In response to the “Vesuvius Challenge” launched in 2023, a team of three college students has won a $700,000 grand prize by unlocking the text of a previously unreadable scroll found in ancient Herculaneum on the Bay of Naples, which was destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. More than 1,000 such scrolls were discovered inside a wealthy Roman villa in the 18th century. But because of the damage they sustained in the eruption, the documents were mostly unreadable; even trying to unroll the brittle, burnt scrolls would have destroyed them. Clues suggested the scrolls contained lost […]
