A team of heritage scientists at MIT and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has unveiled a new imaging technique called 'Photon-Sieving'. The technology was recently deployed to analyze a heavily degraded 14th-century Zapotec codex found in the Oaxaca Valley. To the naked eye, the bark paper appeared as a blank, darkened sheet; however, the new system successfully recovered intricate red and black ink layers depicting royal genealogies and land boundaries.
Unlike traditional multispectral imaging, Photon-Sieving uses diffractive optics to filter light at an atomic level, distinguishing between the chemical signatures of ancient organic pigments and modern environmental contaminants. This breakthrough is expected to revitalize the study of Mesoamerican manuscripts, many of which were previously considered too damaged to read. The recovered data has already identified three previously unknown rulers of the Zaachila dynasty.