Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls may be up to a century older than previously thought, potentially revising our understanding of how these ancient texts were produced.

This new assessment, based on AI analysis of handwriting and modern radiocarbon dating techniques, even suggests that a few scrolls – like those containing the biblical books Daniel and Ecclesiastes – may be copies made during the lifetimes of the books’ original authors, says Mladen Popović at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.