Some Dead Sea Scrolls may be even older than archaeologists thought, new study finds

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN

Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the most widely known archaeological finds of all time, may be older than once thought, according to a new study.

The fresh analysis, which paired radiocarbon dating with artificial intelligence, determined some of the biblical manuscripts date to about 2,300 years ago, when their presumed authors lived, said Mladen Popović, lead author of the report published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

Bedouin shepherds first spotted the scrolls by chance in the Judaean Desert, near the Dead Sea, in 1947. Archaeologists then recovered thousands of fragments belonging to hundreds of manuscripts from 11 caves, all near the site of Khirbat Qumran in what is now the West Bank.

“The Dead Sea Scrolls were extremely important when they were