Scientists Are Lifting Fingerprints Left By People Hundreds Of Years Ago
Justin Henry/Flickr Wax Seal Wax seals have largely fallen out of favor today, but in Medieval times, they were everywhere, used as an official signature on all kinds of important documents. But in addition to an impression of the seal itself, the warm wax also recorded something else--the fingerprints of people applying the seal to the document. Now, researchers at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom are taking a closer look at these old fingerprints using modern forensics. Over the next three years, researchers will examine the fingerprints left on the seals of hundreds of documents from the Medieval period in a project called Imprint. While not all seals contained fingerprints, an earlier study found that 37 percent of the seals examined had usable fingerprints. University of...