Abstract
This note looks at the common claim tracing the history of biometric security back to ancient Babylon. This claim is commonly accepted in the security community and repeated widely (including in prestigious venues). However, the various papers making this claim generally do so in the introduction, without providing any reference for it. We offer an analysis of the soundness of this claim, of how it evolved and how far it spread. Finally, we take this example as an opportunity to look at what seems to be a larger methodological issue—the handling of out-of-field citations—in publishing practices in both computer science and other fields.
Key Insights
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Dozens of research articles from 1999–2024 mention early Babylonians using fingerprint biometrics, despite no evidence supporting this assertion. Looking at the genealogy of claims and citations shows it is improbable that all the mentions can be traced back to a single, flawed source.
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Instead, it can be linked to poor citation practices, especially when making claims about other fields in the introduction of articles. Babylonian biometrics are but one visible example of potentially widespread unjustified claims.
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Authors should update their citation methodology, and editors should be stricter on unjustified claims, while avoiding strict guidelines such as limited citation space, which introduce adverse effects by incentivizing authors to leave claims unjustified.
When reading articles on biometric security, introductions make frequent references to the long history of various identification techniques—and how modern scientific methods rest on much older antecedents. This is to be expected, as historical and sociological contexts are all the more important for technologies that are the subject of frequent criticisms.16,22
However, possibly due to their status as providing context in the introduction—and thus not directly relevant to the articles’ main points—these claims are often left unjustified, as detailed later in this article. This methodological deficiency has allowed one type of claim to spread despite limited evidence: the idea that fingerprint identification was already used in Babylonian times (through the use of clay tablets), generally understood to be around 2000 BCE (before common era).
Thankfully, this claim is not present everywhere and many articles make no mention of it, especially ones focused on the history of biometrics.27 However, looking at the patterns made by the articles with this claim reveals multiple issues. First and most importantly, many of the articles show a normalized behavior—also observable in the field at large—of making claims in the introduction that are not held to the same standard of evidence as the ones in the rest of the article. Such introductory claims are justified neither by the rest of the paper nor by providing any evidence—or worse, their “justification” consists of citing works that do not feature the claim at all. Second, this misinformation is spreading beyond the field of biometrics and computer science, in other scholarly fields (such as law and forensic science29,33) and in pop-science.a Third, the pattern of citation does not indicate a single source from which the error spreads, but a more diffuse state (as shown in the figure). This last element could come from the information being spread informally and being already thought of as true by a large proportion of the biometrics community (even if they mention it only once in a while). Finally, the absence of debunking articles creates an ambiguity: in the presence of both correct histories and the unjustified claims, it is easy to believe that the first are incomplete.
Thus, this article will look first at the different claims made about the history of fingerprints and how they relate to actual evidence on the history (or histories) of biometrics. We will then look at how those claims (and the underlying articles) are related to each other, and finally at the methodological issues this raises.
Figure
Chronology and citation network of some papers mentioning Babylonian biometrics
The Claims
One issue is that the claims of Babylonian use of fingerprint identification vary strongly depending on the source, with the inconsistencies being already concerning in themselves. We can generally observe variations on three elements. First, when it is made explicit, is that authors mention that fingerprints are used either as a way to sign contracts or to identify criminals. Second, when mentioning Babylonian use, many authors also add that the system was also used (at varying times) in China in the same sentence (and sometimes by other civilizations such as ancient Egypt). Finally, the chronology varies wildly, with the following main possibilities (each with example papers):
(1)
(2)
Around 2000 BCE: “The early use of biometrics can be dated back to nearly 4000 years ago when the Babylon Empire legislated the use of fingerprints to protect a legal contract against forgery and falsification by having the fingerprints impressed into the clay tablet on which the contract had been written.”28
(3)
During the reign of Hammurabi,b first major king of the Old Babylonian empire, incorrectly dated as 1955–1913 BCE, almost a century before the reign of the first actual Babylonian kings:25,33,43,44 “Fingerprints have been discovered used as seals on contracts during the reign of Hammurabi in Babylon beginning in 1955 BCE.”43
(4)
(5)
Around 1000 BCE: “Fingerprint as a personal biometric proves [its] capability as the signature from ancient time (around 1000 BC) used in different geographical locations. [Babylonians] pressed the tips of their finger[s] into clay to record business transactions, [Chinese] used ink-on-paper foot and finger impressions for business and to help identify their children.”34
(6)
(7)
(8)
Around 2000 years ago: “It is reported two thousand years ago that in ancient Babylon, merchants sealed deals with fingerprints on clay tablets to record their trading transactions [Fierrez-Aguilar, 2006].”1
Similarly, dates for Chinese use of fingerprints vary from 500 BCE to 1200 CE.
Naturally, all the claims above except the fourth, fifth, and sixth are evidently false due to historical inconsistencies.c The fourth and fifth are more complex to analyze, but thankfully for our purpose, this is not the first controversy on the subject. Indeed, a heated debate occurred more than a century ago between Sir William Herschel, a British ICS officer and forensic science pioneer, and German anthropologist Berthold Laufer.31 The former claimed to have independently invented the idea of using fingerprints as an identification system.26 The latter, supported by multiple colleagues, admitted that Herschel—later helped by eugenicist Sir Francis Galton—was the first to systematize their study and use.d However, they also showed—using many references from both Chinese and Arabic sourcese—that fingerprinting had been in use in China since at least the 8th century CE.30 Laufer also mentions that (at the time) no trace of it could be found among Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, or Roman sources.
What then of the veracity of the remaining claims (which already form a minority)? This is where the actual ground truth is harder to ascertain. A number of extant clay tablets show relatively clear fingerprints on them, as well as other artifacts (for example, potsherds or bricks) from various civilizations. Here, inspired by Harold Cummins—one of the founders of dermatoglyphics—but following more recent analyses, we must make a difference between four possibilities:11,18
(1)
Fingerprints are used for identification: This requires a system which allows certain agents to find to whom certain prints belong.
(2)
Fingerprints are used for authentication: The author of the print can prove that they indeed left the mark by creating a second, identical mark, or reciprocally to repudiate a document by showing their prints are different.
(3)
Fingerprints are left on purpose but not as an authenticating mark and rather as a trademark or initials, with limited to no legal value, or potentially where the act of imprinting one’s finger onto the object is by itself the source of meaning (for example, for religious reasons), with the resulting mark being of little importance.
(4)
Fingerprints are left by mistake as an consequence of handling the item.
The first option really became possible only after the advent of formal analysis and classification of fingerprint patterns and the creation of databases at the turn of the 20th century. The second is well established by the Tang dynasty in China (618–907 CE), following Laufer,30 but could very well be more ancient. We also know of many examples of the fourth, potentially including hand paintings whose age is counted in tens of millennia (with precise dating being difficult).15 The hard question is then the following: Are the prints we have from Babylon of the second or third kind? This is where some experts differ.
Mesopotamian clay tablets are numerous, with more than 40,000 having been dated to just the third dynasty of Ur (although their representativity and modes of acquisition have raised criticisms45). Looking at not just Babylon but the Mesopotamian region, one can find complex and potentially contradictory evidence. For example, archaeological finds at Emar (in the Hittite sphere of influence) revealed a set of footprints in clay being used as a signature by children being sold into slavery,36 (though the majority of the book mentions fingerprints only as unintentional artifacts). This is a signature, but most probably of the third kind (especially considering they are made by children and presumably more subject to change/evolution). Some works focused on contracts or seals also make no mention of fingerprints being used.42
Since 1941, researchers such as Cummins already warned against over-interpreting ancient fingerprints, as their presence does not necessarily indicate a purpose beyond the third kind mentioned previously.18 During the bibliographic investigation involved in this research, in all cases but one, going toward the primary sources showed the claims were either inconsistent or unjustified. This happened either by following the chain of citations to an article that did not make the relevant claim, or to an article that provided neither evidence nor further source for the claim. The only exception comes from a 1980 special issue of Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology,5 by Swedish archaeologist Paul Åström (also founding editor and proprietor of the journal). One can find the following passage on the first page of the introduction:
Even during antiquity, men had a certain idea of the value of fingerprints as individual marks. We have a feeling that we are reading a modern document when we read on a clay tablet from Babylon that a witness states that he was sent out by a superior official to confiscate the property of the accused, to arrest him and to secure his fingerprints. There are also what are probably intentional fingerprints on a brick from Lagash in Mesopotamia dating from 3000 B.C. and on a sun-dried brick from Egypt. From the 7th century A.D. onwards, the Chinese also used fingerprints on legal documents.
The issue is that in this very passage, no source is given, and no primary evidence for it appears in the rest of the document. Although the end of the introduction features some notes and references, none of these apparently address the Chinese fingerprints mentioned, and a single one could be a potential source for Mesopotamian biometrics. However, this leads us to two more issues. First, the passage explicitly mentions tablets from the third Ur dynasty instead of Babylon. Second, it comes from a private letter sent by Adolf Leo Schrijver—who owned a large private collection of Mesopotamian clay tablets but never published on them—in the two months leading to his death in 1977, after which the trail goes cold.
To summarize, although the possibility of Babylonian fingerprint authentication cannot be completely eliminated, it currently seems we do not have sufficient evidence (or rather, a sufficiently solid chain of evidence) to support that statement. However, this lack of evidence has not prevented people from making the claims in all their various forms, as shown below.
Relationships between Articles
The set of articles we analyze below is not meant to be exhaustive but instead shows an example of what can be found with a cursory search for “biometrics” and “babylon” on Google Scholar (removing the numerous irrelevant results). The figure shows a chronology of papers, with the following conventions:
•
An edge from A to B means that paper A uses paper B as justification for its claims, with a cross on the edge indicating that B does not actually support A’s claim.
•
•
The frequency (generally, rarely or never) at which the paper or book provides references for the claims it makes in the introduction is indicated by the type of border (respectively dotted, segmented, or full).
It would probably not be worth the effort to look at all the references cited in detail, but there are three that stand out. First, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) is the cited source for multiple claims and probable source for many more.f It corresponds to a report for the U.S. government and is often cited without dating in the form of a webpage that has been unavailable since 2016 (except through the Wayback Machine archive.org). A 2008 comprehensive report by the NSTCg makes no mention of Babylonian fingerprints, but an earlier hosted webpageh does mention them being used in 500 BCE. This is justified by a reference to a 2005 webpage hosted by the International Institute of Hand Analysis that was itself available until 2013 on the wayback machine.i This webpage itself cites no justification for the claim, although both Cummins and Laufer’s work are mentioned a bit later. The NSTC report is also the most probable ultimate source for other works, such as Kindt’s,29 which instead cited a flash animation made by the U.S. Department of Defense.
The second reference we should mention is Ashbaugh’s 1999 book as it is the probable source for one mistake.2 Although Ashbaugh himself correctly reports on Hammurabi’s reign dates, he also mentions fingerprints being used earlier in 1955 BCE (sadly, without giving any explicit reference for it). Confusion between the two is probably why we observe incorrect dates for Hammurabi in multiple subsequent papers (despite them not citing Ashbaugh).25,33,43,44
Finally, the article by Bose and Kamir13 uses multiple references without making explicit which support which claims (and as it turns out, at least one claim being left entirely unsupported). One of these is an online article published on the Live Science website by Owen Jarus (with no references), also cited in Shakeel and Syed.41
Methodological Questions
The previous section has shown the complex network of citations visible in the figure, which does not appear to stem from a single error made once—unlike the wrong dates stemming from misunderstanding Ashbaugh’s book for example. Instead, it indicates that the idea of Babylonian biometrics is widely spread—something anecdotally confirmed in discussions with other researchers in the fieldj—and reinforced through methodological shortcuts.
This possibility raises the question of citation practices. Does every single claim in an article require a reference? This does not seem optimal, as an abundance of references can reduce readability, especially if they are for trivial claims. The tendency to avoid references for simple claims is also probably reinforced by the enforcement of strict page limits in journals or conference proceedings. That said, intuition indicates that two elements should be necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) for one to dispense with references. First, the claim should be well established and well-known—for example, being taught in most undergrad programs. Second, the claim should be from within the field: It should not be enough for it to be standard in a different field—quite unlike current practices, which focus on citing works from within the field. With the Babylonian example, it could be the case that many authors thought the claim was standard in Assyriology and decided to trust the expertise of previous authors who had not given any reference, thus propagating the claim. Some might even have looked for references but decided their inability to find any was due to their unfamiliarity with that field rather than the nonexistence of good references.
Even when there are references, it is not always possible to find high-quality ones (or at least academic ones). One could consider a statement on something newsworthy but recent enough that peer-reviewed sources are not published yet. Although some dislike the use of non-academic references or websites, they can constitute primary sources which are far better than the absence of justification—even more so if the author ensures they remain accessible by making a snapshot in an online archive. The methodological problem arises when the information is old enough to have solid sources and those are not used—of which the Babylonian fingerprint is an extreme case.
One could hope that the sometimes shoddy scholarship shown above (which is far from being present in all references) comes from bad editors or predatory journals which provide no peer review or real scientific value. However, many references come from some of the biggest names in scientific publishing (such as Springer-Nature, IEEE, or Taylor and Francis). Moreover, some make even graver methodological mistakes, even in full-length books published by major scientific presses: Ashbourn3 and Hawthorne25 respectively cite none and five references over the whole book (and not just the introduction).
It is also worth mentioning that the levity with which claims from other fields can sometimes be treated is not a sufficient explanation for this observation. Indeed, the lack of references in the introduction is also seen in one of the references written by an archaeologist.5
How can the current state of things be explained? One possibility is that some researchers decide the claim does not require a reference (either immediately or after a cursory search fails to encounter a good reference). This is consistent with poor citation practices present in some articles, although these concern only a portion of the references cited earlier. Many authors probably look up the claim and find the first paper that apparently provides a justification and use that—or even use a different paper in which the claim does not even appear.1,9,37 Their standards are then being tested: What if the citing paper itself gives no justification? For many authors, this seems to have no effect. In some cases, the chain of citation could become long enough that it would be unreasonable to expect one to follow it to the end. However, for the present case, most of the chains examined are of length 1, and none are above 3, as shown in the Figure.
How could our different research communities address this issue? Multiple elements come to mind:
•
First, the main levers of action are in the hands of scientific editors and reviewers who alone have the ability to impose strict adherence to the norms of not leaving unjustified claims in published papers. This will most probably only affect non-predatory venues, although this would not necessarily be a negative, as it would strengthen the difference between authentic peer-reviewed venues and predatory ones with no added editorial value. The recent evolution of editors pushing back against paper mills and citation rings is encouraging in this regard.14
•
Second, journal regulations should be updated to reflect better citation practices, both by limiting the number of irrelevant references—such as ones not directly cited in the article’s text, or an exaggerated number of references for a single claim—and by requiring that all relevant claims be justified as per above. Removing strict guidelines on the number of references would help in this regard.k
•
Finally, a reckoning seems necessary as to the status of unsupported claims from other fields and the role of contextualization, by informing authors as to the dangers of such practices—as this article attempts to do.
Conclusion
Whether or not Babylonians used biometric authentication is of extremely limited importance in the grand scheme of science. Thus, this article aims not to fix this small mistake but to call attention to dangerous methodological practices.
That being said, the histories of biometrics—especially for authentication and identification—are, in fact, far from unimportant. The technology was and remains controversial because of its use in policing and surveillance, and its risk for human rights. This is not a recent concern nor is it fear-mongering: The first recorded mandatory biometric passport was used in France in an effort to control ethnic minorities (mostly Roma people)—a practice that only changed in the 2010s.35 Fingerprints were used earlier than that in India by the British imperial power to reinforce the power of the judicial apparatus over the population.l
In some ways, dating fingerprint identification technologies back to Babylon can serve to make them seem more legitimate—an argument explicitly made by Borgerhoff as early as 1931.12 It was important to him to be able to answer to skeptics that the method had been used for more than a millennium (putting its origin in China) although only made scientific more recently (an argument in favor of the superiority of Western science). This search for claims to legitimacy is ever more relevant as the epistemological roots and scientific validity of biometric identification are increasingly questioned.16 Insisting on their use for business contracts rather than policing can also make them appear less threatening—and more independent from criminology and policing in general. Despite these elements, from Bertillonage and Indian prisons to recent times, biometrics are invariably linked to the exercise of state power in all its violence, from tracking suspects based on circumstantial evidence to limiting migrants’ mobility through enforced biometric capture at border camps22—increasingly through the hands of private tech-security companies to which the state delegates and externalizes said power. As people working on biometrics technology, we should not pretend to be apolitical by forgetting this fact and the context in which our works can be reused. We can make the choice to work on these technologies or not, but it should be an informed choice, not one made in willful ignorance.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Laudine Grapperon for her help in obtaining the last source the author could not get, as it was present in only a few libraries with restricted access. They would also like to thank Édouard Thomas, Cecilia Passanti, and Mehdi Bouhamidi for productive discussions on methodology, and Larry Vizier for assistance with the figure. Finally, they would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting the addition of what is now the section on methodological questions.
Enka Blanchard (they/them), is a transdisciplinary CNRS researcher at LAMSADE (University Paris Dauphine PSL), and associate researcher at the Center for Internet and Society, Paris, France.
Footnotes
b
Hammurabi is also often mentioned as the creator of the first code of laws. This is also mistaken, the honour most probably going to Ur-Namma, king of Ur at the turn of the 21st century BCE,36 around three centuries before Hammurabi.
c
One could, of course, imagine that the seventh variant would be correct by interpreting Babylon not as an independent kingdom but as a major city within Persia after its conquest by Cyrus the Great, but the context makes this unlikely.
d
Fingerprints, along with face photographs and diverse anthropometric measurements, would then be expanded even further and systematized in policing by French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon.29
e
The proximity between Galton—and Herschel by extension—and the scientific racism movement might play a role in the writing of the last paragraph of Herschel’s pamphlet: “In conclusion, it is hard to believe that a system so practically useful as this could have been known in the great lands of the East for generations past, without arresting the notice of Western statesmen, travellers, and students. Yet the knowledge never reached us.” This focus on Western sources allows him to ignore the multiple accounts made both by locals and by foreign merchants such as Sulaimān at-Tājir (mentioned in Laufer’s account).
f
For example, the cited report also mentions cavemen’s fingerprints and gives dates, a secondary claim which appears in some articles that do not cite the report.10,38
j
The author initially believed this claim, until creating an academic trivia game led them to perform this research and show the inconsistencies.
k
The author was faced with a relevant conundrum when the first version of this article was submitted, as the magazine only accepted a limited number of references, leaving five to spare once the main corpus was cited. Such rules create an unwelcome tension between increasing one’s chance of being desk-rejected or leaving a few minor claims unsubstantiated. Insisting on the former did lead to a desk-rejection because of extra references at some point in the process, although this was quickly fixed.
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