While relying on clever machines may lack the romance of crossing a desert by camel to discover unopened tombs or roaming through a jungle to discover an ancient temple, using artificial intelligence (AI) would have saved Indiana Jones the trouble of almost being crushed by a rolling stone, shot by mercenaries or being bitten by snakes while solving historical mysteries.
So, saddle up and take a tour of how AI is taking on some of the biggest unsolved historical cases, from deciphering scrolls and secret languages to dating mysterious remains.
In ‘The Last Crusade’, Indiana Jones reads an incomplete medieval stone tablet in Latin (with a little help from his father’s notebook) to reveal the location of the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, in real life, the solution doesn’t always present itself and information remains indecipherable even if it is set in stone, while delicate scrolls are unable to be opened without damage. That is, until the invention of AI...