"The thoughts of our ancestors, locked in mud and ash for 2000 years, hidden in darkness — now, with the light of a worldwide effort shining upon them, finally seen again." The Herculaneum Scrolls, also known as the Villa of the Papyri Scrolls, are a collection of ancient Roman papyri that were carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The carbonization helped to preserve the shape of the scrolls, but it also made them very fragile and difficult to unroll and read. So basically, we don’t know what they say… but we know they say something, because they’re scrolls. Discovered in the 18th century in the ancient town of Herculaneum, near modern-day Naples, they were found in a villa believed to belong to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus. But today, the Vesuvius Challenge — a computer science competition where participants were challenged to use computer vision and machine learning to read the scrolls — announced that they can read the first scroll! From @natfriedman's announcement: "These fifteen columns come from the very end of the first scroll we have been able to read and contain new text from the ancient world that has never been seen before. The author – probably Epicurean philosopher Philodemus – writes here about music, food, and how to enjoy life's pleasures. In the closing section, he throws shade at unnamed ideological adversaries – perhaps the stoics? – who 'have nothing to say about pleasure, either in general or in particular.'" Thanks to cutting edge engineering and AI, we now have completely new ancient writing to add to the canon. And there's more to do, still: 95% of the scrolls are still unread.