Forensic Science Timeline

Evidence of fingerprintsFingerprint, impression made by the papillary ridges on the ends of the fingers and thumbs. Fingerprints afford an infallible means of personal identification, because the ridge arrangement on every finger of every human being is unique... in early paintings and rock carvings of prehistoric humans. Writing of a hand with ridge patterns is discovered in Nova Scotia. In ancient Babylon, fingerprints are used on clay tablets for business transactions.

The earliest documented code of law, promulgated by Hammurabi, king of Babylon, around 2200 BC, contained laws governing the practice of medicine.

In Greece, Hippocrates showed how medicine could influence legal matters by discussing the lethality of wounds.

Aristotle, a student of Plato and tutor of Alexander the Great, greatly expounds on the study of science and scientific observations, which would later influence forensics and crime investigations, among other things.

Socrates was executed by poisoning with hemlock. The early Greeks were familiar with poisons, and there are references to Ulysses and Hercules anointing their arrows with the serpent’s venom.

Herophilus, a Greek scientist, is credited as the first to perform dissections in Alexandria.

The “Eureka” legend told of Archimedes, where the philosopher proved that a crown was not solid gold by comparing measurements of its displacement of water and its weight. It is a direct forerunner of modern forensic engineering techniques. The case marked a critical point when quantitative methods became vital and established the concepts of density, buoyancy, force, and equilibrium.

ERASISTRATUS, an ancient Greek physician, observes that his patients’ pulse rates increase when they tell him lies. This is supposed to be the first lie detection test.

After Julius Caesar was assassinated in ancient Rome, a physician performed an autopsy and determined that only one was fatal of the 23 wounds found on the body.

The first recorded example of forensic dentistry may be the account of Agrippina, the Roman emperor Nero’s mother. She sent for the head of her enemy Lollia Paulina to verify her death. While the face was distorted beyond recognition, Agrippina could recognize a distinctively colored front tooth that she had previously noticed in Lollia’s mouth.

Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek physician, living in Rome, categorizes various plants, their medicinal effects, and their poisoning symptoms. De Materia Medica’s work is considered the foundation of forensic Toxicology.

A Roman orator and an attorney in the Roman courts, Quintilian, uses known science to prove bloody handprints did not belong to the accused murderer and showed that bloody palm prints were meant to frame a blind man of his mother’s murder.

German and Slavic societies made a law that medical experts must be the ones to determine the cause of death in crimes.

In the sixth century, Emperor Justinian recognized the special position of the expert witness when he declared that physicians were not ordinary witnesses but rather persons who gave judgments rather than testimony.

700s Chinese used fingerprints to establish documents and clay sculpture identity without a formal classification system.

Arsenic oxide is first produced commercially due to iron and lead mining refining ore. It will become the poison of choice for many over the succeeding centuries – especially Black Widows and Bluebeards, often called “inheritance powder.”