New AI analysis finds Dead Sea Scrolls older than thought

Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls could be older than once thought, a new study suggests.

According to Mladen Popović, lead author of the report published in PLOS One, the analysis used both traditional radiocarbon dating and new artificial intelligence to date the biblical manuscripts to around 2,300 years ago, CNN reports .

The scrolls were first noticed by Bedouin shepherds in the Judean Desert, which is near the Dead Sea, in 1947. Since then, archaeologists have collected thousands of fragments from what are thought to be hundreds of manuscripts in caves in what’s now the West Bank of Palestine. They contain the earliest known texts from the Hebrew Bible.

“The Dead Sea Scrolls were extremely important when they were discovered, because they completely changed the way we think about anc