make the effort to ensure that it survives in some form and is readable on whatever technology is widespread at the time.
I'm very curious to know if there is a systematic effort underway to search our (limited) stock of ancient parchment scrolls for previous works. It seems like an obvious project, but as underfunded (and competitively proprietary) as archeology and analysis of ancient texts are, I wonder if this has been undertaken.
Anyone out there know anything about this? If so, links, please!
With each passing year, we may be losing what little remains of the 'lost' pre-Alexandrian texts
The truth about trolls: They're just spammers, wasting our time/bandwidth and calling it 'free speech'
This is, BTW, why I never buy that people should be made to pay for the sins of their ancestors. There's not a person alive who could afford to pay for their own ancestors crimes.
Now if you had some of Archimedes' writings around the house, would you erase them so you could resuse the paper?! Priorities sure change, I guess
Well if I was a Greek monk and my choices were hang on to an old Math book or write a prayer book, I'm sure my priority would be the prayer book. It's easy to look back now and sneer at choices that people made a thousand years ago, after all hindsight is 20/20. But who is to say what future generations will think about ours.
I can easily imagine snide comments that will be made about how we callously destroyed the environment, pumped millions in a giant Internet Ponzi scheme when there were more worthwhile causes to support and amassed Nuclear weapons whose poisonous waste will exist for longer than humanity has existed. Think about that next time.
>Maybe poverty will appear just as shocking as
>slavery is to us
I sure hope so. If what you say actually happens, then that means two things: the world would still be here, and it would be a better place than it is today.
As far as the attitudes of some people towards reason, that can be explained:
"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast
seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that
have not seen, and yet have believed." John 20:29
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
What is great about this manuscript is that it
gives Archimedes's writing in the original Greek, rather than Arabic.
A human, for example, has so much redundant DNA that using a large chunk of it for extra storage would not be a hassle. And if the humans got to the point of decoding it, well, they would be sufficiently advanced to handle it. The degeneration over generations would be handled by redundancies, etc.
Wait a minute . . .
this sounds suspiciously like something some nutcase came up with once - - it can't be true, it can't be true .....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'm not entirely changing my premise in my head, but yeah maybe it's not coming out as i would have liked.
Today I feel that paper has a far lower value than it ever did have. I've thrown thoussands of pages that document how I lived and things I know, whereas a few hundred years ago things had to be very important in the first place just to get written down.
Important documents now seem more likely to be lost in a sea of meaningless paper rather than lost in the more literal sense.
Information which we presently deem as useful will be mirrored and copied all over the network, whereas unused information will be slowly phased out.
Sadly the same is true in real life. The monk that cleared archimedes parchment clearly thought that his information was of far greater value than archimedes'. At the time i'm sure the majority of the people agreed with him and there would have been a consensus that it was appropriate to discard that knowledge.
How do we know that when we throw todays AOL cd into the bin, we aren't destorying something that future generations would love to have? Addind up the free hours probably takes us into the next millenium anyway
Any medium that requires human maintenance to persist is surely also prone to being destroyed by other, well meaning humans, trying to save something else. Those spectrum games are only playable now because some forward thinking geek backed them up onto the net.
In this information age we have too much information and need to somehow select which is relavant to keep and which to discard, it's just like clearing out ur hard disk and realised you've deleted your mail archive.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Lets face it, a print out from a laser printer seems to fade away after a few years.
An inkjetted page could never be recovered after it's been washed, and if you get one of those crappy thermal receipts from McDonalds you cant even read it after it's been sitting next to your fries for 5 minutes.
How will we ever preserve things for future generations with our current technologies? (assuming that at some point in the future the internet gets wiped out)
"Vanished"??? What a civilized way of saying "was stolen".
Old versions of ARChimedes games that don't run anymore on StrongARM'ed RiscPC
ARM and Unix FAQs
Once again, Archemedes writings are lost forever.
I beg to differ, I live in Rochester by choice.
I can only compare Rochester to the places I've lived, which include:
and Rochester comes out on top, with Raleigh second (I missed winter in Raleigh, and Raleigh needs a downtown).
Of course, the above places aren't anything special, but if you're looking for a reasonably priced, computer aware place to live and raise a family, you could do far worse than Rochester.
George
I just heard on NPR yesterday about researchers looking at old letters from the time of the American Revolution. The words on the paper are important, of course, but medical historians want the actual letters themselves. To smell them.
It seems that when cholera broke out in a town, the mail was sprinkled with vinegar to help sterilize it before it was carried away. Even two hundred years later one can detect the odor of vinegar on many of them, and this offers clues as to the spread of the disease in the colonies at the time.
Just naively archiving old documents onto CD-ROM or something can miss a great deal...
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Bingo. The key factor is that 12th century Europe was The Dark Ages, when the Church was Life and knowledge was scarce. Paper was a terribly difficult and expensive commodity to manufacture, so recycling old non-religious (i.e. non-useful) paper to make more hymnals was a brilliant move at the time.
I saw the Archimedes Palimpsest last year at The Walters Art Gallery. Note that the paper was not written directly by Archimedes, or even by his students. It's a (presumably) good copy made by later scribes which seems authentic.
The pages had been washed, scraped, cut in half, and rotated 90 degress to make a relatively clean surface for the prayers, then bound with stitching. When you reassemble the parts in the right order and look at it with UV light, the original is mostly visible. If only the ancient Greek and Chinese civilizations had survived and continued their scientific progress, we'd be on interstellar colony ships by now.
What I found far more fascinating is the assertion that the math demonstrated "the roots of the gravitational theory and modern calculus." Now I had been taught that Calculus grew out of a problem solving grudge between two famous mathmeticians. Not being a proponent of the "great man" theory, I tended to assume that this breakthrough built on advancements in theorums up to that point.
However, if this text actually shows that Archimedes had the beginnings so many years before, I might be forced to conceed at least a "great man of math" theory. Though considering the dark ages in between, perhaps an examination of the history will show an evolution and reevolution rather than two poles of brilliance.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...