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Holy Shroud or clever hoax? | Fox News
The image on the Shroud is not red ochre, it is a discollored suger coating from the sugars left on the linen from the ancient manufacturing process of that time.
Shroud of Turin for Journalists - Carbon Dating Mistakes Fact Check
The blood stains are in fact blood stains, and not ochre:
How the images were formed:
The Shroud of Turin's Strange Coating of Saccharides Turned Brown
Dating from the lignin in th e Shroud:
Clues from Vanillin Showed Something Was Wrong in the Carbon 14 Dating
How the Carbon14 dating was wrong:
Other Clues Something Was Amiss in the Carbon 14 Dating
It is amazing how journalists cant get the most basic facts straight then go around telling the world their mistakes as though they are established in fact.
But the Shrouds mysterious image has a simple explanation, according to two credible investigators: professional skeptic Joe Nickell, and Dr. Emily Craig, a forensic anthropologist with years of experience as a medical illustrator.
Working independently, Craig and Nickell have both demonstrated that a medieval artist could have created the image with materials and techniques that were common in the 1300s.
How?
By applying a faint dusting of red ochre (a pigment made from ferrous oxide an artists version of rust) to the linen.
Red ochre and dust-transfer were used 30,000 years ago, to make cave paintings in Spain and France, so its reasonable to think that a 14th-century artist in France could have used them. Whats more, a respected microscopist, Dr. Walter McCrone, detected red ochre in the image on the Shroud; he also found vermillion (a brighter red pigment) in the Shrouds bloodstains. But the work of McCrone, Craig, and Nickell has been ignored or shouted down by those who disagree with them, or who dont want to hear what they have to say.
The image on the Shroud is not red ochre, it is a discollored suger coating from the sugars left on the linen from the ancient manufacturing process of that time.
Shroud of Turin for Journalists - Carbon Dating Mistakes Fact Check
The shroud is sugar coated. A clear polysaccharide residue coats the outermost fibers of the cloth. In places, that residue has changed to a caramel-like substance. That brown substance forms the images.
The blood stains are in fact blood stains, and not ochre:
Immunological, fluorescence and spectrographic tests, as well as Rh and ABO typing of blood antigens, reveal that the stains are human blood. Many of the bloodstains have the distinctive forensic signature of clotting with red corpuscles about the edge of a clot with a clear yellowish halo of serum. The heme was converted into its parent porphyrin, and the spectra examined. This too, revealed the fact that bloodstains are blood. Microchemical tests for proteins were positive in blood areas. Much of this work is published in peer reviewed scientific journals including Archeological Chemistry: Organic, Inorganic, and Biochemical Analysis (American Chemical Society), Applied Optics and the Canadian Society of Forensic Sciences Journal.
How the images were formed:
The Shroud of Turin's Strange Coating of Saccharides Turned Brown
1) Fibers, much thinner than human hair, were handspun together to form the yarn used to weave the linen cloth.
2) Individual lengths (hanks) of the yarn were bleached with potash. This is not an exacting method and thus some hanks of yarn were whiter than others.
How do we know this? The variation in bleaching caused a horizontal and vertical variegated appearance in the cloth; a faint plaid forming as different hanks of yarn were fed into the loom. As the cloth aged and naturally yellowed, the variegation became more pronounced as can be seen in the contrast enhanced photograph.
3) On the loom, warp (vertical) threads were coated with raw starch to make weaving easier. The starch kept the delicate linen yarn from fraying and made it easier to pass the shuttle with the weft yarn over and under the warp.
4) After weaving, the starch needed to be removed. To accomplish this, the cloth was washed in suds of soapwort.
How do we know this? There is, on the outermost fibers of the cloth a clear washing residue: a thin coating of starch fractions and the various saccharides found in soapwort: glucose, fucose, galactose, arabinose, xylose, rhamnose, and glucuronic acid.
Such a residue is normal in soap washing, even with rinsing. The residue is an evaporation concentration that forms on the outermost fibers of cloth during air drying. It forms on both sides of the cloth.
The residue is so thin it is difficult to see with an ordinary microscope. But we can see it with phase-contrast microscopy or a scanning electron microscope. We say it is superficial.
We don't know why but in places this residue has turned brown. It has turned into a caramel-like substance. And it is the brownish color, here and there, that makes up the image we see on the Shroud.
Of this we can be certain: the image is not paint and the polysaccharide residue is not is not a photo-sensitive emulsion.
Dating from the lignin in th e Shroud:
Clues from Vanillin Showed Something Was Wrong in the Carbon 14 Dating
How the Carbon14 dating was wrong:
Other Clues Something Was Amiss in the Carbon 14 Dating
It is amazing how journalists cant get the most basic facts straight then go around telling the world their mistakes as though they are established in fact.