'Handwriting' recognition offers accurate way for dating stone tablets

Archaeology 101 will tell you that accurately dating an object is critical to understanding its meaning and value. When it comes to stone carvings, this typically requires a researcher with plenty of energy, time and skill, but scientists at the National Technical University of Athens have now developed a computer algorithm that promises to revolutionize the entire process. By overlaying digital scans of known inscribers' work, the Greek team are able to recognize stylistic idiosyncrasies and thereby identify the author of a carving. Their accuracy was confirmed by a recent test, in which they attributed proper authorship of 24 stone tablets, picking out the correct chiseler each time. Next step: seeking royalty payments for the works of your great uncle Xanthos.

[rsm @ Jul 3rd 2009 7:14AM]

Great Scott -- they found my high school term paper...

[dreamscape86 @ Jul 3rd 2009 7:57AM]

So much for "my dog ate it", huh?

[Saad Rabia @ Jul 3rd 2009 8:25AM]

This is great news! I can finally recognize if the three 8000 years old blocks in my basement are actually my grandfather's or not.

[bartoron @ Jul 3rd 2009 8:33AM]

LOL.

I don't see how this technology is at all useful. How many 5,000 year old authors do we really know of?

[Eric @ Jul 3rd 2009 2:33PM]

I don't know that they're supposed to determine who made them, but they can match two tablets to one person. This lets them date them, if they know when one of them was made.

[Steve @ Jul 3rd 2009 8:40AM]

It's a dream come true! If you'll excuse me, I'm going to reserve a seat for two at a restaurant now.

[Excelsium @ Jul 3rd 2009 8:40AM]

Maybe now we can declare the world's oldest written works.

[SewerShark @ Jul 3rd 2009 8:51AM]

"Archeology 101 will tell you that accurately dating an object is critical to understanding its meaning and value."
Yeahhh...thats true.......OH, you were talking about the tablet? And date as in time?

[tylerking93 @ Jul 3rd 2009 9:40AM]

I will bet any amount of money, that this...
"seeking royalty payments for the works of your great uncle Xanthos."
will happen.

[Agent .25i @ Jul 3rd 2009 10:30AM]

Why would you want to go out with a piece of rock?

[aatnet @ Jul 3rd 2009 11:43AM]

this is great. Now all that is left is for the Parthenon marbles to return to Athens

[CH3BURASHKA @ Jul 3rd 2009 11:58AM]

This is pretty damn cool.

[murmermer @ Jul 3rd 2009 1:56PM]

its stupid, they never took into account the talent of the actual author- by their science I could go outside and sloppily carve my name into a stone with a harder stone and have them date it back 3000 years... this is just a way to disprove historical documents like the Bible, Quran and other religious/ historical documents

[Eric @ Jul 3rd 2009 3:47PM]

If you can match the style perfectly, then yes, you could create a fake.

Of course, if a 3000-year-old Greek tablet turned up in suburban Ohio, I think they might be a little suspicious.

[SewerShark @ Jul 3rd 2009 2:48PM]

WHAT? Have you readed the article?
"By overlaying digital scans of known inscribers' work, the Greek team are able to recognize stylistic idiosyncrasies and thereby identify the author of a carving."

I means it gonna recognize WHO wrote it, not HOW old it is.

And last time I checked, the Bible was not written in stone. Otherwise it would be a heavy reading.

[Nohone @ Jul 3rd 2009 3:00PM]

murmermer, this is not stupid. It has uses, but not in the way the article described. While there is some use in this tech for dating a work, there are much more reliable ways of dating an artifact - such as examining the patina on the object or even simply just the letter formation used on the object. For example, the long s (confused for an f in Congrefs) character in US historical documents can be used to date something as early or late in US history (it fell out of use in the early 1800s). Letter formation changes frequently and drastically in a language's history.

I can see one application of this being the ability to root out forgeries. This could have found problems with the so called "Jesus Ossuary" from a few years ago. It could have found differences in the carving from the original text and the hoax text.

One of the degrees I hold is in archaeology, one of my profs was the person who examined the ossuary and I was in communication with him about the artifact.

[IluRapii @ Jul 9th 2009 6:40PM]

Morons. This is really important stuff. To bad most of you are so absorbed in your geeky tech lifestyles to actually read a book or do something worth-while with your lives. Go back to your WoW games and waste away geeks.