Sorry to resurrect a dead thread, but I was reading up on this and found it interesting that it appears the person in the cloth was nailed through the wrist and not the palm of the hand, as is commonly popular to believe. Evidence from around the time of Jesus crucifixion, in the form of the bones of a crucified victim, prove that at least some of the time victims were nailed through the wrist and not the hand.
As quoted from wikipedia's entry:
The piercing of the wrists rather than the palms goes against traditional Christian iconography, especially that of the Middle Ages. Many modern scholars suggest that crucifixion victims were generally nailed through the wrists. A skeleton discovered recently in Israel shows that at least some were nailed between the radius and ulna. This was not common knowledge in the Middle Ages. Proponents of the shroud's authenticity contend that a medieval forger would have been unlikely to know this operational detail of an execution method almost completely discontinued centuries earlier.
If it was a forgery, people in the medieval times would not be aware of this most likely, so it wouldn't make sense for it to be this historically accurate if it was a fake unless it was a very rare and overly well-informed person from said times... as that information was lost to the popular belief of being nailed through the hand.
... also, I've read that the corner of the shroud which was carbon dated had been MENDED, which resulted in some newer material than the rest of the cloth because it had at one point been damaged. I found it interesting to note that when it was dated, in 1988, they said that they were unaware of "bacterial contamination," which could throw off the correct date.
And as far as the supposed blood stains go, they have performed tests which indicate it could be Type AB.
There are several reddish stains on the shroud suggesting blood. McCrone (see above) identified these as containing iron oxide, theorizing that its presence was likely due to simple pigment materials used in medieval times. Other researchers, including Alan Adler, a chemist specializing in analysis of porphyrins, identified the reddish stains as type AB blood and interpreted the iron oxide as a natural residue of that element always found in mammalian red blood cells.
... I just find it to be very compelling. I've seen a special on Discovery where artists tried to replicate the image and couldn't do it. Everything points to it most likely being REAL. But whether or not it's actually Jesus is the real question.
I also read that greek and latin letters have been found near the face using digital imaging processing. Along with coins having been placed near the eyes. I'll just quote Wikipedia here:
NASA researchers Jackson, Jumper, and Stephenson report detecting the impressions of coins placed on both eyes after a digital study in 1978. The coin on the right eye was claimed to correspond to a Roman copper coin produced in AD 29 and 30 in Jerusalem, while that on the left was claimed to resemble a lituus coin from the reign of Tiberius.[24]
Greek and Latin letters were discovered written near the face (Piero Ugolotti, 1979). These were further studied by André Marion, professor at the École supérieure d'optique and his student Anne Laure Courage, graduate engineer of the École supérieure d'optique, in the Institut d'optique théorique et appliquée in Orsay (1997). On the right side they cite the letters ΨΣ ΚΙΑ. They interpret this as ΟΨ ? ops "face" + ΣΚΙΑ ? skia "shadow," though the initial letter is missing.
This interpretation has the problem that it is grammatically incorrect in Greek, because "face" would have to appear in the genitive case. On the left side they report the Latin letters IN NECE, which they suggest is the beginning of IN NECEM IBIS, "you will go to death," and ΝΝΑΖΑΡΕΝΝΟΣ ? NNAZARENNOS (a grossly misspelled "the Nazarene" in Greek). Several other "inscriptions" were detected by the scientists, but Mark Guscin (himself a shroud proponent) reports that only one is at all probable in Greek or Latin: ΗΣΟΥ. This is the genitive of "Jesus," but missing the first letter.