Back in 2001 the Taliban in Afghanistan demolished a couple of Buddha statues that had been standing there for around 1500 years, behind them were some caves that were adorned with paintings from a similar era (around 5-900 AD). Now don’t worry, i have no intentions on touching on politics here (something we steer clear of here at reducedmass), but the point is, although the caves are now gone, pieces of them have been tested at a European lab and have lead to some surprising discoveries.

It turns out, after having examined fragments from the paintings (a cross-section of a painting piece can be seen in the picture to the left), they reached the conclusion that they were made with oil! Why is this exciting you may ask? Well until now, it was believed that oil painting was first developed in the 15th century, and by Europeans. Now this isn’t exactly a scientific breakthrough or anything, but i think it illustrates nicely how science is involved in almost everything.

To figure out what the paintings were composed of, they used so-called synchrotron radiation, which is more-or-less just a machine that accelerates electrons around in a big circle, producing x-rays. These x-rays are very strong and focused, and can be used to decipher the structure of materials using a variety of techniques, and they actually had to use a good many of them on this project to get a full picture of all the layers. Other materials found in the pictures include natural resins, proteins, gums, and in some cases, a varnish-like layer.

If you want to read more about the Buddha statues and the caves that contained these oil paintings, I suggest reading the wikipedia page on it, and eventually branching out from their sources.