[griffzhowl]

Yeah, it was quite a compelling story, and it's at least a genuinely beautiful and intriguing tablet. The author Hempsell does have some talent though, in seemingly getting a reputable university to publish his book... I'm thinking he was quite canny in finding this attractive untranslated tablet with little else written about it, and then employing enough knowledge about a combination of different subjects (ancient Sumerian, asteroid orbits, Alpine geology) that no single reviewer was able or motivated to properly evaluate all the arguments. Or he just had a friend at the press.

[johngossman]

There are true stories that don't involve asteroids but are just as compelling. Anything by Irving Finkel, such as:

https://youtu.be/LUxFzh8r384

[natmaka]

There is software working at

- finding correspondences (solve parts of the puzzle) and reconstructing at least part of certain documents ( https://arkeonews.net/new-ai-tool-fragmentarium-brings-ancie... , https://virtualcuneiform.org/ )

- somewhat 'infering' some missing parts ( https://voices.uchicago.edu/ochre/project/deepscribe/ ),

- 'normalizing' (find the 'standard' form) of glyphs ( https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/03/ai-models-make-prec... )

[hbarka]

Erich von Däniken comes to mind.