Though the study, published in the journal Heritage, falls short of concluding whether the shroud was actually Jesus’s burial cloth, it dates its origin to 2,000 years ago.
“The experimental results are compatible with the hypothesis that the Turin Shroud is a 2000-year-old relic,” it says, claiming previous analysis might have been flawed due to contamination.
Researchers say cellulose contained in the shroud’s fibres has aged slowly since the 14th century due to lower room temperatures in Europe.
This means that most of the cloth’s natural ageing, about 90 per cent, ocurred before the 1300s.
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