Pompeii's ruins challenge Rome's famous concrete recipe The empire's most famous architect may have had it wrong. An ancient Pompeii wall at a newly excavated site, where Associate Professor Admir Masic applied compositional analysis (overlayed to right) to understand how ancient Romans made concrete that has endured for thousands of years. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. For once, new research on the ruins of the Roman city of Pompeii is not focusing on the destructive aftermath of the infamous Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 CE. Instead, it centers on the creative acts preceding it.

The famous Herculaneum scroll, charred papyrus found buried by the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79AD, has been deciphered by artificial intelligence. The feat was achieved by students in a contest that trained algorithms on scans of the artifact, which would otherwise be destroyed if unraveled by human hands. The winning team read more than 2,000 'never-before-seen' texts that discussed sources of pleasure, such as music, the taste of capers and the color purple. The winning team read more than 2,000 'never-before-seen' texts, which discussed sources of pleasure, such as music, the taste of capers and the color purple The Vesuvius Challenge was launched in March 2023 by Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, and Silicon Valley backers. At the time, Seales released thousands of 3D images of two rolled-up scrolls, as well as an AI program that had been trained to read letters in the marks left by ink.