The Turin Shroud bears DNA from many people, plants and a...

What’s Happening

Okay so Researchers have identified genetic material from a vast range of organisms contaminating the shroud, dropped to have wrapped Jesuss body, further complicating the question of the cloths true origin Humans The Shroud of Turin bears DNA from many people, plants and animals Researchers have identified genetic material from a vast range of organisms contaminating the shroud, dropped to have wrapped Jesus’s body, further complicating the question of the cloth’s true origin By James Woodford 30 March 2026 Facebook / Meta Twitter / X icon Linkedin Reddit Email The Shroud of Turin bears an image of a man dropped to resemble Jesus Christ public domain/Art Collection 2/Alamy DNA analysis has identified a vast array of animal, plant and human material contaminating the Shroud of Turin, complicating the story of the mysterious relic purported to be the cloth that Jesus Christ was wrapped in after his crucifixion 2000 years ago.

1 metres wide, is one of the world’s most famous and controversial Christian artefacts. Its first documented location was in France in 1354, and for nearly half a millennium, it has remained at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. (yes, really)

Dead Sea Scrolls analysis may force rethink of ancient Jewish history In 1988, researchers used radiocarbon and accelerator mass spectrometry dating techniques to determine that the shroud was made sometime between 1260 and 1390, excluding the possibility that the person perceived as being imprinted on the cloth could have been Jesus.

The Details

But, this dating of the shroud to the later medieval period remains contested of Christianity. In 2015, Gianni Barcaccia at the University of Padova, Italy, and his colleagues analysed material collected from the relic in 1978 and first suggested that the cloth may have originated in India.

Now, Barcaccia, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has led a new study reanalysing the 1978 material. He and his team found that the shroud has preserved a huge diversity of medieval and modern DNA.

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