According to a new study published in Scientific Reports, DNA evidence says the Shroud of Turin is covered in food and animal DNA, along with genetic traces from people whose ancestry spans different parts of the world. It’s news neither side of the centuries-old debate over Christianity’s most famous relic was hoping to hear, not that it will change many minds.
Generations of people have been confident that this simple piece of cloth was the burial shroud of Jesus. Some argue that it’s just some medieval fabrication or a random piece of fabric that took on an unearned religious significance. Regardless of what people believe about it, there are physical attributes of this piece of cloth that can be studied and analyzed in a laboratory.
One such recent DNA analysis suggests that one of the most famous sheets in the world spent hundreds of years doing what sheets do, essentially acting as a napkin as it collected all sorts of biological material.
Scientists Found DNA From Food, Animals, and People on the Shroud of Turin
Researchers examined samples first collected from the shroud in 1978 using modern genetic techniques. They were able to identify DNA from at least 14 people, including the scientist who originally handled the samples. They also found genetic markers linked to Europe, the Middle East, and a surprisingly large chunk (40 percent) from someone or many someones with Indian ancestry. All this lends a bit of credence to one of many theories about the linen’s origin: that it may have originated in the Indus Valley before making its way west.
But then there’s also nonhuman DNA all over it. And when I say nonhuman, I not only mean animals like dogs, cats, pigs, chickens, cows, rabbits, horses, fish, and crustaceans, but also foods like carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, potatoes, peppers, bananas, peanuts, wheat, and maize. They even found traces of Mediterranean red coral.
That’s a whole lot of things that are not Jesus and collectively sound more like a fascinating lunch or perhaps an especially stuffed Golden Corral plate. If anything, it just goes to show how difficult it is to use modern scientific methods to answer age-old religious questions after centuries of countless people handling a material, unconsciously tainting it with their own genetic signatures along with general environmental exposure.
Maybe someone of Indian descent ate some chicken and cucumbers, then rode a horse before rubbing their hands over the shroud? Or maybe Jesus was a tomato? Who knows?
One thing we can be sure of is that absolutely none of this proves where it came from or who it once covered. But it does prove that it is absolutely filthy and that people really should wash their hands more often.
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