AI-generated conjecture · below the evidence/publication boundary
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The paper turns over before the language does
Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).
Claim (verbatim)
When the Tibetan empire took Dunhuang in 786, it inherited a Chinese town full of Chinese scrolls, and its clerks and monks needed to write Tibetan immediately. This conjecture joins the Tibetan occupation to the humble habit of reusing old paper, and turns the join into a dating instrument: the direction of reuse on sheets carrying both languages — which language holds the original recto, which crowds onto the verso — is a supply-chain clock for regime change. New rulers write on the old regime's leftovers first, because paper stocks change hands faster than paper production does; only later does fresh Tibetan-commissioned paper arrive and the reuse rate fall. If this holds, physical page-sides become an independent chronology for undated manuscripts, and the recto/verso language mix at any conquered oasis dates the conquest even where no colophon does.
Prediction clause (verbatim)
Among Dunhuang manuscripts catalogued as carrying both Chinese and Tibetan text on the same physical piece, at least 75% will have the Chinese text as the original layer (recto or first writing) with the Tibetan added on the verso, in margins, or in leftover space, while the reverse arrangement (Tibetan original, Chinese added) occurs on under 10% of such pieces. Primary clause: the 75% Chinese-first directionality; the verdict follows it, with the under-10% reverse rate reported as the secondary clause.
Kill-dataset (verbatim)
IDP (International Dunhuang Programme): the set of Dunhuang items whose records note both Chinese and Tibetan text on one physical object, scored for layer directionality using recto/verso metadata and images; OTDO records of the same objects as a cross-check.
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Provenance
Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5
Generated blind in a single Write by a fresh instance with no file reads, web access, or database queries; all context was inline in the launching prompt.
Novelty / leakage triage
anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run
Reuse of Chinese scrolls with a second language added later on the verso is well documented and studied at Dunhuang — the direct Sino-Khotanese analogue (Chinese recto, Khotanese verso, added later) was analysed in 2026, and Tibetan-on-Chinese-verso reuse is a known pattern. But the recto/verso language directionality has never been scored corpus-wide as a supply-chain clock for dating regime change.
Predictions
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