How DNA forensics is transforming studies of ancient manuscripts
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Specks of eraser dust contain enough DNA to identify the animal products used to in books.Credit: The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, The University of Manchester
In May 2006, Tim Stinson travelled to England to tour the libraries of London, Oxford and Cambridge. At the time, he was editing a fourteenth-century poem for his PhD at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and after months of poring over grainy microfilm copies, he was eager to get his hands on an original. During a visit to Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries — a place so magical that scenes from the Harry Potter films were shot there — he was finally handed one of the manuscripts he had travelled all that way to see. But he found himself so riveted by the physical book that the text it contained became secondary.
The volume was about six centuries old, bound in worn brown leather and composed of 266 yellowed leaves of carefully crafted parchment. It bore the marks of heavy use — faint stains marked the pages and the edges were worn from repeated handling.
How AI is unlocking ancient texts — and could rewrite history