The Turin Shroud: The Image of Edessa created in c. 300-400 AD?

[meccanoman]

Oh no, no, no. The burden is on those making the claim. If you can't back up your claim, the sensible will consider it null and void. It couldn't be any other way, otherwise you would have to be seeking proof that there isn't a pink unicorn farting star-dust as it orbits the earth.

Sorry. You've lost me. Kindly specify the claim or claims I have made in the course of my 5 comments thus far that I'm required to back up?

 

[MikeG]

Sorry. You've lost me. Kindly specify the claim or claims I have made in the course of my 5 comments thus far that I'm required to back up?

I thought it fairly straight forward. You said:

.......If you have reason to doubt what I ... say, then the onus is surely on you..........

No, the onus is not on the doubter. It is on you.

 

[meccanoman]

I thought it fairly straight forward. You said:



No, the onus is not on the doubter. It is on you.

You have to look at the context in which my comment was made. It was NOT about expecting folk here to take everything I say on trust. It was about another commentator signalling he was not prepared to take what I say seriously unless I could show specialist qualifications in the subjects he listed.

What I say is this: if he or anyone else doubts what I say, then kindly challenge me to back up my words with additional evidence (which I may or may not have - if the latter I will say so). Don't, repeat DON'T ask me to volunteer the nature of my specialist qualifications. I would never ask that of others here, and wish to be given the same right to privacy re my education and career background.

 

[MikeG]

Fair enough.

 

[meccanoman]

Fair enough.

Thanks MikeG. Non-combative reply greatly appreciated.

 

[Slowvehicle]

One can only speculate as to who created the Shroud, how they made it, precisely when they made it, why they made it. What's more the image characteristics are totally unique, often described as 'enigmatic'. Scores, maybe hundreds of experts, armed with sophisticated instrumentation, have failed to produce a chemical formula for the Shroud body image, or the precise chemical composition of that unblood-like "blood" that stays permanently red and lacks a typical porphyrin spectrum (Adler and Heller).

So why bother asking for a commentator's qualifications in this or that? How can you be so certain they would have any bearing on something that is a total mystery?

Why not stick to discussing the issues? If you have reason to doubt what I or others say, then the onus is surely on you to consult specialists and/or experts
of your choosing whom you consider might have relevant expertise.

Oh, sweetie--the "issues" have been done to death on the threads into which you choose not to dip. Done to death, I might add, by chemistry teachers, artists, and pigment-makers, as well as interested people with (for instance) normal eyesight and experience with the actual shapes and possible postures of human bodies.

You have made an ungrammatical and extraordinary claim; a claim for which you have offered no support. The onus probandi is, in fact, yours; particularly when you eschew reading what has, in fact, already been said.

(To say nothing of the fact that the cartoon on the CIQ cannot be older than the linen of which the fabric was wrought...)

 

[Slowvehicle]

Sorry. You've lost me. Kindly specify the claim or claims I have made in the course of my 5 comments thus far that I'm required to back up?

...something ungrammatical about the characteristics of the CIQ; and an implication that the cartoon is older than the linen upon which it is wrought...

ETA: that implication was another's, sorry.

 

[meccanoman]

...something ungrammatical about the characteristics of the CIQ; and an implication that the cartoon is older than the linen upon which it is wrought...

ETA: that implication was another's, sorry.

I look forward to this thread returning to the substantive issue raised in the title, namely whether the Shroud of Turin predated its radiocarbon date (1260-1390) by centuries, some 13 according to the pro-authenticity proponents.

I believe it was designed and fabricated by the half dozen or so canons of the private chapel founded by Geoffroy de Charny, Lord of Lirey and his wife. I believe it was a simulation of the body imprint of the crucified Jesus left by sweat and blood on 14th century herringbone weave, a proxy for Joseph of Arimathea's "fine linen". I believe the technique involved a form of powder imprinting, with some resemblance to Garlaschelli's ideas, but important differences too. I believe the image comprises melanoidins, i.e. high molecular condensation products formed by Maillard browning reactions between reducing sugars and amino groups. There are affinities too with the ideas of STURP's Raymond Rogers, but again, important differences too.

 

[Slowvehicle]

I look forward to this thread returning to the substantive issue raised in the title, namely whether the Shroud of Turin predated its radiocarbon date (1260-1390) by centuries, some 13 according to the pro-authenticity proponents.

I believe it was designed and fabricated by the half dozen or so canons of the private chapel founded by Geoffroy de Charny, Lord of Lirey and his wife. I believe it was a simulation of the body imprint of the crucified Jesus left by sweat and blood on 14th century herringbone weave, a proxy for Joseph of Arimathea's "fine linen". I believe the technique involved a form of powder imprinting, with some resemblance to Garlaschelli's ideas, but important differences too. I believe the image comprises melanoidins, i.e. high molecular condensation products formed by Maillard browning reactions between reducing sugars and amino groups. There are affinities too with the ideas of STURP's Raymond Rogers, but again, important differences too.

Ah. I breathlessly await the evidence you must intend to provide; the objective, non-anecdotal, testable, practical evidence upon which your beliefs are based.

 

[meccanoman]

Ah. I breathlessly await the evidence you must intend to provide; the objective, non-anecdotal, testable, practical evidence upon which your beliefs are based.

You can find the evidence you seek on my two current websites. One is WordPress-hosted with shroudofturinwithoutallthehype in the title, with some 300 or more postings these last five years with much hands-on experimentation. My initial research was posted to my sciencebuzz site (Blogger-hosted), which still gets the occasional posting on the Shroud, but much else besides (Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, a wide range of chemical/biochemical/biomedical topics etc).

So I'm not the innocent abroad you seem to have assumed... Why make these assumptions about newcomers - or returnees- to this site? Being a newbie here does not necessarily make one a newbie on the topics addressed. (Speaking of which, I'm pleased to see the post-James Randi site labelling one as "New Blood" instead of the previous "Student"!

 

[Slowvehicle]

You can find the evidence you seek on my two current websites. One is WordPress-hosted with shroudofturinwithoutallthehype in the title, with some 300 or more postings these last five years with much hands-on experimentation. My initial research was posted to my sciencebuzz site (Blogger-hosted), which still gets the occasional posting on the Shroud, but much else besides (Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, a wide range of chemical/biochemical/biomedical topics etc).

So I'm not the innocent abroad you seem to have assumed... Why make these assumptions about newcomers - or returnees- to this site? Being a newbie here does not necessarily make one a newbie on the topics addressed. (Speaking of which, I'm pleased to see the post-James Randi site labelling one as "New Blood" instead of the previous "Student"!

Ah. Clickbait.

TY

No evidence to post here, then?

Oh, well.

(BTW, "Student" will come--just wait)

 

[John Jones]

You have to look at the context in which my comment was made. It was NOT about expecting folk here to take everything I say on trust. It was about another commentator signalling he was not prepared to take what I say seriously unless I could show specialist qualifications in the subjects he listed.

What I say is this: if he or anyone else doubts what I say, then kindly challenge me to back up my words with additional evidence (which I may or may not have - if the latter I will say so). Don't, repeat DON'T ask me to volunteer the nature of my specialist qualifications. I would never ask that of others here, and wish to be given the same right to privacy re my education and career background.

State your position unambiguously, or risk being misunderstood.

 

[John Jones]

[...] I believe the image comprises melanoidins, i.e. high molecular condensation products formed by Maillard browning reactions between reducing sugars and amino groups. There are affinities too with the ideas of STURP's Raymond Rogers, but again, important differences too.

I can't wait to hear your arguments re the Maillard reactions.

Ray Rogers left this life as a discredited chemist. His Kitchen Chemistry was *****.

 

[meccanoman]

I can't wait to hear your arguments re the Maillard reactions.

Ray Rogers left this life as a discredited chemist. His Kitchen Chemistry was *****.

The current Model 10 this Shroud investigator/real time internet reporter proposed some 18 months ago is absurdly simple in principle (it's the details at the atomic and molecular level that are unknown, though that would not have bothered the medieval fabricators of the Shroud).

Briefly I propose that white wheaten breadmaking flour was the imprinting agent. But the fine powder particles had first to be attached to one (probably two) human volunteers. That required an initial swabbing of the naked volunteers with vegetable oil, a technique I had earlier discovered to work when working with metal bas relief templates.

The oiled volunteers then lie down on the ground, head to head, face up for the frontal imprinting, face down for the dorsal. The flour is then placed in a sieve, and sprinkled onto the subjects from above, probably a height of several cm or more. It is this vertical presentation of the imprinting medium, settling preferentially but not exclusively on the higher flatter relief, with maybe small amounts where that meets vertical relief at the sides, that can account for much of the image subtlety - avoiding the look of crude rubber stamp imprint.

Wet linen is then draped over the oil/flour-dusted subjects, probably the two simultaneously, and helpers proceed to press it gently so as to capture as much as possible of the higher flatter relief, avoiding the sides (thereby minimizing lateral false widening/distortion - though I suspect a little helps to avoid too narrow an imprint!).

The flour/oil- imprinted linen is then suspended in a large breadmaking oven or similar (as might exist in a country residence, many miles from the nearest town or city) and heating proceeds. There then follows the same kind of chemistry that accounts for the browning of flour dough to make loaves of bread. The browning depends on Maillard reactions between reducing sugars and amino-groups in the flour (the side chain amino-groups of lysine residues in protein are a prime candidate for those Maillard reactions, though there are others).


After 10 or 15 minutes in the oven (with the temperature up to 180 to 200 degrees C) one then has one's yellow or brown contact imprint onto virtually unchanged linen. (A little yellow discoloration of the latter is not a bad thing since it provides an instant 'aged' appearance).

The final step is to give the imprinted linen a vigorous wash in soap and water to dislodge the surface encrustation, leaving just a faint fuzzy image which has certain properties that might ring a bell. The image is a tone-reversed negative, it responds to 3D-rendering software, it displays a half-tone effect and discontinuities under the microscope, it is easily bleachable (ordinary domestic bleach will do - diimide has not been tested as yet).


Best I stop there and await reaction. Something less dismissive and/or combative than we've seen thus far would be welcome.

 

[John Jones]

I haven't seen any evidence of this Mallard reaction.

 

[Pixel42]

What you're describing might well be a good way of producing an image that is similar to the one that appears on the Shroud now, but my understanding is that descriptions and an illustration of how the Shroud looked when it was first exhibited suggest the image was much more obvious then. Does your technique produce an image that fades over time?

Your experiments certainly sound interesting, you've obviously put a lot of time into them.

 

[MikeG]

The current Model 10 this Shroud investigator/real time internet reporter proposed some 18 months ago is absurdly simple in principle (it's the details at the atomic and molecular level that are unknown, though that would not have bothered the medieval fabricators of the Shroud).

Briefly I propose that white wheaten breadmaking flour was the imprinting agent. But the fine powder particles had first to be attached to one (probably two) human volunteers. That required an initial swabbing of the naked volunteers with vegetable oil, a technique I had earlier discovered to work when working with metal bas relief templates.

The oiled volunteers then lie down on the ground, head to head, face up for the frontal imprinting, face down for the dorsal. The flour is then placed in a sieve, and sprinkled onto the subjects from above, probably a height of several cm or more. It is this vertical presentation of the imprinting medium, settling preferentially but not exclusively on the higher flatter relief, with maybe small amounts where that meets vertical relief at the sides, that can account for much of the image subtlety - avoiding the look of crude rubber stamp imprint.

Wet linen is then draped over the oil/flour-dusted subjects, probably the two simultaneously, and helpers proceed to press it gently so as to capture as much as possible of the higher flatter relief, avoiding the sides (thereby minimizing lateral false widening/distortion - though I suspect a little helps to avoid too narrow an imprint!).

The flour/oil- imprinted linen is then suspended in a large breadmaking oven or similar (as might exist in a country residence, many miles from the nearest town or city) and heating proceeds. There then follows the same kind of chemistry that accounts for the browning of flour dough to make loaves of bread. The browning depends on Maillard reactions between reducing sugars and amino-groups in the flour (the side chain amino-groups of lysine residues in protein are a prime candidate for those Maillard reactions, though there are others).


After 10 or 15 minutes in the oven (with the temperature up to 180 to 200 degrees C) one then has one's yellow or brown contact imprint onto virtually unchanged linen. (A little yellow discoloration of the latter is not a bad thing since it provides an instant 'aged' appearance).

The final step is to give the imprinted linen a vigorous wash in soap and water to dislodge the surface encrustation, leaving just a faint fuzzy image which has certain properties that might ring a bell. The image is a tone-reversed negative, it responds to 3D-rendering software, it displays a half-tone effect and discontinuities under the microscope, it is easily bleachable (ordinary domestic bleach will do - diimide has not been tested as yet).


Best I stop there and await reaction. Something less dismissive and/or combative than we've seen thus far would be welcome.

Well this would be extraordinarily easy to replicate. The only difficulty would be getting hold of the right grade of linen. Is there any reason why you haven't run this test?

As the chemistry of the shroud was looked at in great detail a few years back, is your hypothesis consistent with their results, chemically?

 

[meccanoman]

I haven't seen any evidence of this Mallard reaction.

As I say, it's just a model at this stage (though I hesitate to deploy that term 'just' given the crucial importance of models, aka hypotheses, in science generally).

You mentioned Ray Rogers earlier, best known for his post-STURP vaporigraph model that also explained the image color in terms of Maillard reactions. There are any number of pro-authenticity advocates who have embraced that model (indeed, it was the first to be laid at my door some 5 years ago when challenging authenticity). What was Rogers' evidence for Maillard chemistry? None as I recall - in fact he even acknowledged the absence of surplus nitrogen in the earlier STURP analysis of image-bearing fibres - but that did not appear to bother him unduly, nor his fan club.

The important thing is to be able to test in principle for Maillard products, including those fiendishly complex high molecular weight melanoidins, as and when a STURP Mk2 is permitted (probably not in my lifetime!). That will be no easy task, given the minute amounts of image pigment available, especially if resorting a second time to Rogers' sticky tape sampling of stripped-out individual fibres. Until then, one has to content oneself with model-building, with the proviso, as indicated, that all models should be testable in principle (and hopefully, one day, in practice).

A more immediate goal for testing the Shroud might be to detect traces of flour residues which if present make Maillard chemistry the likely chemistry in a thermal mechanism (hot oven) as per breadmaking. I've suggested in my latest posting that the reddish-brown flecks one sees all over the Shroud in Mario Latendresse's Shroud Scope pictures, especially under high magnification and added contrast, might well be gluten, the highly water-insoluble storage protein of wheat and other cereal grains. One would not expect sticky flecks of gluten to wash out completely in the final rinsing stage. Maybe a hoovering of the Shroud, with permission from its custodians, would be all that was needed to test for gluten. (The Shroud was controversially hoovered back in 2001 or thereabouts, so it's just possible that what was recovered and hopefully put under lock-and-key then (?) then could be utilized for gluten-testing).

 

[meccanoman]

What you're describing might well be a good way of producing an image that is similar to the one that appears on the Shroud now, but my understanding is that descriptions and an illustration of how the Shroud looked when it was first exhibited suggest the image was much more obvious then. Does your technique produce an image that fades over time?

Your experiments certainly sound interesting, you've obviously put a lot of time into them.

Might I be correct in thinking you have a certain engraving in mind, one by Antonio Tempesta, 1613, which appeared in a highly controversial magazine article back in Nov 2014 (authored by a tour-guide/occasional writer of history books).

I would not assume that because that Shroud image was so prominent in that ENGRAVING it was necessarily the artist's intention (it being quite difficult to represent faint images if having to rely entirely on scored or etched lines in a metal plate).

Note the date (1613). That was decades AFTER the first (surviving) copies of the Shroud appeared, notably (a) Lier (1516) (b)Guadalupe (1568). They both show a faint fuzzy image, and while I'm no expert in art, I would have said that was the artists' intention, i.e. they are not that way on account of their age.

The dubious thesis in that magazine article began with this quotation: "My research began with this engraving, as it demonstrated that the original images of the Shroud were much more prominent than they are now. The Shroud would not have made an impact on such large crowds if they had not been".

But those outdoor viewers in that engraving must surely have known that if going to see the reputedly GENUINE (! burial shroud with a body imprint in sweat and blood of the crucified Jesus, the image would have been scarcely visible unless viewed at close quarters. But they were expecting and probably content maybe to see the Shroud - not the image in close-up detail.

Actually that article gets progressively worse with its tendentious claim to relate "history". Immediately after the words quoted above, it goes on to say:

"There are features - the Crown of Thorns, the long hair on Christ's neck, the space between the elbows and the body, the loincloth - that can no longer be seen today".

Such touching faith in what an early 17th century engraver chose to show and not to show in an engraving intended for public exhibition! Such touching faith in Time to delete some features in their entirety while preserving others!

Why was there no mention of those earlier copies? Objective history? Or putting together a narrative that generates loads of self-publicity (handy if one's also a Mediterranean tour guide with senior citizens at the Captain's table hanging on one's every word!)?

Sorry, I'm not usually this dismissive of rival ideas, but that "just a faded painting" theory is frankly unsubstantiated, even in historical terms, to say nothing of chemically illiterate, as stated earlier. Paintings do not fade to leave a negative (tone-reversed) image... Nor do they disappear when one adds chemical bleaches like hypochlorites or diimide, ones that work only on organic (carbon-based) pigments, not on the solid inorganic ones - metal oxides, sulphides etc - found on an artist's paint brush or palette.

 

[meccanoman]

Well this would be extraordinarily easy to replicate. The only difficulty would be getting hold of the right grade of linen. Is there any reason why you haven't run this test?

As the chemistry of the shroud was looked at in great detail a few years back, is your hypothesis consistent with their results, chemically?

Yes, it takes only an hour or two in one's kitchen with a hot oven to show that flour-imprinting works in principle to produce an image that is uncannily Shroud-like. Even Thibault Heimburger MD, quick to find fault with Garlaschelli's powder frottage, and even more dismissive of my initial dabbling with heated metal templates, has declared flour-imprinting to be the best model he's seen so far. (He was initially dubious of the need for an oil- base before flour, but later agreed ( probably after doing his own tests) that it played an important in generating that subtle, fuzzy image).

So yes, the model has been experimentally tested, scores of times, with a range of 'templates' range from small plastic figurines, large ones (half human size), my own and wife's hands etc. Results from my face were more problematic - on account of the abrupt changes in relief, nose etc, making me inclined to agree with Luigi Garlaschelli that a bas relief was used for the face (which could explain some anomalies).


You say the chemistry of the Shroud was looked at in great detail. Only partly true actually. Certainly there was a vast number of wet microchemistry spot tests, but most were directed to detecting artists' pigments (largely negative!). But there was a serious shortcoming - namely the (understandable) decision to restrict the tests to individual fibres detached from the Shroud with sticky tape with minuscule amounts of 'unknown'. That placed huge limitations on what one could hope to learn. To give just one example: the tentative identification of the image pigment as "conjugated carbonyls" was based on scarcely any hard data - and indeed seems to have been largely armchair chemistry when you read the account in John Heller's book. (There's a tiny fly in the ointment inasmuch as the simplest conjugated carbonyl - acrolein - CH2=CH-CHO, is colorless when pure!).

I personally believe that carbonyls play no crucial role in determining the yellow or brown colour. It's usually long runs of conjugated double bonds, with or without nitrogen (NOT oxygen) that are responsible for the colour of organic chromophores, e.g. -CH=CH-CH=CH-N=CH- etc etc.

These are the kind of structures one might expect to be formed along the way in sugar-protein Maillard reactions, resulting finally in yellow or brown melanoidins (which may or may not retain nitrogen).

Are Maillard reaction products consistent with STURP's data? Answer: we don't know because Raymond Rogers, STURP's chemistry team leader, did not take an interest in Maillard products until after the project was over. I personally have spent many hours online trying to find chemical and/or other 'fingerprint' tests for melanoidins and other yellow or brown Maillard end-products, so far without success. It is an amazingly complex area of organic chemistry with no specific tests that I can find thus far. We shall persevere... Maybe pyrolysis mass spectrometry is the answer (which if the case would be ironic, given it was the technique that Rogers applied to non-image aspects of the Shroud, notably blood).