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Something that amazes me about The Shroud of Turin is that if it was created in the 14th century, how did they create a photographic negative 400 years before the first known photographic negative was created in 1826 by Nicephore Niepce. It’s the most studied artifact in history and still no one knows how The Shroud was created.

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People in the 14th century were no dumber than people living today, and painters like Duccio di Buoninsegna had a great understanding of shadows, and were capable of drawing amazing portraits.

They were absolutely capable of painting a negative of a portrait.

Of course they weren’t dumb, but having a great understanding of shadows is a far cry from being capable of creating a photo negative. They didn’t even have the concept of a photo negative. How would they even have thought to achieve such a thing? And for what purpose?

And, by the way, the image on the shroud is not made of paint, so contemporary proficiency with painting techniques hardly seems relevant.

Why would they need the specific concept of a photo negative? A negative is just a reversal of light/dark. They knew of such things. They knew primary colors, too. Painting and mixing colors is not exactly modern -- it has been around for many centuries. Artists practice playing with light and color as basic exercises, and have done so for hundreds if not thousands of years. Switching light and dark is a fairly basic concept to artists, not an innovation that required photography to exist in order to conceptualize it.

In the same vein, why would it have to be made of paint? Paint is simply pigment inside a medium. Dyes are also pigment, in different medium, made to soak into and bind with cloth instead of being layered on top.

I'm not saying that is how it was created, but I highly doubt that the skills to do so did not exist.

Why would they have done it?

I have no idea, but that seems completely orthogonal to what technique was used.

It’s extremely relevant to the question, which is what the negative nature of the image has to tell us about the relative probabilities of the two hypotheses (miraculous hypothesis vs fraud hypothesis).

In my view, it is a big problem for the fraud hypothesis because you have to explain why and how it was done. At a time when the idea of a photo negative was entirely unknown, and when there are no other examples of negative images, or even any mention of the idea of making such images, why would the fraudsters seize on the idea of making their fraudulent image a negative? There is no record of anybody even recognising that it is a negative until the 19th century. So, it’s not at all what you would expect given the fraud hypothesis. You would expect a straightforward image.

> At a time when the idea of a photo negative was entirely unknown

It was not called a negative until the 19th century when photography came about, because before that a photo negative wasn't a thing. Before that it was just a "painting with light and dark reversed".

> when there are no other examples of negative images, or even any mention of the idea of making such images

There are many examples. See woodcuts, for example. The concept of creating the negative of an image was common.

> why would the fraudsters seize on the idea of making their fraudulent image a negative?

Because they, and the intended consumers of their piece, were not stupid and all were aware of the pattern that a person would leave on a cloth. Presumably it was not more difficult to drape a cloth over a body and observe the staining pattern then than it is today.

> You would expect a straightforward image.

No, you would expect a straightforward image, because photographs weren't invented until many centuries later, apparently.

They inverted the colors because they were creating a painting of an impression of a face on a piece of cloth.

If you put a piece of cloth on your face, the parts of the face that touch the cloth are the ones where color would be transferred from your face to the cloth, and which are therefore darker. The parts of the face that are more recessed, like the areas around the eyeballs, would not touch the cloth, and so less or no color would be transferred from the face to the cloth in those areas.

In other words, the part of the face that would receive more shadow in a normal image (and would be darker) would receive less pigment in the painting (and would be lighter).

A face impression would be very distorted when moving from a 3D face to a 2D sheet. So it is not an impression.

I didn't say it was an impression, I said it was a painting of an impression.

I don't see why the miraculous hypothesis gets to get away with not explaining why and how the miracle was done. Why should we reject it being a fraud just because we don't know how it was done, while accepting a miracle which we also don't know how was done?

I think it's pretty common (maybe even required?) not to know how a miracle was done. The whole point seems to be that it was not done by known means.

That doesn't make it any more reasonable to accept as an explanation.

> In my view, it is a big problem for the fraud hypothesis because you have to explain why and how it was done.

Why is it hard to imagine the perpetrators just painted a model with red ochre and draped a cloth over him?

And you are misunderstanding the burden of proof, fraud is merely one possible explanation. Even if you show that its real blood instead of paint, how do you demonstrate that its not the impression of a dead medieval knight and was later mis-interpreted as a shroud of Jesus after the original creation was forgotten?

Those who would claim its actually the shroud of Jesus have the burden of proving it could possibly be old enough, that it could have been woven by peoples of that time, that the red ochre is actually blood, that Jesus actually existed, that he was crucified, and that he was laid in this shroud and its his blood.

And even then that doesn't show he was resurrected, or that he was divine, or a god, or anything to that effect. We have a ton of evidence Jesus wasn't, his own failed prophecy of the kingdom of heaven coming before the disciples passed, and his crying out for god on the cross.

Mostly we have the fact that the super active, super public god of the bible disappeared after all these stories were written and hasn't been seen since, despite claiming its the most important thing in the world that people know he exists. Essentially damning more than 90% of all the people who have ever lived to hell.

you can ask this for any non- photorealistic art.

It was not dyed - the fibers that are discolored are discolored only on one side.

They did not know primary colors. They weren't discovered until the 19th century, even then it took another 100 years before they figured out that red blue and yellow are not the primaries.

A negative is just an inversion of the intensity of visible signal. It even has a manifestation in common experience. Stare at something for a long time, then look away. A negative will superimpose on whatever you're now looking at it. I can't think of a good reason humans of the past should not have been able to reproduce this kind of effect artistically.

They were very familiar with rubbings where you place paper or canvas on a sculpture or incised surface and rub charcoal on it to capture the image. The result is very much like a negative.

"being capable of creating a photo negative"

You're calling it a photo negative. It's not a photo negative. It's a painting that has shadows and lights inverted.

"the image on the shroud is not made of paint"

It's made of red paint.

Not true at all. No red paint in it.

This has been conclusively, scientifically debunked multiple times.

Please provide sources.

Wikipedia's recap indicates compelling evidence of medieval origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin#Scientific_ana...

Red paint that isn't visible under an electron microscope is some pretty advanced paint.

It's red ochre.

It could be survivorship bias. All the fake shrouds with botched images were recognised as fakes and thrown out long ago. Only this one which happens to look vaguely realistic has been kept.

Plus what must have been lost in 500 years, all photonegative pictures, fragments, descriptions, recipes, any references for such imagery etc. It is very strange that this is the only image that remained. And an image of a nude Jesus from the back. For which no other instance is known anywhere.

Xylography (woodcut) technique also uses negatives. The technique is ancient in China and it has been attested in 13th century Europe

A photo negative in a single color is not a tough concept to stumble upon if you ever carve something to be thin enough to let light through.

Bas relief and the play of light and shadow have been used since humans have tried their hand at carving. Seeing the impression a wet face left on dry cloth would be sufficient to tickle artistic inspiration, but actual artists, who spend their time thinking about how things appear and how to capture them in their respective media would have all sorts of opportunities for capturing the negative of an image, even if they wouldn't have thought of it in those terms.

There are plenty of examples of engravings, carvings, intaglia, and so on that used what we consider to be a "negative." There's nothing particularly special about flipping an image, transposing light and dark, inverting the 3d characteristics, or otherwise reversing different aspects.

Specifically, the inverse image might be carved for a wax seal ring or imprint, or it might be carved for a decoration stamp used in cement, or a mold for jewelry or ceramics. There are plenty of examples of things all throughout history that provide opportunity to inspire an inverted or "negative" image; it's simply our context of photography that is novel.

If I had to choose between (a) an artist who decided to invert the light/dark palette to achieve a dramatic effect or (b) it actually wrapped God and the moment of His death it left pigment on the cloth, I'm going with (a) every time.

If you want to get Bayesian on it, the base rate of confirmed art forgeries and religious artifact forgeries is non-trivial, but the base rate of confirmed creators of the universe manifesting has human form is zero.

It's sort of semi-3D. Reasonably good imitations have been made by molding linen to a shallow sculpture (aka a bas-relief) and dusting it with pigment, which thus picks up peaks and troughs.

Not only a photographic negative, a photographic negative with proper depth that was painted on individual sides of the fibers of the shroud by something (likely heat). The fibers that are colored on this shroud are colored only on one side and they themselves are colored. There is no chemical deposition upon them, at least none visible to an electron microscope.

Recent research has discovered the "stroboscopic effect" in the image. The hands and feet are moving when the image was imprinted on the shroud.

Strobe lights didn't exist in the 14th century either.

Which priest or other religious zealot with a vested interest found this out?

Also, is the implication that undead Jesus was twitching rapidly and flashing on and off? That is kind of cool, perhaps I should get religion.

Setting aside the unnecessary snide commentary, if the image were made when Jesus was coming back from the dead, starting to move, potentially fitfully, as one would who hadn't moved for several days, would seem pretty normal to me.

There's a number of weird things that knowledge of their manufacture has been lost. The lenses of Gotland, Greek Fire and the Chinese Jade burial suits all come to mind.

I don't see that as a reason to Revere any item.

Anyone who has made the mistake of storing expensive clothing in a closet with a window (/me raises hand) can explain how the Shroud could have been created. An object that blocks sunlight from reaching a dark cloth will leave an unmistakable image of itself.

So the hypothesis here is that they hung a dead guy in front of a dark cloth for a few months, and also made sure that the details of his face somehow made it onto the cloth even though the light was silhouetting him? Or am I missing something here?

If it's a forgery, it could have been done simply by using whatever sculpted or hand-formed objects were needed to create the negative image. Basically a stencil.

Point being, people are way too eager to assume supernatural causes.

Is there much of a controversy about it being an imprint of a body ?

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