Fake Dead Sea Scrolls and other Antiquities: Blockchain isn’t Fraud-Proof, but it’s one Hell of a Deterrent
Hype can get people to drop their inquisitive and skeptical traits. It can sweep people away, not noticing that they take certain unproven statements as irrefutable axioms Confusion over the meaning of certain buzzwords can also give people the wrong impression. So is the case with blockchain and security, particularly fraud.
Blockchain is not inherently fraud-proof, but it can greatly deter fraud over time.
Take for example one potential application of blockchain, antiquities. Just like art, antiquities might see a future being catalogued and tracked on universal blockchains that museum curators depend on for authenticity. Unfortunately for us history buffs, not all artifacts turn out to be what they’re cracked up to be.
A recent forensic study of several fragments attributed to be from the Dead Sea Scrolls, on display at the Museum of the Bible (MOTB) in Washington D.C., proved they were forgeries. Scholars and investigators know that the original scrolls are authentic, but sometime around 2002 a number of new fragments entered the antiquities black market and made it to auction.
There are likely more. “The plan at MOTB was always to test all their fragments. Yesterday’s results were just for the first lot. There will be more to come,” Dr. Kipp Davis, a research fellow at Trinity Western University and associate at its Dead Sea Scrolls Institute told The Times of Israel recently.
Auction houses and some museums have incentive not to recognize these studies, but the rumors have persisted for years already and studies like this one will only force collectors to gradually accept the truth: They might have been duped on their purchases.
A blockchain might not have been able to catch a forgery at the start. At some point, a newly discovered artifact has to be entered into a registry and catalogued. However, had such a distributed ledger existed in 2002, it would give fraud investigators more breadcrumbs to track down the ultimate source of the forgeries, or multiple sources.
Perhaps blockchain can one day be integrated with more sophisticated AI-based technologies or Star Trek-esque programs that can analyze objects merely by scanning them. Absent these marvels that would immediately detect kinds of material, date inscriptions or cross-reference such data with carbon dating, we have a new kind of efficient ledger.
Blockchain tech, by meticulously cataloguing who owns, borrows, buys, and trafficks in antiquities or art, can create a more authoritative path back to purveyors. Projects like Verisart and Ascribe are recording information about physical works of art.
Thieves dealing in forgeries would face a much more difficult environment inherent to blockchain’s infrastructure. When black market dealers might see their personal information entered into a global distributed ledger by an anonymous party, the ability to stay in business will be tough.
With blockchain, forensics and fraud will get a lot harder when tracking down counterfeiters gets much easier. As the industry seeks and tests new ways to extract value from blockchain, the benefits of asset-tracking will likely show themselves to be immense.
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