Scientists Say Lead in Ink Could Finally Crack Herculaneum's Burnt Scrolls-So They Baked a Fake One as a Test

How do you test a theory on how to decipher a priceless archaeological artifact? According to a team of researchers, you pay children to make fake versions of it.

A team of scientists has proposed a new approach to reading the famous Herculaneum scrolls: 2,000-year-old texts that are impossible to unroll because Mount Vesuvius burnt them to a crisp in 79 BCE. They suggest looking for lead in the ink. In a study published yesterday in the journal PLOS ONE, the team writes that even small amounts of lead in the ink make letters highly detectable to X-ray CT (an imaging technique).