Hundreds of years before Europeans supposedly invented oil painting, ancient Buddhists were using a primitive form of the method to paint murals in the Bamiyan caves of Afghanistan, according to the results of a study announced yesterday; Nature has a news story here. The murals, hidden behind massive statues of Buddha, were defaced when the Taliban destroyed the statues in 2001.
The results from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility mark the latest finding in light source science, a truly fascinating area that continues to shed light on the past.
Early this month, the lab announced that paleontologists are using synchrotron X-rays to study spiders, wasps, and other "wee beasties" preserved inside opaque chunks of ancient amber. They convert their data into plastic replicas of the fossilized creatures. One researcher said the models, which are much larger than the actual animals and can be manipulated by hand, are better than having the real thing.
And in 2006 another landmark experiment at SLAC used X-rays to reveal a 10th-century copy of 2000-year-old works by Archimedes. The original writing had been scraped off pieces of parchment and covered with other writings. It was by far the oldest copy of works by the great mathematician.
