The Turin Shroud is far older than carbon dating suggests and may indeed date to biblical times as believers claim, a study has found.
The Turin Shroud is far older than carbon dating suggests and may indeed date to biblical times as believers claim, a study has found.
The findings may revive hopes that the cloth, far from being a medieval fake, is a miraculous recording of the face of Jesus after the Crucifixion. Raymond Rogers, of the University of California's Los Alamos Laboratory, argues that carbon-dating tests on the shroud in 1988 were "invalid" because they were performed on a replacement section rather than the original linen. His own exhaustive tests, most of them chemical analyses of fibres he says were taken from the original linen, instead reveal its age to be from 1,300 to 3,000 years old.
Many Roman Catholics, who believe the cloth bears the image of Jesus after it was used to wrap his body when he was taken from the Cross, were incensed by the results of the first scientific tests.
Researchers, working separately in Arizona, Cambridge and Zurich, carried out tests which concluded that the shroud could be dated only to between AD 1261 and 1390, and was therefore likely to be a deception devised in the Middle Ages.
Even the then cardinal of Turin, Anastasio Alberto Ballestrero, was forced to concede that the garment was probably a hoax.
However, writing in the journal Thermochimica Acta, Mr Rogers explains that fibres from the original linen showed no trace of a chemical called vanillin. Vanillin is produced by the thermal decomposition of lignin, a chemical compound found in plant material such as flax. Levels of lignin in material such as linen fall over time.
Had the shroud been produced in medieval times it would still contain vanillin. Mr Rogers, a member of the original Shroud of Turin Research Project which first began studying the linen in 1978, wrote of his surprise at the findings of the radio-carbon dating a decade later.
After re-examining the data, he concluded that the sample used for dating in 1988, and the other 32 samples he had personally taken of the linen fibre from all over the four-yard shroud, using adhesive tape, were not the same.
Chemical kinetics, analytical chemistry, and other tests, including some for cotton content, proved, he said, that the "radio-carbon sample was not part of the original cloth", and so was "invalid in determining the age of the shroud". According to the academic, the cloth used in the carbon dating was probably woven into the shroud during repairs in late medieval times. The linen sheet was damaged in several fires after its existence was first recorded in France in 1357, including in a church blaze in 1532.
It was also been treated with alizarin dye, available in Italy only after the 1300s, and with a plant gum to help match the original's sepia colour.
一级建造师二级建造师二级建造师造价工程师土建职称公路检测工程师建筑八大员注册建筑师二级造价师监理工程师咨询工程师房地产估价师 城乡规划师结构工程师岩土工程师安全工程师设备监理师环境影响评价土地登记代理公路造价师公路监理师化工工程师暖通工程师给排水工程师计量工程师
执业药师执业医师卫生资格考试卫生高级职称执业护士初级护师主管护师住院医师临床执业医师临床助理医师中医执业医师中医助理医师中西医医师中西医助理口腔执业医师口腔助理医师公共卫生医师公卫助理医师实践技能内科主治医师外科主治医师中医内科主治儿科主治医师妇产科医师西药士/师中药士/师临床检验技师临床医学理论中医理论