ERASER HELPS PROVE MEDIEVAL PARCHMENTS WERE MADE OF ADULT ANIMAL SKINS
This technique definitely saved the historians who were trying to preserve the parchment papers…
Reading has never been the same when the paper was invented, since, a very long time ago. We were able to read and understand and that’s what separated us from the rest of the animals. We have this hunger for knowledge that we have to eventually fill up. And without paper, we have probably read tales and such on the walls. That gives me such a headache just thinking about it. But reading has been changing every time. That also means that our ways to read and have also been evolving. And it’s not a very gradual thing, but rather a slightly drastic one, if that’s applicable.
Just a decade ago, you wouldn’t be staring at your screen just to red this article. We had to publish a book first before we can let you know that parchment was made of adult animal skins. But reading has evolved so much and we now have this computer that we use in order to read articles such as this. It easier since we crave for convenience and knowledge at the same time and it seems that we always have something up our sleeves.
Well, of course you may have known that parchment is from animal skins since you may be using parchment, but the thing is, we want to share to you how we actually confirmed that. Researchers knew that parchment is from animal skins, but some myths that the really thin parchments were from aborted newborns of cows and whatnot, and they were skeptical about that. They knew that it wasn’t that, but they had to confirm it for evidence’s sake.
So, out of curiosity, they just had to find out. And what else will they use to gain what they needed from the parchment? Nothing else, but the good and trusty eraser. They used a PVC eraser in order to obtain proteins from 72 parchments from the 13th century scripts and bibles where most of the world’s most important pieces were written by hand by people who have long gone this world. And most of all, they are not allowed to ruin it in any way.
And what do you know that an eraser can be that helpful? They just erased the parts of the parchments where there is no writing and carried on from there. They used the proteins that they got from the parchments to let them indicate what kind of skin that parchment is from and what kind of animals and how old were they when it was taken. Well, of course they would also want to know where those animals might have come from.
And as it turned out, the ever so popular parchment was made of adult sheep and cow skins. They have just recently published the study that they did in PNAS and with that, they found that the truth is just as simple as they thought. No need to be cruel to the maker of the parchments people.