1,700-Year-Old Dead Sea Scroll 'Virtually Unwrapped,' Revealing Text

The En-Gedi scroll, a text that includes part of the Book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible that was ravaged by fire about 1,400 years ago, is now readable, thanks to a complex digital analysis called "virtual unwrapping."

Rather than physically unfurl the scroll, which would have destroyed the crumbling artifact, experts digitally scanned the document, and then virtually flattened the scanned results, allowing scholars to read its ancient text.

"We're reading a real scroll," lead study author Brent Seales, professor and chairman in the department of computer science at the University of Kentucky, said in a news conference yesterday (Sept. 20). "It hasn't been read for millennia. Many thought it was probably impossible to read." [Gallery of Dead Sea Scrolls: A Glimpse of the Past]

The charred scroll from En-Gedi (right) that experts digitally unfurled (left).

Credit: From Seales et al., Sci. Adv. 2:e1601247 (2016). Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

Potential scroll fragments from En-Gedi that are severely burned.

Credit: Shai Halevi / Israel Antiquities Authority

Archaeologists found the scroll in 1970 in En-Gedi, where an ancient Jewish community thrived from about the late 700s B.C. until about A.D. 600, when a fire destroyed the site, the researchers said. Excavations of the synagogue's Holy Ark, a chest or cupboard that holds the Torah scrolls, revealed charred scrolls of parchment, or animal skin. But each scroll was "completely burned and crushed, had turned into chunks of charcoal that continued to disintegrate every time they were touched," the researchers wrote in the study.

The En-Gedi scroll is different than the original Dead Sea Scrolls, which a young shepherd discovered in caves near Qumran in the Judean Desert in 1947. However, Dead Sea Scroll has become an umbrella term for many ancient scrolls found in the area, and some researchers also call the En-Gedi artifact a Dead Sea Scroll.

The scorched En-Gedi scroll fragments sat in storage for more than 40 years until experts decided to give them another look, and try the newly developed "virtual unwrapping" method for the first time on the scroll.

Cyber scroll

The En-Gedi scroll in the micro-CT scanner.

Credit: Orit Rosengarten / Israel Antiquities Authority

The virtual journey began in Israel, where experts digitally scanned the rolled-up scroll with X-ray-based micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). At this point, they weren't sure whether the scroll had text within it, said study co-author Pnina Shor, curator and head of the Dead Sea Scrolls Projects at the Israel Antiquities Authority. So, they increased the spatial resolution of the scan, allowing them to capture whether or not each layer had detectable ink.

Their exhaustive attention to detail paid off: There was ink, and it likely contained metal, such as iron or lead, because it showed up on the micro-CT scan as a dense material, the researchers said.

However, the text was illegible. So Shor and her colleagues in Israel sent the digital scans to Seales in Kentucky so he and his team could try the new "virtual unwrapping" technique.

"It was certainly a shot in the dark," Shor said.

Virtual unwrapping

A merged text layer suggestion after the virtual unrolling.

Credit: Seth Parker / University of Kentucky

This new method marks the first time that experts have virtually unrolled and noninvasively studied aseverely damaged scroll with ink text, Seales said.

The unwrapping took time and involved three steps: segmentation, texturing and flattening, he said.

With segmentation, they identified each segment, or layer, within the digital scroll, which had five complete revolutions of parchment in the scroll. Then, they created a virtual geometric mesh for each layer made of tiny, digital triangles. They were able to manipulate this mesh, which helped them "texture" the document, or make the text more visible.

"This is where we see letters and words for the first time on the recreated page," the researchers wrote in the study.

Finally, they digitally flattened the scroll, and merged the different layers together into one, flat 2D image that could easily be read. [In Photos: Amazing Ruins of the Ancient World]

Book of Leviticus

The scroll holds the beginning of the Book of Leviticus, the third of the five books of Moses (known as the Pentateuch) that make up the Hebrew Bible, biblical scholars said. In fact, the En-Gedi scroll contains the earliest copy of a Pentateuchal book ever found in a Holy Ark, the researchers said.

The virtual unwrapping revealed two distinct columns of text that include, in total, 35 lines of Hebrew. Each line has 33 to 34 letters. However, there are only consonants, no vowels. This indicates that the text was written before the ninth century A.D., when Hebrew symbols for vowels were invented, said study co-author Emanuel Tov, a professor emeritus in the department of Bible at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Radiocarbon dating places the scroll in the third or fourth century A.D., but studies based on historical handwriting place it at either the first or second century A.D., the researchers said. Regardless, the data suggest that it was written within the first few centuries of the Common Era, they said.

These dates make the En-Gedi scroll slightly younger than the original Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written between about 200 B.C. and A.D. 70.

"Hence, the En-Gedi scroll provides an important extension to the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls and offers a glimpse into the earliest stages of almost 800 years of near silence in the history of the biblical text," the researchers wrote in the study.

Moreover, the En-Gedi text is "completely identical" to the text and paragraph breaks found in medieval Hebrew Bibles, which are known as the Masoretic text, a text that is still used today. In antiquity until the first century B.C., there were an "endless number of textual forms" of the Masoretic text, earning them the name "proto-Masoretic," Tov said.

But the En-Gedi finding suggests that the standard Masoretic text coalesced relatively early, he said.

"This is quite amazing for us," Tov said. "That in 2,000 years, this text has not changed."

The study was published online today (Sept. 21) in the journal Science Advances.

Costa Rica closes 2 airports after volcano eruptions

Eight flights suspended at the main international air terminal, authorities say

20.09.2016   Dominican Republic  world, todays headlines, americas   

By Senabri Silvestre

SANTO DOMINGO, Dom. Rep.

Two airports in Costa Rica were temporally closed Monday after ashes spilled from the Turrialba volcano, local authorities said.

Operations at the Juan Santamaria International Airport, the country’s main air terminal, and the Tobias Bolanos airport, were suspended until conditions improve, according to the chief of the Civil Aviation Directorate Ennio Cubillo.

“The particles are not only in the airspace but also on the surfaces of taxing and takeoff," he told local media.

Authorities also considered whether to limit the general aviation activities at the Daniel Oduber International Airport located in the northwest of the Central American nation.

Eight flights were suspended at the Santamaria Airport, from which an estimated 6,238 passengers departed Monday, according to Civil Aviation Directorate figures.

The Turrialba volcano, located in central Costa Rica, erupted several times Monday throwing a column of ash 4,000 meters during the first eruption, followed by one about 1,000 meters high, according to the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica.

The first eruption spewed incandescent rock more than 500 meters high, along with gas and ash, that reached Central Valley communities, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) west of the volcano.

Ντοκουμέντο: Η πτώση του Απάτσι στην παραλία-Προσθαλάσσωση επιθετικού ελικοπτέρου AH-64DHA Apache κατά την άσκηση ΣΑΡΙΣΑ – Σώοι οι χειριστές(video)

20 Σεπτεμβρίου 2016

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© Ιωάννης Λέκκας

Επιθετικό ελικόπτερο AH-64DHA Apache της Αεροπορίας Στρατού πραγματοποίησε αναγκαστική προσθαλάσσωση σήμερα περί ώρα 08:50 στη θαλάσσια περιοχή του Κόλπου Ορφανού, κατά τη διάρκεια δραστηριοτήτων της Εθνικής Διακλαδικής Άσκησης «ΣΑΡΙΣΑ–2016» που βρίσκεται σε πλήρη εξέλιξη. Οι δύο χειριστές του ελικοπτέρου έχουν τις αισθήσεις τους και διακομίστηκαν στο 424 Γενικό Στρατιωτικό Νοσοκομείο Θεσσαλονίκης για περαιτέρω ιατρικό έλεγχο. Σύμφωνα με τις πρώτες πληροφορίες, το έμπειρο πλήρωμα του ελικοπτέρου προχώρησε σε αναγκαστική προσθαλάσσωση ελάχιστα μέτρα από την ακτή παρά το γεγονός ότι το ελικόπτερο παρουσίασε απώλεια ισχύος των κινητήρων σε χαμηλό ύψος και πάνω από θάλασσα.

Panama's Grand Canal

We chronicle the construction and controversy of the multibillion-dollar venture to modernise the Panama Canal.

18 Sep 2016 14:02 GMT 

Panama is one of Latin America's most diverse landscapes, with riches and luxury alongside drastic poverty. The Panama Canal, however, is a point of pride for many - a feat that is unparalleled in the world of waterway engineering.

Designed by the French and completed by the Americans a century ago, it is one of the largest public construction projects in US history. The canal was built to ease the movement of water vessels, such as marine and cargo ships, between two of the world's largest bodies of water - the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Every day, more than 40 ships pass through the canal. But despite increasing cargo tonnage, Panama needed to expand the canal to accommodate a new generation of container ships, the so-called neo-Panamax, which are too big for the old canal locks.

To cater to this larger transit tonnage and global shipping demands, Panama decided to take its two-lane canal and add a new third lane.

The new canal designs are set to improve upon the current functionality, such as with the new gates that slide across the channel chambers as opposed to the traditional "open and shut" gates. Reinvented basins are also a new feature, helping move ships across the canal chambers using water-saving methods.

The Panama Canal expansion is projected to double the capacity of the canal and hence considered a major boon for ports and the Panamanian government.

However, the economic promise of the canal runs alongside environmental concerns. How will the canal's expansion affect Panama's ecosystem? 

TechKnow travelled to Panama to look at the engineering behind the massive expansion project and to hear from biologists and community leaders about Panama's changing ecosystem.

Source: Al Jazeera

Human skeleton found on famed Antikythera shipwreck

Brett Seymour, EUA/WHOI/ARGO

Divers examine human bones excavated from the Antikythera shipwreck.

Hannes Schroeder snaps on two pairs of blue latex gloves, then wipes his hands with a solution of bleach. In front of him is a large Tupperware box full of plastic bags that each contain sea water and a piece of red-stained bone. He lifts one out and inspects its contents as several archaeologists hover behind, waiting for his verdict. They’re hoping he can pull off a feat never attempted before — DNA analysis on someone who has been under the sea for 2,000 years.

But on 31 August this year, investigators made another groundbreaking discovery: a human skeleton, buried under around half a metre of pottery sherds and sand. “We’re thrilled,” says Brendan Foley, an underwater archaeologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and co-director of the excavations team. “We don’t know of anything else like it.”Through the window, sunlight sparkles on cobalt water. The researchers are on the tiny Greek island of Antikythera, a 10-minute boat ride from the wreckage of a 2,000-year-old merchant ship. Discovered by sponge divers in 1900, the wreck was the first ever investigated by archaeologists. Its most famous bounty to date has been a surprisingly sophisticated clockwork devicethat modelled the motions of the Sun, Moon and planets in the sky — dubbed¹ the ‘Antikythera mechanism’.

Brett Seymour, EUA/WHOI/ARGO

A partial skull, with three teeth, is among the human remains found at the Antikythera wreck.

Within days of the find, Foley invited Schroeder, an expert in ancient-DNA analysis from the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, to assess whether genetic material might be extracted from the bones. On his way to Antikythera, Schroeder was doubtful. But as he removes the bones from their bags he is pleasantly surprised. The material is a little chalky, but overall looks well preserved. “It doesn’t look like bone that’s 2,000 years old,” he says. Then, sifting through several large pieces of skull, he finds both petrous bones — dense nuggets behind the ear that preserve DNA better than other parts of the skeleton or the teeth. “It’s amazing you guys found that,” Schroeder says. “If there’s any DNA, then from what we know, it’ll be there.”

Schroeder agrees to go ahead with DNA extraction when permission is granted by the Greek authorities. It would take about a week to find out whether the sample contains any DNA, he says: then perhaps a couple of months to sequence it and analyse the results.

For Schroeder, the discovery gives him the chance to push the boundaries of ancient-DNA studies. So far, most have been conducted on samples from cold climates such as northern Europe. “I’ve been trying to push the application of ancient DNA into environments where people don’t usually look for DNA,” he says. (He was part of a team that last year published the first Mediterranean ancient genome, of a Neolithic individual from Spain².)

Foley and the archaeologists, meanwhile, are elated by the chance to learn more about the people on board the first-century bc ship, which carried luxury items from the eastern Mediterranean, probably intended for wealthy buyers in Rome.

Rare discovery

The skeleton discovery is a rare find, agrees Mark Dunkley, an underwater archaeologist from the London-based heritage organization Historic England. Unless covered by sediment or otherwise protected, the bodies of shipwreck victims are usually swept away and decay, or are eaten by fish. Complete skeletons have been recovered from younger ships, such as the sixteenth-century English warship the Mary Rose and the seventeenth-century Vasa in Sweden. Both sank in mud, close to port. But “the farther you go back, the rarer it is”, says Dunkley.

Only a handful of examples of human remains have been found on ancient wrecks, says archaeologist Dimitris Kourkoumelis of the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, who collaborates with Foley. They include a skull found inside a Roman soldier’s helmet near Sardinia, and a skeleton reportedly discovered inside a sunken sarcophagus near the Greek island of Syrna (although the bones disappeared before the find could be confirmed).

Michael Tsimperopoulos, EUA/WHOI/ARGO

Hannes Schroeder (left), project co-director Theotokis Theodoulou (centre) and Brendan Foley inspect the bones.

In fact, the best-documented example is the Antikythera wreck itself: scattered bones were found by the French marine explorer Jacques Cousteau, who excavated here in 1976. Argyro Nafplioti, an osteoarchaeologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, concluded that the remains came from at least four individuals, including a young man, a woman and a teenager of unknown sex³.

At the wreck site, only broken pots now remain on the sea floor — the sponge divers recovered all artefacts visible on the seabed in 1900–01. But Foley thinks that much of the ship’s cargo may be buried under the sediment. His team, including expert technical divers and members of the Greek archaeological service, relocated and mapped the 50-metre-deep site before beginning their own excavations in 2014. They have found items such as wine jars, glassware, two bronze spears from statues, gold jewellery and table jugs used by the crew (see ‘Ancient bounty’). The divers have also recovered ship components including enormous anchors and a teardrop-shaped lead weight, found in June, that may be the first known example of what ancient texts describe as a ‘war dolphin’ — a defensive weapon carried by merchant vessels to smash hostile ships.

Source: Stefan Williams, Australian Centre for Field Robotics; Alex Tourtas, EUA/WHOI/ARGO

The skeleton uncovered in August consists of a partial skull with three teeth, two arm bones, several rib pieces and two femurs, all apparently from the same person. Foley’s team plans further excavations to see whether more bones are still under the sand.

That so many individuals have been found at Antikythera — when most wrecks yield none — may be partly because few other wrecks have been as exhaustively investigated. But the researchers think it also reveals something about how the ship sank. This was a huge vessel for its time, perhaps more than 40 metres long, says Foley, with multiple decks and many people on board. The wreck is close to shore, at the foot of the island’s steep cliffs. He concludes that a storm smashed the ship against the rocks so that it broke up and sank before people had a chance to react. “We think it was such a violent wrecking event, people got trapped below decks.”

Mediterranean mystery

Michael Tsimperopoulos, EUA/WHOI/ARGO

Diver Gemma Smith brings up bones from the Antikythera wreck.

The individuals found at Antikythera could be from the crew, which would probably have consisted of 15–20 people on a ship this size. Greek and Roman merchant ships also commonly carried passengers, and sometimes slaves. One reason people get trapped inside shipwrecks is if they are chained, points out Dunkley. “The crew would be able to get off relatively fast. Those shackled would have no opportunity to escape.” Intriguingly, the recently discovered bones were surrounded by corroded iron objects, so far unidentified; the iron oxide has stained the bones amber red.

Schroeder says that because ancient underwater remains are so rare, DNA analysis on such samples using state-of-the-art techniques has barely been tried. (Analyses were conducted on skeletons from the Mary Rose and the Vasa, but specialists no longer see those methods — based on amplifying DNA using a method called PCR — as reliable, because it is too difficult to distinguish ancient DNA from modern contamination.) Exceptions include analyses on8,000-year-old wheat from a submerged site off the English coast (although these results have been questioned because the DNA did not show the expected age-related damage⁴), and mitochondrial DNA from a 12,000-year-old skeleton found in a freshwater sinkhole in Mexico⁵.

Anthony Ayiomamitis

The surprisingly complex Antikythera mechanism modelled the motions of the Sun, Moon and planets.

Finding undisturbed remains such as those at Antikythera is crucial because it offers the opportunity to extract any DNA in the best possible condition. Previously salvaged bones are not ideal for analysis because they have often been washed, treated with conservation mater­ials or kept in warm conditions (all of which can destroy fragile DNA), or handled in a way that contaminates them.

Schroeder guesses from the skeleton’s fairly robust femur and unworn teeth that the individual was a young man. As well as confirming the person’s gender, DNA from the Antikythera bones could provide information about characteristics from hair and eye colour to ancestry and geographic origin. In the past few years, modern genome sequences have revealed that genetic variation in populations mirrors geography, says Schroeder. He and others are now starting to look at how ancient individuals fit on that map, to reconstruct past population movements. Would the shipwreck victim look more Greek-Italian or Near Eastern, he wonders?

Over dinner, the researchers decide to nickname the bones’ owner Pamphilos, after a name found neatly scratched on a wine cup from the wreck. “Your mind starts spinning,” says Schroeder. “Who were those people who crossed the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago? Maybe one of them was the astronomer who owned the mechanism.”

Typhoon Malakas, equivalent of a Category 3 tropical cyclone, will landfall in southwest Japan Monday.

Typhoon Malakas Skirts Taiwan, Heads Towards Japan

Typhoon Malakas passes Taiwan and is making it's way towards mainland Japan. 

Story Highlights

Typhoon Malakas, equivalent of a Category 3 tropical cyclone, will landfall in southwest Japan Monday.

Damaging winds will spread into Kyushu and Shikoku Monday into Tuesday.

Malakas will be a heavy rain and flooding threat for Japan through late Tuesday or early Wednesday (Japan time).

Typhoon Malakas will landfall in southwest Japan Monday spreading damaging winds and heavy rainfall eastward over parts of southern Japan into Tuesday.

The center of Malakas is nearing the Japanese island of Kyushu, currently the equivalent of a Category 3 tropical cyclone, as of Monday evening, local time. (Japan is 13 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern daylight time.)

Current Storm Info

Warnings for this damaging wind potential, heavy rain and flooding potential have been issued by the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA).

Wind gusts topping 50 mph have already been measured in Kagoshima Prefecture, and will only increase as the eyewall of Malakas heads ashore.

(MORE: Typhoon Alley: Where The Most Intense Tropical Cyclones Most Frequently Occur)

Current Winds

Damaging winds are likely for portions of Kyushu and Shikoku islands, and winds in a very localized area near where Malakas makes landfall and in mountainous terrain in southern Kyushu Island could be as high as 120 mph. 

Wind Speed Probability for Winds Greater than 74 mph.

Malakas will impact Kyushu in southern mainland Japan late Monday evening and continue to interact with Shikoku and much of southern Japan Tuesday (local time), but is expected to be weakening with time. 

Projected Path and Intensity

The most widespread impact in mainland Japan will be heavy rainfall and flooding. Over 12 inches of rain has already been tallied at Tokorono, in Okinawa Prefecture over 48-hours as of early Monday, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Additional amounts of 5-12 inches are expected through early Wednesday in southern and central Japan, with locally higher amounts in mountainous terrain.

Mudslides and landslides are possible in and around the higher terrain of the southern and central Japan.

Rainfall Forecast

The center of Malakas is expected to pass near Tokyo early Wednesday as a weakening tropical storm or tropical depression on Wednesday morning. Heavy rainfall is expected. 

Malakas Impact on Taiwan and Japan's Ryukyu Islands

Wind gusts were reported up to 59 mph on an elevated station at Lanyu, Taiwan, and 38 mph in Hualien province in eastern Taiwan on Saturday morning Taiwan time.  

In Japan, wind gusts up to 100 mph were reported in Yonagunijima where the eye directly passed overhead. Gusts to 60 mph were reported in Ishigaki in the far southern Ryukyu Islands early Saturday. 

Tragedy in Thailand: At least 13 dead after tourist boat capsizes(video)

Four people have died after a boat containing Muslim tourists capsized in Thailand, trapping up to 100 people underwater. The ferry tipped over near the Wat Sanam Chai temple, a popular tourist destination in the city of Ayutthaya, about 50 miles north of Bangkok. TV reporter @Thanakarn_BrightTV20 posted a video of the aftermath, showing dozens of rescue workers clambering over the stricken vessel as large crowds gathered on a nearby jetty. He tweeted: "Urgent! Capsized near Wat Sanam Chai in Thailand approximately 100 people who have been lost underwater." The Bangkok Post reported that so far four people have been confirmed dead, while several more are still missing. Rescue workers are continuing the search for survivors. Initial reports from Thailand suggest a large group of Muslim tourists were celebrating the opening of a new mosque near the ancient Wat Sanam Chai, an active Buddhist temple on the banks of the Chao Phraya River. They had just boarded the boat to leave when the vessel capsized in front of hundreds of fellow vistors stood on the pier. It is not yet clear what caused the boat to capsize.