Dr. Dennison could barely contain himself as he sat with his fellow scientists around the large circular table. As a book collector he had seen many rare examples of fine manuscripts, but this latest development completely blew him away.
In a unique discovery of swabbing and using eraser bits scientists had begun to examine DNA deposited by ancient scribes while copying "The Gospel of Luke" during the 12th century. These are the same methods used in identifying the DNA of a suspected criminal. This small group of scientists was now able to discern the age of a manuscript, how it was constructed, what type of material it was written on, and who might have read it. They could even determine the type of insects that may have found a home within the book. Those bugs, believe it or not, are better known as "book worms."
It had been previously believed most transcripts of that era were written on a certain type of animal skin, typically a light colored parchment such as calfskin. New discoveries have shown that as many as four different types of skins were used ranging from calf, sheep, goat, and several differing types of deer skin. Skins were used for both writing on and as decorative straps.
Armed with this new discovery the scientists were able to better establish the dates different parchments were used with much more precision. Dr. Dennison's group of collaborators were tasked with defining the types of insects that had bored into the wooden panels used to cover the manuscripts. Once the insects were known they would begin to assign dates based upon the inks used by different scribes. Their last task they would move on to attempt to decipher the specific proteins left on the parchment via skin cells, and even minute mucus droplets remaining from a ancient cough or a sneeze.
This exciting new technology might also answer questions revealing which types of animals that may have been indigenous to certain areas. Which diseases were prevalent at the time and perhaps even in some cases who the actual scribes were who translated the information into words. Aided by grants from various institutions many teams are now beginning to send eraser shavings taken from "The Dead Sea Scrolls" in Israel to be evaluated. Other religious entities around the world are now requesting that this new DNA testing be conducted on their rare books to determine if traces of aged compounds might aid in dating their archives.
It should be noted scrolls were frequently updated by the most learned scribes over a period of years. It is not unusual to find that many different scribes had written in the same manuscript. Updates may have been conducted to depict events that occurred over the course of several hundred years.
Credit: Based upon the article originally titled "Biology Of The Book" by Ann Gibbons Science magazine July 28th edition 2017