What was the birth of forensic science?

Question

I'll give a shiny new Best Answer to the first person to give the answer.

Great answer Yaybob but not quite correct. Go back further.

Answer 1

Wikipedia mentions Archimedes who determined that the crown was not pure gold, that the goldsmith cheated the king. Remember your specific gravity experiments in high school. I went to an exclusive school. We used real gold! OK, I made that up.

My vote goes to the story told about Xi Yuan Ji Lu during the Song Dynasty. Around 1247 a peasant was found murdered. The wounds appeared as though they were inflicted by a sickle. Xi ordered all the farmers to come to the assembly place, bringing their sickles. Apparently, flies collected on one sickle, smelling the blood. The murderer confessed when confronted with this evidence.

Answer 2

The Sherlock Holmes series of novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the world to the concept of forensic science:

http://superdork.net/wacky/?p=105:

Birth of Forensic Science

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who turned to writing stories when his medical practice failed, introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes and his revolutionary way of solving crimes: Holmes deciphered physical clues instead of depending on informers and confessions.

Scotland Yard followed his lead and in the 1890s British scientists developed fingerprinting. By 1903 both Scotland Yard and the New York City PD fingerprinted suspects and the rest of the world soon adopted the practice.