How to: Read books buried 2000 years ago

Maggie Koerth 7:51 am Mon Dec 23, 2013

When the first excavations of the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum began in 1738, the diggers found what appeared to be charcoal and half-burnt logs. In reality, those blackened lumps were papyrus scrolls. Buried beneath the detritus of Mt. Vesuvius, a Herculanean villa contained a whole library of the things. And now, thanks to micro-CT imaging and other digitization techniques, researchers are finding ways to read those scrolls.

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