The Shroud of Turin: an Amino-carbonyl Reaction (maillard Reaction) May Explain the Image Formation

The Shroud of Turin is a large piece of linen that shows the faint image of a man on its surface: it has been claimed to be the shroud of Jesus. Here we report evidences that colour can be produced by reactions between reducing sugars, left on the cloth by the manufacturing procedure, and amines deriving from the decomposition of a corpse. Treatment of a cloth prepared according to the ancient technology gave a distribution of colour on the thread fibres in good agreement with the Shroud features. Such a natural image-production process would support the hypothesis that the Shroud of Turin had been a real shroud. However, these observations do not prove how the image was formed or the "authenticity" of the Shroud.