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New Technique Helps Archaeologists Decipher Ancient Languages

A conservationist works on a 1,500-year-old mosaic floor bearing Greek writing, discovered in Jerusalem's Old City. (Reuters)
A conservationist works on a 1,500-year-old mosaic floor bearing Greek writing, discovered in Jerusalem's Old City. (Reuters)
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New Technique Helps Archaeologists Decipher Ancient Languages

A conservationist works on a 1,500-year-old mosaic floor bearing Greek writing, discovered in Jerusalem's Old City. (Reuters)
A conservationist works on a 1,500-year-old mosaic floor bearing Greek writing, discovered in Jerusalem's Old City. (Reuters)

Developing an AI network can help scholars restore ancient Greek texts. Researchers at University of Oxford have recruited new deep learning techniques to decipher symbols of ancient languages.

The research team says there are many artifacts featuring important historical symbols and inscriptions that erode with time, noting that the clear inscriptions that archaeologists can read and understand are few.

In a test, where the AI attempted to fill the gaps in 2,949 damaged inscriptions, human experts managed to explain 30 percent of unclear symbols, whereas the network took two hours to decipher 50 inscriptions, reported the New Scientist website.

The team said the new network named "Pythia" is able to provide 20 different predictions to explain each eroded inscription, leaving the selection of the suitable hypothesis that correspond to the context of the ancient inscriptions to archaeologists.

In addition to providing various options, Pythia evaluates the reliability of each option or hypothesis it offers to archaeologists to help them reach the correct one.

"Pythia is the first electronic model used to restore ancient archaeological inscriptions by deciphering the eroded letters through deep learning networks," the study team wrote.

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Beloved Zurich Zoo Gorilla Euthanized after Years of Declining Health

FILE - N'Gola, the silverback male of the gorilla group at Zurich Zoo celebrates his 40th birthday on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Zurich. (Siggi Bucher/Keystone via AP, file)
FILE - N'Gola, the silverback male of the gorilla group at Zurich Zoo celebrates his 40th birthday on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Zurich. (Siggi Bucher/Keystone via AP, file)
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Beloved Zurich Zoo Gorilla Euthanized after Years of Declining Health

FILE - N'Gola, the silverback male of the gorilla group at Zurich Zoo celebrates his 40th birthday on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Zurich. (Siggi Bucher/Keystone via AP, file)
FILE - N'Gola, the silverback male of the gorilla group at Zurich Zoo celebrates his 40th birthday on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Zurich. (Siggi Bucher/Keystone via AP, file)

The Zurich Zoo’s beloved gorilla of more than 40 years has been put down after a long struggle with declining health, a zoo official in the Swiss city said this week.
N’Gola was 47 and one of the oldest male gorillas in European zoos, said Zurich Zoo director Severin Dressen.
He was a Western lowland gorilla — a subspecies of the great apes found in Africa and listed as critically endangered — and because of his mature age he was a silverback, after the gray hair on his back, The Associated Press reported.
N'Gola had suffered a host of health ailments, including arthritis, a heart condition and a tapeworm infection. He had been on painkillers for several years, eating less, and losing weight and muscle mass.
“It’s a hard decision to euthanize a silverback,” Dressen said.
"We’ve seen a crash in the wild over the span of three generations of 80% of the population," Dressen said about the decline of gorillas in the wild. Zoos can be helpful for research and public education about species protection, he added.
N'Gola was born in captivity and fathered 34 children. He was known for his sensitive side, taking “care of his harem, his group of females,” Dressen said.
In 2012, the female Nache in his harem suffered a burst appendix during advanced pregnancy, and both she and the unborn baby gorilla died, according to the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuricher Zeitung.
N’Gola spent weeks whimpering through the zoo enclosure looking for her, the report said.
Dressen also recalled a time when N'Gola looked after a baby gorilla in the group. "The mother wasn’t there, and he kind of — which is not a typical silverback behavior — took care of that baby.”
As for humans, N'Gola mostly ignored "other bipedal species on the other side of the glass” of his enclosure, Dressen said.