A close reading of three Latin legal cases shows how backward our current system of forensic science can be.
The modern practice of forensic science is generally agreed to date back to at least the early 19th century in Europe, but ancient Roman history contains examples of three seemingly modern techniques that were used to solve crimes centuries before that. Shockingly, some of our modern techniques are not based in accepted science and are not significantly different than the Romans'.
Enlightenment era practices in the Age of Reason led to the creation of modern forensic science, with methods in toxicology, fingerprint analysis, and ballistics coming into vogue. High-profile cases like Jack the Ripper in England and the Parker-Webster murder case in the U.S. employed new forensic techniques in the second half of the 19th century. This was also the time period in which the term forensics became widely used, related to the Latin word forum, as the Romans would present legal charges in the public square.
While the ancient Romans did not have a specific term for forensic science, nor a full understanding of techniques of criminal investigation as science, there are historical examples of their using bloodstain pattern analysis, footprints and drag marks, and dental markers in figuring out whodunnit.
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