Manuscript Hidden In Plain Sight For 500 Years, Recently Discovered

The white-out may be a relatively new invention, but way before that, people already had their own ways of reusing a surface. For instance, medieval scribes were able to scrape off ink from animal hide sheets, while artists have been known to paint over one image with another.

Hi-tech imaging reveals rare manuscript that could reveal clues on ancient Mexican culture https://t.co/DlDidEpFYy pic.twitter.com/qQ3htfBeDa

— LatinAmericanScience (@LatAmSci) August 22, 2016

Little is known about Americans perusing surfaces for writing, but a new study published in the Journal of Archeological Science: Reports noted that there had been a handful of manuscripts that remained from before Europeans discovered the the Americas. They discovered leather strips coated with gesso - a white, plaster-like substance.

Among the manuscripts studied is the Codex Selden, which scholars have been suspicious of for decades now, thinking that there is something that the book has been hiding beneath the surface. However, the Mixtec people who created the manuscripts used inks from plant materials, so there is no way that scientists could take a closer look at it without destroying the surface.

Luckily, there is a new technology that allows for the manuscript to be examined. A fairly new technique called hyperspectral imaging, according to Science Alert, allows for researchers to take very high-resolution images at different wavelengths of light. These images can be added and subtracted against each other to reveal what could be called "ghosts" beneath the manuscript's surface.

Not all pages have been scanned at this point, but researchers were able to identify individual people in the original text, and as they are able to scan more, they could find a way to connect the characters with historical figures.

The early scans also showed that the manuscript has a different style compared to others that have survived, so it could offer a new perspective on archaeological finds from the same area - what is particularly noteworthy is that its text flows sideways across the page spreads, rather than from top to bottom, like the way the manuscript on the surface does. For now, researchers are hoping to have the rest of the book scanned in order to better understand its history.