A breakthrough out of the Vesuvius Challenge builds on past efforts to virtually “unroll” fragile papyrus documents carbonized into hardened lumps by the volcanic blast.

For the past two years, citizen scientists and scholars have been working to reveal the previously hidden texts of the Herculaneum scrolls

U.K. scientists say they have made a historic breakthrough by making the first image of the inside of a scroll carbonized by a volcanic eruption 2,000 years ago.

Scientists are leveraging a combination of artificial intelligence and X-rays to begin unraveling the mystery of the charred scrolls.