Using sheepskin as an anti-fraud device can seem as a weird concept in the drive to prevent scams, but this is what medieval lawyers used for centuries, a recent research discovered.
Preventing scams in old times
For centuries lawyers were using sheepskin in order to prevent fraud, researchers found out. Scammers trying to pull wool over people’s eyes would be defeated by unique qualities of sheep’s skin, University of Exeter and Cambridge scholars revealed.
Sheep skin has a high content of fat (30-50% of fat in sheep as compared to 2-3% in cattle and 3-10% in goatskin). When the skins are processed, fat deposits which sit in between the layers would creates pores in the dry product. Consequently, attempts to scrape ink would result in the obvious destruction of the skin through delamination.
This made sheepskins the medieval lawyers’ choice as an anti-scam device. The legal documents were written on skins of sheep rather than cattle or goats, for this reason, researchers believe.
To ensure authenticity, lawyers also used seals, but there was still a possibility that someone may try to scrape the inc and write over. Using the type of skin prone to destruction in case of tampering was another way to ensure legitimacy of documentation.
The sheepskin is so durable that lots of such documents survived till our times in archives and private collections. Although many documents relating to land ownership were destroyed after 1925 when a new legislation was adopted.
There is historic evidence that the use of sheepskins was prescribed for royal accounts as they were “least liable to alterations or corruption”.
Scientists now use the old documents to research centuries of craft, trade, and animal husbandry.
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