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.

It's been left unread for nearly 2,000 years, last glimpsed when the Roman Empire ruled over Europe. Now, scientists have used AI to virtually unfurl one of the Herculaneum scrolls – the ancient documents buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. 'It's an incredible moment in history as librarians, computer scientists and scholars of the classical period are collaborating to see the unseen,' said Richard Ovenden, senior executive Bodleian Libraries. 'The astonishing strides forward made with imaging, and AI are enabling us to look inside scrolls that have not been read for almost 2,000 years.' The Herculaneum scrolls are thought to contain profound philosophical and literary texts from ancient Greek and Roman scholars. The problem is that any attempts to unroll the burnt cylinders will turn them to dust because they are so fragile – meaning the words would be lost forever.

A closed carbonised papyrus scroll from Herculaneum being scanned. The Vesuvius Challenge is an unparalleled competition in the field of classical studies, with the potential to pave the way for something akin to a second Renaissance. Its objective is to use artificial intelligence (AI) to virtually unroll hundreds of closed papyrus scrolls, containing ancient literature that has not been seen for 2,000 years. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79, it buried various cities at the Gulf of Naples under massive volcanic material – including Herculaneum, located near Pompeii. In the 18th century, an exceptionally luxurious Roman villa was excavated there, close to the ancient city walls and shoreline. The villa's marvellous wall paintings, mosaics, busts and statues had been conserved by the ashes.

The Herculaneum Scrolls contain hugely significant philosophical and literary texts from ancient Greek and Roman scholars, but were turned to carbonized lumps by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Attempts to unroll the scrolls have damaged or destroyed them, turning the precious coal-like relics to dust. Now, scientists are using clever scanning techniques to identify the text written within – without having to unroll the fragile'papyrus' pages. The team has already read one of the scrolls to discover how Greek philosopher Plato spent his last evening 2,500 years ago - but say other huge revelations about Socrates could be in store. Graziano Ranocchia, a papyrologist from the University of Pisa in Italy, said: 'Plato is just the start'.

The Greek word for "purple" has been extracted from a Herculaneum scroll Almost 2000 years after they were buried by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, scrolls from a library in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum have begun to reveal their secrets. The tightly wrapped papyrus scrolls were charred in the disaster, which also destroyed the nearby town of Pompeii. But by studying 3D X-ray scans of the scrolls, researchers have deciphered a word on one of them: "porphyras", meaning "purple". The breakthrough came from Luke Farritor, a 21-year-old computer science student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His success involved training an AI to identify nearly invisible ink-like patterns in the 3D scans. "Seeing Luke's first word was a shock," says Michael McOsker at the University College London in the UK, who was not involved in the discovery.

Scientists are offering $250,000 (£205,000) in prizes for anybody who can read a series of 2,000-year-old manuscripts that were charred during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. When the volcano blast wiped out Pompeii in 79AD, hundreds of texts from the Herculaneum library were buried and carbonised by the smoking ash and gases. They resurfaced in 1752 in a villa near the Bay of Naples which is once believed to belong to the father-in-law Julius Caesar, but their contents have remained a mystery as scientists judged them too fragile to unfurl. Now a team of researchers has launched a contest after showing that an artificial intelligence system can extract letters and symbols from high-resolution X-ray images of the documents. This machine-learning algorithm was trained to read the ink on both the surface and hidden layers of the unopened scrolls.

The nearby volcano blackened the sky and swallowed the city in clouds of ash; centuries later, robot dogs now prowl the ruins, guarding the city's dead against the ravages of time. Boston Dynamics' robot dog, Spot, will help archaeologists and preservation crews by patrolling the 66-hectare site for signs of erosion, damage, and looting. The volcanic ash that buried Pompeii in 79 CE turned a thriving Roman coastal city into a well-preserved tomb--and a time capsule. Today, the archaeological site is one of the most famous in the world, and it continues to reveal new glimpses of life in a cosmopolitan Roman city during the empire's heyday, like an ancient fast-food counter excavated in 2020. But in 2013, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) found that erosion and weathering were taking a toll on the parts of the site archaeologists had excavated so far. To protect the ruined city and keep restoration workers safe, park authorities needed to find new ways to monitor for damage, restore ancient structures, and preserve them for the future.

SPOT by boston dynamics can operate on different types of terrain with agility and autonomy, allowing the automation of routine inspection activities and the collection of data in a safe manner. 'these smart platforms for data analysis, such as that created by sprint reply, form the necessary basis for making data acquired during such robot inspections usable and accessible for applications at the archaeological park of pompeii.' 'often the safety conditions within the tunnels dug by grave robbers are extremely precarious, as a consequence of which the use of a robot could signify a breakthrough that would allow us to proceed with greater speed and in total safety,' declares director general gabriel zuchtriegel.

A four-legged robot called Spot has been deployed to wander around the ruins of ancient Pompeii, identifying structural and safety issues while delving underground to inspect tunnels dug by relic thieves. The dog-like robot is the latest in a series of technologies used as part of a broader project to better manage the archaeological park since 2013, when Unesco threatened to add Pompeii to a list of world heritage sites in peril unless Italian authorities improved its preservation. Spot, made by the US-based Boston Dynamics, is capable of inspecting even the smallest of spaces while "gathering and recording data useful for the study and planning of interventions", park authorities said. The aim, they added, is to "improve both the quality of monitoring of the existing areas, and to further our knowledge of the state of progress of the works in areas undergoing recovery or restoration, and thereby to manage the safety of the site, as well as that of workers." Until Spot came along, no technology of its kind had been developed for archaeological sites, according to Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii archaeological park. Park authorities have also experimented with a flying laser scanner capable of conducting 3D scans across the 66-hectare (163-acre) site.

A four-legged robot called Spot has been deployed to wander around the ruins of ancient Pompeii, identifying structural and safety issues while delving underground to inspect tunnels dug by relic thieves. The dog-like robot is the latest in a series of technologies used as part of a broader project to better manage the archaeological park since 2013, when Unesco threatened to add Pompeii to a list of world heritage sites in peril unless Italian authorities improved its preservation. Spot, made by the US-based Boston Dynamics, is capable of inspecting even the smallest of spaces while "gathering and recording data useful for the study and planning of interventions", park authorities said. The aim, they added, is to "improve both the quality of monitoring of the existing areas, and to further our knowledge of the state of progress of the works in areas undergoing recovery or restoration, and thereby to manage the safety of the site, as well as that of workers." Until Spot came along, no technology of its kind had been developed for archaeological sites, according to Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii archaeological park. Park authorities have also experimented with a flying laser scanner capable of conducting 3D scans across the 66-hectare (163-acre) site.