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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for a classic episode from the Vault. This was

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Speaker 1: part one of our exploration of the Voytage Manuscript, published

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Speaker 1: on September three, nineteen. Yeah, this is a great one.

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Speaker 1: This is a mystery, a cryptic mystery. So join us

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Speaker 1: in this two parter beginning right now. Welcome Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radios How

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: today we have a conundrum to consider a book that

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Speaker 1: cannot be read by anyone. So it's kind of a

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Speaker 1: riddle in the dark, isn't it like something that Gollum

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Speaker 1: might ask of a Bilbo, or Bilbo might cunningly ask

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Speaker 1: of Gollum. Right, It's like I walk, but I have

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Speaker 1: no feed. I stand, but I have no legs. Yea,

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Speaker 1: and so it but but but it is an intriguing

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Speaker 1: kind of riddle. Why can't the book in question be read?

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Speaker 1: So we instantly can think to some of the tricks

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Speaker 1: of riddles. Right, Well, perhaps the book does not exist.

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Speaker 1: You cannot read a non existent fictional book such as

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Speaker 1: uh your hey, Luis Borges, the Book of sand or

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Speaker 1: a thorough perez rovertas the Book of Nine Doors to

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Speaker 1: the Kingdom of Shadows. These are books that exist within

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Speaker 1: stories or within other works that have no reality in

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Speaker 1: our world. Likewise, you cannot read a book that no

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Speaker 1: longer exists, you know, a book that has become lost,

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Speaker 1: such as you know, the various destroyed Maya Codices or

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Speaker 1: aristotle Second Book of Poetics, which, of course the major

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Speaker 1: plot point in Burro Echo is the Name of the Rose. Right.

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Speaker 1: But no, the book that we're talking about here, it

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Speaker 1: is real and it definitely exists. Okay, so that might

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Speaker 1: lead you to the next like level of of contemplation here. Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: perhaps this book cannot be read because it is forbidden.

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Speaker 1: You know, some powerful librarian or clerk keeps it hidden,

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Speaker 1: perhaps alongside the Ark of the Covenant or something. Right. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so like that same Aristotle text, but in the Name

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Speaker 1: of the Rose, right, Yeah, where where somebody just preventing

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Speaker 1: you from viewing it and reading it. No, that's not

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Speaker 1: the case with this, But because plenty of people have

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Speaker 1: attempted to read it and still attempt to. Any serious scholar,

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Speaker 1: can you know, they can actually travel to its physical

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Speaker 1: location and and go through the you know, the necessary

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Speaker 1: of paperwork one presumes, can examine it physically, and you, you,

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Speaker 1: the listener, can even attempt to read it on the internet,

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Speaker 1: or you can you can acquire a printed fac simile,

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Speaker 1: many of which are very nice, I understand. Okay, I

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Speaker 1: got one. Well, there are a lot of texts from

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Speaker 1: the ancient world that only exists in some incredibly degraded format. Right,

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Speaker 1: so there we have evidence that a book existed, but

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Speaker 1: you you can't make out what's on the page anymore.

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Speaker 1: Maybe there's only a scrap of it left, right, it's

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Speaker 1: been destroyed, or it's been or perhaps you know, it's

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Speaker 1: been scraped away and other things have been printed on

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Speaker 1: top of it. But nope, that's not the case with

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Speaker 1: this book. It's it's actually quite well preserved for a

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Speaker 1: centuries old manuscript. Okay, here's one. Maybe you can't read

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Speaker 1: it because it's not made of language. Ah, that's that's

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Speaker 1: a that's a clever a clever guest picture book or something. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but this book actually contains quite a bit of text, okay,

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Speaker 1: and so that that leads us to the next level

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Speaker 1: of a contemplation here. Okay, then the text must be

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Speaker 1: in a language that is forgotten, or a nonsensical representation

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Speaker 1: of language, or perhaps what appears to be language is

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Speaker 1: actually a code for something else. Okay. So there is

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Speaker 1: a book. You can look at it, there is text

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Speaker 1: in it, but for some reason you can't make sense

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Speaker 1: of the text. Right. And in this we're getting to

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Speaker 1: like the heart of many of the discussions surrounding the

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Speaker 1: book we're going to be discussing today. This book is

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Speaker 1: written in a language or code, or some under other

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Speaker 1: manner of textual form that no one at least no

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Speaker 1: one living or no one that has lived in the

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Speaker 1: in the previous centuries, is capable of understanding. In fact,

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Speaker 1: while various people have claimed to have cracked it or

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Speaker 1: translated or figured out some or all of its secrets,

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Speaker 1: we can state with a fair amount of certainty, as

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Speaker 1: of this recording, and probably you know, for you know

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Speaker 1: the duration for the shelf life of this episode, no

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Speaker 1: one has been able to read this book at least

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Speaker 1: not for many many centuries, at least as far as

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Speaker 1: we know, and unless one of these people on like

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Speaker 1: YouTube or read it is onto something and nobody has

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Speaker 1: really uh nobody's given them credit yet. Yeah, or somebody

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Speaker 1: has figured it out but decided not to share it

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Speaker 1: with anyone, which is generally not the case. Generally, there

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Speaker 1: are plenty of people even today that are claiming to

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Speaker 1: have some theory as to uh, you know, that they

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Speaker 1: have some angle some in that's going to allow them

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Speaker 1: to uh, you know, to this nut. So what we're

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Speaker 1: talking about today is a real manuscript that exists in

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Speaker 1: the world. Some of you may well have heard of it.

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Speaker 1: It's actually I think if you go back, it's something

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Speaker 1: that listeners have requested us to cover in the past.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if we've got to request recently, but

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Speaker 1: in the years I've been on the show, I know

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Speaker 1: people have written to us asking like, hey, what's your

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Speaker 1: take on it? And it is a manuscript known as

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Speaker 1: the Voytage Manuscript or the I've also heard it pronounced Vonage,

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Speaker 1: but I think we'll say Voytage. It's v A Y

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Speaker 1: N I C H. All right, well, let's just describe

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Speaker 1: it to everyone. For starters, we should just drive home

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Speaker 1: that again. You can look up a copy of this.

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Speaker 1: It's what it's a very readily available on what our

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Speaker 1: archive got or got exactly, and not only you can

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Speaker 1: you should Well we'll talk more about the contents of

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Speaker 1: it in a minute, but maybe we should start with

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Speaker 1: just the base physical reality of what this codex is.

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Speaker 1: It's in the form of a codex, right, So it's

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Speaker 1: not a scroll. It's like a you know, a folding

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Speaker 1: book with pages that you can leave through. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: a roughly seven by ten inches. Uh, not a huge

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Speaker 1: tone right, not huge. So a lot of these older

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Speaker 1: books you think of as being this big thing that

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Speaker 1: you put up on a lectern and you open the

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Speaker 1: giant uh cover of it that may be made of

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Speaker 1: wood or whatever, and you leave through the huge pages

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Speaker 1: with their illuminations. But no, this is a little thing,

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Speaker 1: maybe to be cradled in a wizard's knobby fingers. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The precise dimensions I was reading are it's like twenty

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Speaker 1: three point five centimeters by sixteen point two centimeters and

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Speaker 1: about five centimeters thick. So it's little, yeah, and that's

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Speaker 1: what what's Look the page count some of some of

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Speaker 1: the neighborhood of two seventy. Yeah, it's so the number

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Speaker 1: of pages existing today. I've seen a couple of different

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Speaker 1: counts of two forty or two forty six pages. I

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Speaker 1: think that might be depending on what types of leafs

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Speaker 1: you're counting on the edges. But it's believed that some

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Speaker 1: original pages of this manuscript are lost. It may originally

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Speaker 1: have had around two hundred and seventy pages or so,

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Speaker 1: but we don't know for sure. And these pages are

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Speaker 1: made of parchment, specifically of vellum, which was a common

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Speaker 1: medieval writing material. Parchment means a prepared version of an

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Speaker 1: animal skin that was used for writing vellums. Specifically, I

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Speaker 1: think it's calf skin, so these are calf skin pages

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Speaker 1: with ink writing on them. Also about the pages in

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Speaker 1: this book, we should note that in the format we

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Speaker 1: have it today, some pages appear to be out of order.

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Speaker 1: So I think at some point this manuscript was not

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Speaker 1: fully bound. It's bound now, but I think it has

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Speaker 1: been through different binding over the ages, and at some

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Speaker 1: point it looks like some pages got shuffled out of order,

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Speaker 1: and the version we have it now has pages that

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Speaker 1: look like they're from the wrong section in which they're

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Speaker 1: currently placed. So that's just just how it is as

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Speaker 1: we have it. It's probably due to some owner throughout

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Speaker 1: the centuries making an error and rearranging them when the

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Speaker 1: pages became loose. The text in the book is closely

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Speaker 1: written in freerunning alphabetic script. Uh. The number of letters Uh.

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Speaker 1: One source I was looking at said nineteen to twenty

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Speaker 1: eight letters. I don't know if you found a different figure. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've seen several different estimates of like fifteen to twenty

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Speaker 1: five or estimates of thirty letters. I think it's difficult

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Speaker 1: because there are some symbols in there which could be

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Speaker 1: copies of the same letter you've already seen, or could

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Speaker 1: be slightly different letters. Uh. And it's hard to tell

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Speaker 1: if you're not working with a known alphabet, right. And

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Speaker 1: that's part of it is that like these for the

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Speaker 1: most part, don't seem to have real counterparts in European

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Speaker 1: letter systems. Um. You know, at first glance, it looks

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Speaker 1: like like just standard texts that should relate to some

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Speaker 1: European language. But upon closer inspection and things become more difficult.

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Speaker 1: The letters have a lot of fascinating loops and yeah,

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Speaker 1: like they're they're full of these uh, these knots and

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Speaker 1: lassos and then the illustrations, of course, which have already

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Speaker 1: alluded to. They has all these these strange line drawings

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Speaker 1: that have been colored in with watercolors, and they consist

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Speaker 1: of you know, plants, possible astrological drawings, weird illustrations of

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Speaker 1: naked women, uh, seeming debay their shower, and what might

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Speaker 1: be giant plants or other things. Well, we'll get more

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Speaker 1: into what the illustrations represent later on. Um, now it

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Speaker 1: was it is written in ink. I think it has

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Speaker 1: watercolors in it. Yeah, the watercolors definitely to color the illustrations.

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Speaker 1: But then the ink itself I read was a brown

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Speaker 1: ink and it seems to have been like an inexpensive

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Speaker 1: inc of the time. So nothing particularly notable. Okay, Now

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Speaker 1: we've already mentioned that it is not a readable document.

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Speaker 1: It is in a language. If it is a language,

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Speaker 1: the language is unknown. Yes, sometimes called voi a cheese,

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Speaker 1: which is just a modern appellation because we don't know

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Speaker 1: what it is. Yeah, and uh, what's something like a

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Speaker 1: hundred and seventy thousand characters in the book some you know,

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Speaker 1: we already talked about the number of alphabetic characters, maybe

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Speaker 1: somewhere in the range of thirty uh, depending on what

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Speaker 1: you define as being in a distinct alphabetic character, and

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Speaker 1: then roughly what thirty five thousand strings of characters of

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Speaker 1: varying length which can be interpreted as words. These are

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Speaker 1: usually thought of his words, whether by the you know

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Speaker 1: cryptographers who look at this there are something like thirty

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Speaker 1: five thousand or like thirty seven thousand words, and they

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Speaker 1: might not correlate to real words. Now where you will

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Speaker 1: where will you find this book? Now, well, you'll find

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Speaker 1: it in the United States. Yes, we'll get into the

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Speaker 1: history of the book. They brought it to the United States,

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Speaker 1: but it is currently housed at the banecky Rare Book

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Speaker 1: Room at Yale New Haven, Connecticut. Yeah, so it's in

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Speaker 1: a library at Yale and it is open to being

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Speaker 1: looked at by scholars. I remember I read a couple

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Speaker 1: of sources talking about how later in his life Umberto

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Speaker 1: Echo went to view it personally. Yeah, he was visiting

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Speaker 1: the library. It's the only book in the library that

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Speaker 1: he asked to view. And you can find the photos

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Speaker 1: of him Burto Echo reading or well looking at the book.

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Speaker 1: And of course it's a perfect thing for Umberto Echo

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Speaker 1: to show interest in. You've read the name of the Rose,

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Speaker 1: you know, his love for mysterious manuscripts of unknown medieval origin,

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Speaker 1: and that gets to one of the real mysteries of

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Speaker 1: this text. This text is one of the great standing

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Speaker 1: mysteries of I don't know, I guess, of medievalism, of

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Speaker 1: of linguistics, of cryptography. It's just this wonderful enigma that's

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Speaker 1: still out there. And part of the enigma is we

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Speaker 1: don't know its actual origin. We we pick up with

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Speaker 1: it in history at a certain point where we we

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Speaker 1: know where it first arrived and was recorded, but we

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Speaker 1: don't know who made it, or how why they made it,

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Speaker 1: or how they made it right. Yeah, for for the

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Speaker 1: longest there was also no carbon dating of the book,

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Speaker 1: so eston it's used to range. You know, usually people

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Speaker 1: were saying fifteenth century, so uh, some were saying thirteenth century.

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Speaker 1: And I think there's a reason for that, because it

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Speaker 1: was originally attributed to the English monk and philosopher Roger Bacon,

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Speaker 1: you know, of course, considered by many to be one

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Speaker 1: of the fathers of modern science. And since Roger Bacon

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Speaker 1: lived in the thirteenth century, if he had written it,

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Speaker 1: this would place its origin in the thirteenth century. But

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Speaker 1: I don't think any modern scholars actually believe Roger Bacon

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Speaker 1: wrote it, and later radiocarbon dating would prove that right,

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Speaker 1: And we'll get back to the Roger Bacon connection in

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Speaker 1: a bit. But yeah, in two thousand nine, the vellum

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Speaker 1: that it's printed on was carbon dated to the University

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Speaker 1: of Arizona, and it was carbon dated to the early

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Speaker 1: fifteenth century, so fourteen o four too roughly. And so

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Speaker 1: one note on how carbon dating works, of course, is

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Speaker 1: that carbon dating is used to date things that were

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Speaker 1: at some point alive or at some point had carbon

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Speaker 1: from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere fixed into them because

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Speaker 1: a certain because a certain known proportion of this carbon

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Speaker 1: is radioactive, it decays at a known rate. So therefore

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Speaker 1: you can tell basically if it comes from a thing

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Speaker 1: that was once alive, when did the thing that it

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Speaker 1: was made out of die? Right, When did it stop

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Speaker 1: incorporating new gas from the atmosphere into itself. So you

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Speaker 1: could say that it could have been no earlier than

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Speaker 1: this time that the document was produced, but it could

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Speaker 1: possibly have been later that the document was produced, just

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Speaker 1: as long as the vellum was actually this old. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it kind of depends on how long the vellum was

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Speaker 1: said on the shelf. Right. Also, it's bound in goat skin,

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Speaker 1: though it also seems to have once had a wooden

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Speaker 1: cover based on some of the details in the manuscript. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think it's a different binding over the centuries. Done. Now,

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Speaker 1: there used to be some theories that this was a

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Speaker 1: modern forgery, maybe by the very book collector it's now

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Speaker 1: named after, who will discuss later on, but that really

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Speaker 1: seems unlikely now given that it has been carbon dated

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Speaker 1: to the fifteenth century, right. Yeah. Now in terms of

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Speaker 1: the author, well, that's part of the unknown origins. Nobody

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Speaker 1: signed it. Yeah. Handwriting analysis has suggested as few as

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Speaker 1: two or many or as many as eight writers, which,

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Speaker 1: of course Simon wouldn't really be that uncommon for a

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Speaker 1: book of this time period. Okay, but at least the

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Speaker 1: illustrations are signed. Right now, nobody knows who made the illustrations. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, the origin is ultimately unknown. And when it

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Speaker 1: comes to you know, copies, this this is it. This

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Speaker 1: is the one copy of the Voyage Manuscript. Now we mentioned,

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Speaker 1: of course that Voytage that what we call it now

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Speaker 1: is the Voyage Manuscript, and that name comes from a

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Speaker 1: modern person not from you know, a medieval person. So

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Speaker 1: what this book was originally called was, well, we don't know, unknown. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's had various sort of catalog numbers along

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Speaker 1: the way. But you know what will come back to.

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Speaker 1: Voytage refers to Wilfred Michael vonage Uh and dates back

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Speaker 1: to nineve So given the history of the book called

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Speaker 1: It's It's it's current name is relatively recent, I think

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Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and when we

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Speaker 1: come back we can discuss more of the mystery of

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Speaker 1: this fascinating text. All right, we're back. So we're talking

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Speaker 1: today about the Voytage Manuscript, the classic enigmatic text to

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Speaker 1: believe now to be from the fifteenth century or so

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Speaker 1: due to carbon dating. But we don't know who wrote it.

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Speaker 1: We don't know where it came from. We just know

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Speaker 1: it sort of shows up at one point in history

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Speaker 1: and then trades hands for a while until it resurfaced

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Speaker 1: around nineteen twelve. Now, if you have never browsed through

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Speaker 1: this book, do yourself a favor and just pause the

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Speaker 1: episode and go do that. Now, a scan of it

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Speaker 1: is or you know, obviously not if you're driving or whatever,

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Speaker 1: but then just get the audio pot Oh, would that'd

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Speaker 1: be great an audio version of the point, Yeah, amazing,

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Speaker 1: we gotta cash in on that. But so that you

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Speaker 1: can look it up on the internet, there's a full

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Speaker 1: scan of it that's hosted on archive dot org. You

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Speaker 1: can flip all the way through the book. I would

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Speaker 1: say it is almost a necessary experience, just the same

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Speaker 1: way that if you have the means you should try

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Speaker 1: to travel and like expand your mind through seeing other cultures.

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Speaker 1: If you have the Internet, you should try to expand

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Speaker 1: your mind through this esoteric document. Yeah, I mean really,

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Speaker 1: this stuff like this is the reason we have the Internet.

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Speaker 1: That's on the benefits of the Internet is being able

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Speaker 1: to a document like this can be accessed by everybody. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: there are a few things we can if we're going

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Speaker 1: to be chasing the mystery of who created this document,

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Speaker 1: can it be translated? What does it mean? We should

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Speaker 1: look at a few other facts about the text itself.

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Speaker 1: So it's in a script that is clearly written from

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Speaker 1: left to right and from top to bottom, so much

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Speaker 1: like English or like many other European languages. But not

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Speaker 1: all languages are like this. Arabic is not like this.

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Speaker 1: Urdu farcie I mean, there are a bunch of examples

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Speaker 1: of languages that go from the right to the left,

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Speaker 1: so it is probably not drawing from that kind of

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Speaker 1: tradition unless they just switched it for no reason. No.

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Speaker 1: Another fact that might seem interesting to us about the

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Speaker 1: text is that there are no punctuation marks, but it

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Speaker 1: turns out that's not necessarily all that interesting given the

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Speaker 1: time from which it comes, because it's extremely common in

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Speaker 1: older documents in many languages for their not to be punctuation.

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Speaker 1: Another thing is that there are no chapter markings or bettings.

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Speaker 1: But based on the illustrations, it's clear that there are

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Speaker 1: sections that appear to be about different subjects if they're

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Speaker 1: about anything, And I think maybe we should talk about

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Speaker 1: some of those different sections of the manuscript to try

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Speaker 1: to help us understand it absolutely well. The first half

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Speaker 1: of the book is the the herbal section, and it's

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Speaker 1: full of botanical illustrations. You could say, yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: they clearly are supposed to be plants, but we should

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Speaker 1: stress that while some of the illustrations of plants look

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Speaker 1: kind of like plants you would recognize, I'm not necessarily

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Speaker 1: saying they are illustrations of real plants, but they at

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Speaker 1: least look like terrestrial plants. Some of these illustrations do

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Speaker 1: not look like terrestrial plants. Some look like green ice

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Speaker 1: snakes from the methane likes of Titan, or like strange

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Speaker 1: constricter caterpillars from the heart of a comet. That truly

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Speaker 1: weird alien drawings, things that are sort of green and

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Speaker 1: look like they have leaves but also have what looks

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Speaker 1: like tentacles or eyeballs. Yeah, they they are strange to

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Speaker 1: be held. And this is the most normal section of

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Speaker 1: the manuscript. Yeah, it is so. The German computer scientist

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Speaker 1: Klaus Schmi who wrote a two thousand eleven article for

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Speaker 1: Skeptical Inquirer about the Voyage Manuscript. I'm gonna refer back

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Speaker 1: to that article quite a few times, but but he

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Speaker 1: was writing about this section, and he writes that none

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Speaker 1: of the illustrations of plants in the document have been

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Speaker 1: conclusively identified by botanists, so nobody has been able to

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Speaker 1: look at that and say, yep, that is definitely a geranium.

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Speaker 1: One theory by the botanist Hugh O'Neill claimed to have

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Speaker 1: identified two of the illustrations as the sunflower and the

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Speaker 1: capsicum plant, and of course, Capsicum is a genus of

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Speaker 1: plants in the night shade family that produced peppers. Peppers

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Speaker 1: are great, right, except peppers are not European, so both

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Speaker 1: of these plants did not spread to Europe until after

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Speaker 1: contact with the America's which would date the document a

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Speaker 1: little bit later. But there is not a general consensus

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Speaker 1: that O'Neill's identify cation of these illustrations is correct. It's

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Speaker 1: just not clear at all that these are actually drawings

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Speaker 1: of sunflowers and pepper plants. So generally the botanical section

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Speaker 1: is a big old question marks. Some of them look

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Speaker 1: like they could be real plants, but there's none you

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Speaker 1: can point to. There there are none you can point

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Speaker 1: to and say, yep, we know what that is. Well,

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Speaker 1: this trend kind of continues in the next section, which

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Speaker 1: is the astrological section, which is full of circular illustrations

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Speaker 1: that are often interpreted as being perhaps astrological in nature,

365
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Speaker 1: But as as pointed out by Josephine Livingston in her

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Speaker 1: New York Or article The Unsolvable Mysteries of the Vonage Manuscript,

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Speaker 1: of which I'll also refer back to, she says that

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Speaker 1: to call this section astrological is generous yes, because it doesn't. Now,

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Speaker 1: there are illustrations in it that do seem to correlate

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Speaker 1: to classic astrological imagery, but then again there are depictions

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Speaker 1: of like astronomical objects that don't appear to correlate to anything.

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Speaker 1: For about eight or nine years now, I should just

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Speaker 1: say I've had a page of the Voytage manuscript pinned

374
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Speaker 1: up on the backboard of my desk at work. I

375
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Speaker 1: don't see it as much now because now it's under

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Speaker 1: the raised part of my desk um, but it's a

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Speaker 1: it's a page from what is believed to be the

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Speaker 1: astrological section. Specifically, it's a page that just has a

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Speaker 1: bunch of concentric circles of these untranslatable words between megas

380
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Speaker 1: looking dudes sitting in buckets or dunk tanks or something

381
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Speaker 1: with stars coming out of their fingertips, and they're all

382
00:20:31,119 --> 00:20:33,800
Speaker 1: ringed as if in reverence, around the figure of a

383
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Speaker 1: prancing goat with a mouthful of green plant matter. And

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Speaker 1: I figured that's a good enough metaphor, is anything for

385
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Speaker 1: the work we do? Alright? The next section is often

386
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Speaker 1: referred to as the baliological section, right, and of course

387
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Speaker 1: that refers to the study or field of bathing, which

388
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Speaker 1: if that sounds like, wait a minute, could there be

389
00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:56,320
Speaker 1: a field of that? Yeah, medieval text there were a

390
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Speaker 1: lot of thoughts about bathing. There were thoughts about the

391
00:20:58,800 --> 00:21:02,800
Speaker 1: restorative powers of certain types of waters or mineral baths

392
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Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. Oh yeah, I mean

393
00:21:05,440 --> 00:21:07,520
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's an important subject. You're getting

394
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Speaker 1: into the issues of hygiene, which of course influence overall

395
00:21:11,200 --> 00:21:14,840
Speaker 1: bodily health, public health, but also hygiene has has long

396
00:21:14,920 --> 00:21:18,600
Speaker 1: been intertwined with their ideas of spiritual purity as well.

397
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Speaker 1: Now you might think, okay, well, this section has got

398
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Speaker 1: to be kind of normal because it's just depicting people bathing, right,

399
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Speaker 1: Bathing can't get that weird? Uh it this is maybe

400
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Speaker 1: the weirdest section of all. Yeah, because there are all

401
00:21:30,520 --> 00:21:34,439
Speaker 1: these images of nude female figures in pools of liquid

402
00:21:35,400 --> 00:21:38,920
Speaker 1: I mean or tubs of liquid, but also possibly like

403
00:21:39,160 --> 00:21:44,200
Speaker 1: large oversized flowers. And then there's tubular plumbing that suggests

404
00:21:44,359 --> 00:21:48,120
Speaker 1: plants or even like viscera or of some sort. Yeah,

405
00:21:48,400 --> 00:21:51,600
Speaker 1: it's a very strange section of the manuscript. The writing

406
00:21:51,640 --> 00:21:55,080
Speaker 1: in this part, I noticed, suddenly gets very dense, whereas

407
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Speaker 1: in previous pages there might have been a large illustration

408
00:21:57,920 --> 00:22:01,399
Speaker 1: of the plant and then some small, you know, some

409
00:22:01,560 --> 00:22:03,919
Speaker 1: lines of text around it. Here you've got some densely

410
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Speaker 1: packed text. And again I want to stress that some

411
00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:09,280
Speaker 1: of the illustrations of the section look like they could

412
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Speaker 1: be referring to real world objects and practices, Like some

413
00:22:12,720 --> 00:22:15,639
Speaker 1: appear to just show nude women bathing maybe in mineral

414
00:22:15,720 --> 00:22:19,480
Speaker 1: baths or in streams or in aqueducts or along waterfalls,

415
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Speaker 1: But others show things that I don't even know how

416
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Speaker 1: to describe. What Like I've got an example here for

417
00:22:24,880 --> 00:22:27,440
Speaker 1: Robert to look at that is it's like a woman

418
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Speaker 1: standing in what looks like a giant instrument horn that's

419
00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:35,639
Speaker 1: growing out of something. It's the spreading horn that I

420
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Speaker 1: think maybe it's supposed to have water flowing in it.

421
00:22:38,400 --> 00:22:41,240
Speaker 1: But then also growing out of this horn is like

422
00:22:41,480 --> 00:22:46,399
Speaker 1: this alligator pod that I don't know how to I mean,

423
00:22:46,440 --> 00:22:50,240
Speaker 1: it's sort of green gray brown with like holes that

424
00:22:50,359 --> 00:22:52,760
Speaker 1: have water coming out of them, but like a space

425
00:22:52,840 --> 00:22:57,199
Speaker 1: tentacle with shower heads, like bio shower heads coming out

426
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Speaker 1: of it, with like ridged alligator scales on its back,

427
00:23:00,160 --> 00:23:03,639
Speaker 1: and and yeah, like like lotus like lotus pods that

428
00:23:03,760 --> 00:23:07,159
Speaker 1: have water. Yeah. Yeah, like it almost has kind of

429
00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:09,800
Speaker 1: like a Susian or even like a gig or S

430
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:12,639
Speaker 1: quality to it. I was noticing in this section how

431
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:15,119
Speaker 1: much the Voyage Manuscript, and I think this is not

432
00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:18,160
Speaker 1: an accident, how much it reminds me of another book

433
00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 1: that I've liked for years, the Codex Serafinitus, which is

434
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:25,840
Speaker 1: an entirely fictional and intentionally fictional encyclopedia created by the

435
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:28,960
Speaker 1: Italian artist Luigi Serafini in the late nineteen seventies. I

436
00:23:28,960 --> 00:23:32,000
Speaker 1: think it was published in nine one. Basically, it is

437
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:36,159
Speaker 1: like an artist's attempt to create a new voyage manuscript

438
00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:39,840
Speaker 1: type document. It's got a constructed language, lots of alien

439
00:23:39,920 --> 00:23:44,159
Speaker 1: illustrations of plants, animals, objects and processes that don't exist

440
00:23:44,240 --> 00:23:47,359
Speaker 1: on Earth. It's like an encyclopedia from another world. But

441
00:23:47,560 --> 00:23:50,600
Speaker 1: that is basically what the Voytage Manuscript sort of appears

442
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:53,040
Speaker 1: to be. All Right, So we've had plants, we've had

443
00:23:53,480 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 1: possible charts of the stars and so forth, we've had

444
00:23:57,280 --> 00:24:00,840
Speaker 1: weird alien showers, and then at at the end here

445
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,560
Speaker 1: and that this final section is what, according to Livingstone,

446
00:24:04,560 --> 00:24:07,720
Speaker 1: seems to be related to practical instructions for the use

447
00:24:07,920 --> 00:24:10,840
Speaker 1: of the mysterious plants from earlier. It basically looks like

448
00:24:11,280 --> 00:24:13,240
Speaker 1: it has recipes at the end, and I think this

449
00:24:13,320 --> 00:24:16,200
Speaker 1: breaks down into multiple sort of subsections, like there it

450
00:24:16,359 --> 00:24:18,320
Speaker 1: is believed that there some parts of it are supposed

451
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:22,119
Speaker 1: to be pharmaceutical, like they depict the creation of medicines

452
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:24,359
Speaker 1: and storage and viols, and other parts appear to be

453
00:24:24,400 --> 00:24:28,480
Speaker 1: about cooking or something. Yeah, so it's just as mysterious

454
00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:30,840
Speaker 1: as the rest of it. But yeah, but at this

455
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:34,880
Speaker 1: point you don't really encounter any illustrations. It's more it's

456
00:24:34,880 --> 00:24:39,280
Speaker 1: more textual in nature. But yeah, so this is the book,

457
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:41,960
Speaker 1: and the book is is just so unique in its style.

458
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:45,119
Speaker 1: It does not seem to have any true surviving peers.

459
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:50,320
Speaker 1: It does not cleanly fit with late medieval alchemical texts,

460
00:24:50,320 --> 00:24:52,600
Speaker 1: because certainly there are other weird texts. Oh yeah, I

461
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:54,439
Speaker 1: mean that's something we should point out. I mean, if

462
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:57,880
Speaker 1: you're thinking, well, how could a text be about plants

463
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:01,280
Speaker 1: and astrology and bathing and hideing and medicine and cooking

464
00:25:01,359 --> 00:25:04,560
Speaker 1: all at the same time, that's a weird combination of subjects.

465
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:06,840
Speaker 1: I would say, actually, this is not unusual at all

466
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:08,440
Speaker 1: for the time it was written. There were plenty of

467
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:13,960
Speaker 1: encyclopedia type documents that collected diverse subject matter at the time,

468
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:18,600
Speaker 1: and there was a general blurring of the lines between science, medicine, magic,

469
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:22,440
Speaker 1: and household advice. All Right, you were the type of

470
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:25,159
Speaker 1: individual that either wrote or contributed to the writing of

471
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:27,440
Speaker 1: a book, You likely had a lot to say about

472
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:31,280
Speaker 1: various topics, right, or a lot to crib from earlier encyclopedias.

473
00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:32,760
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of times. What you'll find in

474
00:25:32,840 --> 00:25:36,600
Speaker 1: some of these medieval encyclopedias is a mixture of original

475
00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:41,160
Speaker 1: observations with people like I don't know, reproducing encyclopedia entries

476
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:43,720
Speaker 1: by plenty or something and just saying like, and here's

477
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: the ancient wisdom of Scipio Africanus. Yeah, I mean it

478
00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:49,960
Speaker 1: comes back to a quote from Burda Burdo Ecco in

479
00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:52,119
Speaker 1: the name of the Roads. The observation that books speak

480
00:25:52,160 --> 00:25:55,160
Speaker 1: to other books. You know that translations from other books,

481
00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:58,399
Speaker 1: ideas from other books. But it does not seem that

482
00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: there were there were a lot of books, at least

483
00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:03,280
Speaker 1: books that have survived. You know that we're speaking to

484
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 1: the Voytage manuscript like it. It does seem to be

485
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:09,800
Speaker 1: this singular thing that's left out. That's you know, that's

486
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:13,520
Speaker 1: it doesn't really fit in with manuscripts of the period. Uh,

487
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:15,080
Speaker 1: you know, it's in many ways, it's kind of like

488
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:19,520
Speaker 1: an outside context book, at least to most of those

489
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:23,719
Speaker 1: who have viewed it over the last several centuries. Um. Then,

490
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:26,200
Speaker 1: of course, to be clear, many books of the past

491
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:30,480
Speaker 1: were lost, many languages were lost, whole cultures have perished.

492
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: So just because it's one of a kind now does

493
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:35,280
Speaker 1: not necessarily mean it was always one of a kind. Yeah,

494
00:26:35,320 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 1: there could have been a whole library of voyage type

495
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:40,639
Speaker 1: books that just all got lost except for this one.

496
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:43,880
Speaker 1: And then likewise, the context of our texts are always

497
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:46,919
Speaker 1: fading away. And that's why it's always instructive too. If

498
00:26:46,960 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: you pick up, say the works of William Shakespeare, or uh,

499
00:26:49,800 --> 00:26:51,399
Speaker 1: you know, you pick up a copy of you know,

500
00:26:51,520 --> 00:26:54,920
Speaker 1: Dante's The Divine Comedy, it generally pays off to have

501
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:58,000
Speaker 1: some sort of reference guide if unless you were just schooled,

502
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:01,240
Speaker 1: say in Dante's case, in like you know, in medieval

503
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:05,440
Speaker 1: culture and Italian politics and so forth, like you need

504
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:08,399
Speaker 1: something to help you make sense of all the references, uh,

505
00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:11,399
Speaker 1: you know, the cultural contexts, any symbols that are trotted

506
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 1: out or the religious context. Yes, uh, in a similar

507
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 1: case can be it can be made for the arts.

508
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:20,399
Speaker 1: You know, there are some of the stranger works of

509
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:24,560
Speaker 1: art from the past. Um, you know, they look extra

510
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:27,840
Speaker 1: strange to us because we generally don't have the same

511
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:31,639
Speaker 1: you know, contextual understanding for the references and for the symbols. Uh,

512
00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:34,320
Speaker 1: you know, symbols and references that would have probably been

513
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:36,879
Speaker 1: known to the original intended audience, Like we are not

514
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:41,440
Speaker 1: the intended audience of of those works. And then I think,

515
00:27:42,080 --> 00:27:45,159
Speaker 1: along with most theories regarding the Vontage Manuscript, you can

516
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:47,560
Speaker 1: say that we are certainly not the intended audience of

517
00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:51,119
Speaker 1: it today. Um, though there's at least one, I don't know,

518
00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: there's at least one theory that maybe supports the idea

519
00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:56,200
Speaker 1: that that the way that we are reacting to the

520
00:27:56,280 --> 00:27:59,720
Speaker 1: Vantage manuscript is appropriate. But but we'll get back to that, right.

521
00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 1: We are going to go on to try to parse

522
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: out the different theories that could explain its origin, all right,

523
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 1: So I wanted to talk about a few more observations

524
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:11,359
Speaker 1: about the Voytage Manuscript of the Vantage Manuscript from that

525
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 1: article I mentioned earlier by from two thousand eleven and

526
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:18,119
Speaker 1: Skeptical Inquirer by the German computer scientist Klaus Schmi. I

527
00:28:18,200 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: thought it made quite a few good points, and one

528
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:23,280
Speaker 1: of the most interesting points it made. I don't know

529
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:25,240
Speaker 1: why this stuck out to me so much, but I

530
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: I suspect will end up referring back to it. He

531
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:33,080
Speaker 1: pointed out that there are no visible corrections in the

532
00:28:33,160 --> 00:28:37,360
Speaker 1: Voyage manuscript, and this is pretty strange for a document

533
00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 1: produced by hand. Think about it. Could you write out

534
00:28:41,600 --> 00:28:45,880
Speaker 1: a document of thirty five thousand words in ink with

535
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:50,480
Speaker 1: no mistakes at all, no cross throughs or scratch outs. No,

536
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:53,760
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean it would certainly have. You

537
00:28:53,800 --> 00:28:56,080
Speaker 1: would have to be something that was just so you know,

538
00:28:56,200 --> 00:28:58,680
Speaker 1: wrote for you, that was just so uh, you know,

539
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:01,560
Speaker 1: formed in your mind, can just do it without any mistakes,

540
00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:04,320
Speaker 1: or it would have to be something where mistakes didn't matter,

541
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:07,760
Speaker 1: such as if you were just making it all up exactly. Yeah.

542
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:10,360
Speaker 1: So I feel like this is a significant point because

543
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 1: when you look at handwritten or hand copied documents from

544
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:16,720
Speaker 1: the ancient world, there are tons of emendations. You see

545
00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 1: word is scratched out or cross through or or fixed.

546
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just common at a time when

547
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:25,880
Speaker 1: documents were handwritten instead of produced by a printing press

548
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 1: or a computer. Yeah, it took a lot of time

549
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:29,560
Speaker 1: to make days. It took a lot of skill, and

550
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:34,200
Speaker 1: paper was expensive. Ink was expensive. Ultimately, if you had

551
00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:35,840
Speaker 1: to cross out of word, you cross out of work. Yeah,

552
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 1: and humans are imperfect copying machines. Now, again, we don't

553
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:43,440
Speaker 1: know whether the Voidese manuscript is an original document and

554
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:46,480
Speaker 1: that's like the original copy from the author, or it's

555
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:49,960
Speaker 1: a copy of another document. I would say this, this

556
00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 1: to me very much argues against it being a copy

557
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 1: from another document, just because I mean, scribes, scribes make mistakes.

558
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:00,520
Speaker 1: You're going thirty five thousand words, You're going to make

559
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:02,640
Speaker 1: some mistakes and end up having to scratch them out

560
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:06,120
Speaker 1: and rewrite the word. So so this would this would

561
00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:09,040
Speaker 1: seem to argue for the idea that this was, if

562
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:11,200
Speaker 1: not one of a kind, like this was at least

563
00:30:11,360 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 1: a singular piece, right, Yes, Or it might go for

564
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:16,240
Speaker 1: one of the theories we'll talk about later on the

565
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: theory that there is not actually a meaning or message

566
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 1: in the text. But then again, there are arguments against that,

567
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:24,760
Speaker 1: so we should not get committed to that that that

568
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 1: endpoint Another thing that she may points out is that

569
00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:30,720
Speaker 1: people have tried to source the book by looking at

570
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 1: the astrological imagery in it, but this hasn't really turned

571
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:37,240
Speaker 1: up anything solid either. But a great note he has

572
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 1: that some researchers believed to identify illustrations in the book

573
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:46,720
Speaker 1: as Andromeda like or as Andromeda fog like the galaxy Andromeda,

574
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:49,440
Speaker 1: or as the PLI E. D S. But again he

575
00:30:49,520 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 1: says that this is just it's speculation, kind of like

576
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:55,000
Speaker 1: the botanical thing, you know, where somebody looks at an

577
00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 1: illustration and says, I think that could be a capsicum plant,

578
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:01,320
Speaker 1: that could be a pepper, but it's not clear enough

579
00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:03,520
Speaker 1: that other scholars look at it and say, yeah, that's

580
00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:05,720
Speaker 1: definitely what it is. And this is touching on a

581
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:08,400
Speaker 1: trend that will continue to discuss. And I mean this

582
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: in the in a completely non magical, non speculative way,

583
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:15,960
Speaker 1: but it does seem to be the case that the

584
00:31:16,120 --> 00:31:19,840
Speaker 1: longer you stare at the Advantage manuscript, the longer you

585
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:23,280
Speaker 1: deal with it, the more likely you are to find connections,

586
00:31:23,320 --> 00:31:26,520
Speaker 1: the more like you are to see things. It certainly

587
00:31:26,880 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: encourages the conspiratorial cast of mind, or the well i

588
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 1: don't know. Again, there's a nice way to frame that

589
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 1: in a in a bad way to frame that, Like

590
00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:38,640
Speaker 1: when when you want to make connections between things. I mean,

591
00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:40,320
Speaker 1: on one hand, I feel like that's something I love

592
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: doing on this show, is making a connection you might

593
00:31:43,840 --> 00:31:47,760
Speaker 1: not have expected between one idea or one thing and another. Right,

594
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 1: And it's how we solve That's how we figure out

595
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: so many ancient uh you know, works of art or

596
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:57,640
Speaker 1: works of literature, to go back to the Rosetta Stone.

597
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:00,120
Speaker 1: That is how we eventually were able to do to

598
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:03,400
Speaker 1: solve the riddle of Egyptian hieroglyphics. So yeah, this is

599
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 1: the exercise of figuring things out. But the Vontage manuscript

600
00:32:07,480 --> 00:32:12,640
Speaker 1: seems remarkably resistant to such unraveling well right, I mean,

601
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:16,360
Speaker 1: and it seems to encourage a perhaps unhealthy type of obsession.

602
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:19,440
Speaker 1: Also where I mean, if you take this principle of

603
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:22,600
Speaker 1: making connections too far, of course, where you end up

604
00:32:22,720 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 1: is conspiracy theory world, right, Like you're just finding crazy

605
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 1: coincidences between things, or you even get into numerology. You know, oh,

606
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: it looks it looks like there are you know, seventeen

607
00:32:34,400 --> 00:32:37,240
Speaker 1: line breaks on this page and and that corresponds to

608
00:32:37,320 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: the number of wounds on Christ in this painting or something.

609
00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 1: You know, that that kind of thing where you can

610
00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: find connections if you're determined to find connections, no matter

611
00:32:46,920 --> 00:32:49,840
Speaker 1: how tenuous the link anyway. So to get back to

612
00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 1: h a few of these observations that I noted from

613
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:57,400
Speaker 1: schmis analysis. One is that the clothing and hairstyles worn

614
00:32:57,520 --> 00:33:00,160
Speaker 1: by the people in the illustrations and the voice which

615
00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:03,360
Speaker 1: manuscript seem to date the document to Europe in the

616
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: period of about fourteen fifty to fifteen twenty, but it's

617
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 1: hard to be sure. But this is something that that

618
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:12,440
Speaker 1: is done with other documents sometimes, like if you look

619
00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: at the illustrations of people, what they're wearing, how they

620
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:18,240
Speaker 1: wear their hair, that will tend to correlate to certain

621
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:21,840
Speaker 1: styles from certain periods in places in history. Shema points

622
00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 1: out that the average word length in the document is

623
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:27,760
Speaker 1: about four to five letters, and this doesn't help us

624
00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:30,360
Speaker 1: a whole lot because that could be consistent with a

625
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:33,280
Speaker 1: number of European languages. It just sort of makes it

626
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 1: look like, yes, this is plausibly a language. But there

627
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 1: there are some other things, like one is that it

628
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 1: has fewer recurring words uh, than would appear to be

629
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 1: expected for a natural language, And this sort of argues

630
00:33:46,600 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: against the idea of the text being a simple letter substitution.

631
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:53,680
Speaker 1: But then again, maybe if it is a real language,

632
00:33:53,760 --> 00:33:55,800
Speaker 1: or if it is something in code, it's not a

633
00:33:55,920 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 1: simple letter substitution. Maybe it's a more complex type of cipher.

634
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:03,400
Speaker 1: But ultimately, Schmay concludes that no theory has held up

635
00:34:03,560 --> 00:34:06,400
Speaker 1: under scrutiny yet, which is a great place to be

636
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:10,600
Speaker 1: because now we get to discuss them absolutely. So what

637
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:12,480
Speaker 1: we're gonna do is we're gonna take another break, and

638
00:34:12,520 --> 00:34:15,120
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna first take us to

639
00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:18,600
Speaker 1: take us through the known history of the Vantage Manuscript,

640
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:21,239
Speaker 1: like when when it first occurs, and some of the

641
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 1: key points in history that we're we're relatively sure of. Okay, alright,

642
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:29,400
Speaker 1: we're back, all right. So, as we've mentioned before, we

643
00:34:29,520 --> 00:34:32,359
Speaker 1: don't know who created the Vantage Manuscript. That is one

644
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 1: of the great mysteries. We don't know who wrote it.

645
00:34:34,719 --> 00:34:37,239
Speaker 1: We don't know if it was the original, if the

646
00:34:37,680 --> 00:34:39,920
Speaker 1: version we have now is the original copy, or if

647
00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:42,080
Speaker 1: it's a copy of something. We don't know for sure.

648
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:46,280
Speaker 1: But at some point in history this document just shows

649
00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:48,880
Speaker 1: up and and I guess that's where we should dive in.

650
00:34:49,080 --> 00:34:52,000
Speaker 1: So we're gonna dive in in the sixteenth century, right,

651
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:54,800
Speaker 1: the year is fifty six, and this is when the

652
00:34:54,880 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: manuscript first pops up in the court of Holy Roman

653
00:34:58,719 --> 00:35:02,960
Speaker 1: Emperor Rudolph the Second of Bohemia, who, by my most accounts,

654
00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 1: was an eccentric monarch, which is, it's not hard to

655
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:10,480
Speaker 1: be an eccentric monarch. Monarchy tends to invite eccentricity, and

656
00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:13,239
Speaker 1: uh and but but this is an individual who's very

657
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 1: interested in the occult, in alchemy and kept a great library,

658
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:20,880
Speaker 1: and I've also read was was very fascinated by by

659
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:24,839
Speaker 1: giants and dwarves as well. Yeah, he apparently collected little people.

660
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:28,880
Speaker 1: That seems like a strange kind of medieval monarch fascination.

661
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: I guess Renaissance monarch here. So in many ways is

662
00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:33,719
Speaker 1: weird as a weird guy, but he's also sort of

663
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:37,760
Speaker 1: the character that you would expect from a medieval monarch.

664
00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 1: So the this document shows up in his possession, right,

665
00:35:42,760 --> 00:35:46,359
Speaker 1: and the we're not sure who sold it to him,

666
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:50,399
Speaker 1: but the the the unknown seller sold it for six

667
00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:56,880
Speaker 1: hundred gold. Duckets, and duckets are docts. I think it's

668
00:35:56,920 --> 00:36:00,960
Speaker 1: gonna be duckets. Duckets, I like thinking doct two cats. Yeah,

669
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:04,120
Speaker 1: well I always I always think duets. So six hundred

670
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: six hundred gold anyway to put it more like dungeons

671
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: and dragons. Uh level. Now this came with like a

672
00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 1: certificate of authenticity, right, Yeah, essentially it came with a

673
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:18,000
Speaker 1: letter stating that it was written by Roger Bacon. Roger Bacon,

674
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: as we already alluded to, uh, was a Franciscan friar

675
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 1: who lived twelve nineteen through twelve two roughly, and uh

676
00:36:26,760 --> 00:36:29,640
Speaker 1: he was also said to be a wizard. Of course,

677
00:36:29,680 --> 00:36:32,400
Speaker 1: this is kind of common with with learned individuals and

678
00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 1: you know of that time, right like later on their

679
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:37,320
Speaker 1: stories about them, they are not only were they learned,

680
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:40,239
Speaker 1: but perhaps they had powers as well. Well. As we've

681
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:43,000
Speaker 1: discussed on the show many times, in the medieval period

682
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 1: and the Renaissance period, there was a significant amount of

683
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:48,880
Speaker 1: blurring between the lines of science and magic. People who

684
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 1: were genuinely making scientific observations about the world and about

685
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:57,200
Speaker 1: natural phenomena also sometimes believed in demonology and and just

686
00:36:57,320 --> 00:37:00,840
Speaker 1: kind of like grouped all this knowledge together. Yeah, but

687
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:03,879
Speaker 1: at any rate, Bacon was an individual who in many

688
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:05,680
Speaker 1: ways he was an early advocate of what would become

689
00:37:05,719 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 1: the scientific methodism. Yeah. The on the other hand, you know,

690
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:14,359
Speaker 1: he was also interested in codes and secrets and uh

691
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:18,640
Speaker 1: and certainly later on became very associated with the occult,

692
00:37:18,719 --> 00:37:21,719
Speaker 1: became sort of a focus of a cold interest. Now

693
00:37:21,880 --> 00:37:24,880
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned that modern scholars do not think that

694
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 1: the Vantage Manuscript was written by Roger Bacon, and it

695
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:31,360
Speaker 1: also seems almost conclusively argued against by the carbon dating

696
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:34,120
Speaker 1: of it, which put it in the fifteenth century. Right,

697
00:37:34,200 --> 00:37:36,480
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, I mean about the only thing

698
00:37:36,520 --> 00:37:38,759
Speaker 1: you could make a case for would be what if

699
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 1: Roger Bacon had written it and this was like a

700
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:44,319
Speaker 1: copy of that text, and but then we lost all

701
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:48,640
Speaker 1: references to the original, you know, more leaps of of

702
00:37:48,719 --> 00:37:52,600
Speaker 1: believability there. But at any ry, Yeah, pretty pretty much

703
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:55,080
Speaker 1: nobody is saying that Bacon had anything to do with

704
00:37:55,160 --> 00:37:58,200
Speaker 1: the Vantage Manuscript other than him being cited in this

705
00:37:58,440 --> 00:38:02,279
Speaker 1: letter that accompanied it on sale to the Holy Roman

706
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 1: Roman Emperor. So it'd be like if you showed up

707
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:07,600
Speaker 1: with a document and you know, it's a weird document

708
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:11,080
Speaker 1: that nobody can read, and you just said, George Washington

709
00:38:11,160 --> 00:38:13,799
Speaker 1: wrote this. You can easily see how attaching the name

710
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 1: of a famous person to something could make the could

711
00:38:16,160 --> 00:38:18,560
Speaker 1: get you more money for it. So Rudolph the Second was,

712
00:38:18,719 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 1: you know, the type of individual who was, you know,

713
00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 1: very excited to to obtain this document. He probably put

714
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:26,960
Speaker 1: some of his best minds to figuring it out, but

715
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:29,240
Speaker 1: nobody was able to crack it. He was a sixteenth

716
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 1: century readitor. Definitely he's on the case. But but nobody

717
00:38:34,080 --> 00:38:35,760
Speaker 1: was able to figure it out. You know, it alluded

718
00:38:35,960 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: experts of the time, just as it has always alluded

719
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:42,400
Speaker 1: to experts. So he ends up being passed on, uh

720
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:47,400
Speaker 1: to a botanist by the name of jacob Um hor Riki.

721
00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:52,960
Speaker 1: I think the Latin name would be uh Jacobus Sinapius.

722
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 1: But it was passed on to a botanist essentially because

723
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:58,160
Speaker 1: it does contain a number of what seemed to be

724
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:02,840
Speaker 1: botanical illustrations. And then the botanist keeps it for twenty

725
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 1: years uh. And during this time, Rudolph himself dies in

726
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:09,480
Speaker 1: sixteen twelve, and then the book passes on to an

727
00:39:09,520 --> 00:39:12,160
Speaker 1: unknown person who keeps it for yet another twenty years,

728
00:39:12,640 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 1: and then in the sixteen twenties, the book enters the

729
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:19,240
Speaker 1: possession of Athanasius Kircher, who lives six two through sixteen eighty.

730
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:23,719
Speaker 1: And this is this is another just fascinating character. A

731
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: German scholar and polly math who who also set out

732
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 1: to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics at one point, and his assumptions

733
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:34,680
Speaker 1: ended up being incorrect, but he actually made some correct

734
00:39:34,719 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: connections between the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the and the Coptic languages.

735
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:45,120
Speaker 1: He also studied Chinese language as well as various artificial languages.

736
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 1: His letters show that he was quite interested in this

737
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 1: particular book acquired prior to obtaining it, but then five

738
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:55,840
Speaker 1: years after acquiring it he published a Universal Study of

739
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:59,760
Speaker 1: Artificial Languages and apparently makes no mention of the monach

740
00:39:59,840 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 1: Man Innuscript. So presumably it perplexed him, just as it

741
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 1: perplexed so many others. That's interesting. So he's interested in

742
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:10,520
Speaker 1: this book, he's interested in artificial languages. That would make

743
00:40:10,560 --> 00:40:13,480
Speaker 1: it seem like either he did not conclude that this

744
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:16,719
Speaker 1: was an artificial language, or that he had to stay

745
00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:19,759
Speaker 1: silent about it for some reason. Well, and this is

746
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 1: just my take. I wonder if people I would think

747
00:40:23,160 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 1: that maybe another reason would be if he could not

748
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:28,080
Speaker 1: figure it out like it, he didn't mention it, because

749
00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:30,879
Speaker 1: who wants to be the expert on artificial languages and say,

750
00:40:31,239 --> 00:40:33,359
Speaker 1: you know, I couldn't crack this well, right, he could

751
00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 1: have the Isaac Newton mentality, where you know Isaac Newton

752
00:40:36,719 --> 00:40:39,319
Speaker 1: said like, here's what I've figured out as for these

753
00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:42,280
Speaker 1: other as for the cause of gravity, the underlying cause.

754
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:46,080
Speaker 1: He just said, I do not feign hypotheses. You can

755
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:49,239
Speaker 1: kind of respect that. Now. I do think it's something

756
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:51,880
Speaker 1: we should come back and discuss artificial languages at some

757
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:54,880
Speaker 1: point on the show, because it is is fascinating to

758
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:58,000
Speaker 1: to realize that here's this book on the study of

759
00:40:58,080 --> 00:41:01,320
Speaker 1: artificial languages, and of course this is central as before.

760
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:04,640
Speaker 1: You know, we encountered cling On or doth Iraqi or

761
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:08,480
Speaker 1: any of thee or Esperanto, So it would be fun

762
00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:10,319
Speaker 1: to come back to that. Well, I've actually thought about

763
00:41:10,360 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 1: the idea of covering artificially invented languages on Invention on

764
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:16,160
Speaker 1: our other podcast. That would be a good one. So

765
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: keep keep an eye out over there Invention, the other

766
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: podcast that we do. You can find it at invention

767
00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 1: pod dot com. Uh you can subscribe wherever you subscribe

768
00:41:25,120 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 1: to your podcast. It is uh, it is human techno history,

769
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:31,480
Speaker 1: one invention at a time. All right, So Athanasious Kircher,

770
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:35,239
Speaker 1: he's got the Vointage manuscript, and what happens to it? Then, well,

771
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:36,880
Speaker 1: he has it for a while, but then he becomes

772
00:41:36,880 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 1: a Jesuit monk and he gives away all of his

773
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 1: earthly possessions, which includes his books and so his his library,

774
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:46,400
Speaker 1: and the Vontage manuscript itself lands in the library of

775
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:51,000
Speaker 1: a Jesuit seminary, which I believe it is a Collegio Romano,

776
00:41:51,600 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 1: just south of Rome, and it remains there for something

777
00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:58,319
Speaker 1: like two hundred and fifty years. Though according to Livingstone,

778
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: the book quote appears to have bounced around progue for

779
00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:04,640
Speaker 1: a while. In sixteen thirty nine, a person named uh

780
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:08,720
Speaker 1: Barcias described it as a is quote a certain riddle

781
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:13,160
Speaker 1: of the sphinx, a piece of writing and unknown characters unquote,

782
00:42:13,200 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: and guests that quote the whole thing is medical unquote.

783
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 1: The book's historical trail vanishes in sixteen seventy up until

784
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 1: the time that Volinage purchased it. And that's from that

785
00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:24,600
Speaker 1: New Yorker article. Yes, that's from the New Yorker piece. Okay,

786
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:27,680
Speaker 1: so then we get up to the twentieth century, and

787
00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:29,880
Speaker 1: this is when it shows up with the guy actually

788
00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:35,479
Speaker 1: named Voyage, yet another fascinating weird individual to enter into

789
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:37,239
Speaker 1: the history. And we haven't even covered some of the

790
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 1: other weird individuals that factor into its history. So it

791
00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:43,040
Speaker 1: ends up in the sort of along with a purchase

792
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:46,879
Speaker 1: of other books in the hands of this eccentric book

793
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:50,880
Speaker 1: dealer named Wilfred Michael Voyinage, Yeah, who lived eighteen sixty

794
00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:54,759
Speaker 1: five through nineteen thirty and yeah, he publishes the entire

795
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:58,320
Speaker 1: library and uh, and it ends up being moved to America,

796
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:00,839
Speaker 1: and this of course includes the book that would take

797
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:05,320
Speaker 1: his name right, So yeah, Polish born. He's an interesting

798
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:07,600
Speaker 1: fellow to say the least. He knew He allegedly knew

799
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 1: twenty different languages. Was at one point investigated by the

800
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:15,640
Speaker 1: FBI for possessing Bacon cipher, an actual cipher, for creating

801
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:18,120
Speaker 1: coded message that it was devised by Roger Bacon just

802
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 1: to bring Roger Bacon back into everything. And he even

803
00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:25,200
Speaker 1: apparently sold a forgery to the British Museum at one point,

804
00:43:25,280 --> 00:43:29,040
Speaker 1: though perhaps by accident. Yeah, there their whole story he

805
00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 1: was a very well traveled, adventuring individual. At some point,

806
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:35,279
Speaker 1: I think he was sent to a prison in Siberia

807
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:39,440
Speaker 1: for his political activities. Uh he somehow escaped to England

808
00:43:39,520 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 1: at some point and became a book collector. In that

809
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:47,800
Speaker 1: that Josephine Livingstone article, she talks about this story that

810
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 1: he would he would delight in showing off his wounds people,

811
00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:54,520
Speaker 1: and he would like lift his shirt up and he

812
00:43:54,560 --> 00:44:00,239
Speaker 1: would say here by sword, here by bullet. But yeah,

813
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:03,480
Speaker 1: so Voinese is a really interesting guy. And at one

814
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:06,440
Speaker 1: point in hyping his manuscript, this is also quoted in

815
00:44:06,640 --> 00:44:10,240
Speaker 1: in Josphine Livingstone's piece, he was talking to the Times

816
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:13,440
Speaker 1: and he said, when the time comes, I will prove

817
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:15,840
Speaker 1: to the world that the black magic of the Middle

818
00:44:15,880 --> 00:44:20,680
Speaker 1: Ages consisted in discoveries far in advance of twentieth century science.

819
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:23,160
Speaker 1: And I think this speaks to a certain kind of

820
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:28,480
Speaker 1: attitude that documents like this inspire and other historical mysteries,

821
00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:30,680
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, you know, the anti kate, thero

822
00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:34,360
Speaker 1: a mechanism, or untranslated documents. Anytime you've got this object

823
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:39,239
Speaker 1: from history that seems to contain information or learning, or

824
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 1: indicate information or learning, but is not fully solved at

825
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:46,279
Speaker 1: the time people are looking at it. It tends to

826
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:50,480
Speaker 1: to make people want to go toward these almost conspiracy

827
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: theory level ideas of like lost knowledge and and you know,

828
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 1: like like ancient aliens kind of territory. Why do we

829
00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:01,399
Speaker 1: have such a tendency in those directions, like why why

830
00:45:01,520 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 1: is it? Why are our brains wired to go to

831
00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: that conclusion rather than like, oh, here's a strange document

832
00:45:07,719 --> 00:45:10,160
Speaker 1: in code. Well, I mean, I guess at one level,

833
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 1: you know, we look to the modern age and we

834
00:45:12,239 --> 00:45:17,080
Speaker 1: we we had we tend to regard our current scientific

835
00:45:17,160 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: technological understanding the world is superior to that of the past. Um,

836
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: you know, by and large, I mean, certainly there are

837
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:26,399
Speaker 1: areas where and we've discussed some of these in the show,

838
00:45:26,440 --> 00:45:29,320
Speaker 1: where we can point to things in the modern world

839
00:45:29,800 --> 00:45:32,319
Speaker 1: that are perhaps inferior to ways of dealing with things

840
00:45:32,360 --> 00:45:34,040
Speaker 1: in the past. You know, generally things that are more

841
00:45:34,160 --> 00:45:38,160
Speaker 1: cultural or interpersonal. Uh. But we we tend to think,

842
00:45:38,200 --> 00:45:40,000
Speaker 1: you know, when it comes to like figuring out how

843
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:43,520
Speaker 1: the world works, especially the natural world, like today is

844
00:45:43,560 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 1: the day, and then never have we had a greater understanding.

845
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:48,920
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, there are things that

846
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:51,560
Speaker 1: we do not understand about the world yet, and there

847
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 1: are things, particularly details from the past, details from history,

848
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 1: that we can never fully understand, you know, that are

849
00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:02,080
Speaker 1: going to just remain, you know, gaps essentially gaps in

850
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:07,360
Speaker 1: the fossil records of of our literary and historical legacy.

851
00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:09,200
Speaker 1: I've said this on the show before, but I remain

852
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:12,840
Speaker 1: committed to a to a middle position here between the

853
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:15,800
Speaker 1: sort of the condescending modern idea that looks at the

854
00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:19,080
Speaker 1: past and says ancient and medieval people's they were just stupid,

855
00:46:19,120 --> 00:46:21,879
Speaker 1: they didn't know anything, versus the one on the other hand,

856
00:46:21,960 --> 00:46:24,840
Speaker 1: that tends toward believing in some lost golden age, you know,

857
00:46:24,960 --> 00:46:28,239
Speaker 1: ancient loss knowledge that far surpasses our own. I think

858
00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:31,560
Speaker 1: the reality is that it's not like there's an ancient

859
00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 1: lost Golden Age. There wasn't an Atlantis where they had

860
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:37,320
Speaker 1: flying cars and stuff like that. It's more like that

861
00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 1: people in the past were struggling with limitations that we

862
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:44,080
Speaker 1: don't face. They had they didn't have the technology we have,

863
00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:47,399
Speaker 1: but they were also incredibly smart. They were super clever

864
00:46:47,520 --> 00:46:50,719
Speaker 1: and came up with amazing workarounds and methods for things

865
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:52,840
Speaker 1: using the limited technology they have. This is what I

866
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:55,000
Speaker 1: always think about, you know, the classic construction of the

867
00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:58,480
Speaker 1: Pyramids example, It's like, no, it doesn't mean that they

868
00:46:58,520 --> 00:47:01,399
Speaker 1: had like alien technology. It just means that, like, these

869
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:03,160
Speaker 1: are smart people and they had to figure out how

870
00:47:03,200 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 1: to solve big problems with limited tools. I think also

871
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:09,360
Speaker 1: we sometimes fall into this trap of thinking thinking about

872
00:47:09,480 --> 00:47:13,120
Speaker 1: the you know, our modern world's contemplation of the past

873
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:16,520
Speaker 1: is kind of a battle between the present and past,

874
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,120
Speaker 1: Like the past is an enemy to be defeated in

875
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:21,440
Speaker 1: our attempt to understand it, to kind of make an

876
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:23,560
Speaker 1: adversary out of it. And I guess part of that

877
00:47:23,719 --> 00:47:25,759
Speaker 1: is maybe like you know, maybe this part of it

878
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 1: is just found in all cultures where the past is

879
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:31,160
Speaker 1: something an enemy to the mabile overcome. Maybe it's part

880
00:47:31,160 --> 00:47:34,160
Speaker 1: of the colonial legacy, or maybe it's because of Indiana Jones,

881
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:37,160
Speaker 1: you know, with uh, you know, this idea of somebody

882
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:40,320
Speaker 1: like like physically combating the past in order to acquire

883
00:47:40,360 --> 00:47:44,240
Speaker 1: its secrets. And then if something is resistant to this assault,

884
00:47:44,920 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 1: then it must it must have some sort of secret knowledge.

885
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:51,160
Speaker 1: It must there must be something more than like the

886
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:53,720
Speaker 1: fault cannot be our own. It must be some hidden

887
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:56,759
Speaker 1: power of the past. That's interesting, all right, Well we

888
00:47:56,840 --> 00:48:00,239
Speaker 1: gotta get back to what happened to the Voytage manuscript, right,

889
00:48:00,320 --> 00:48:03,399
Speaker 1: So it was in Vona's possession, and then he dies

890
00:48:03,560 --> 00:48:05,680
Speaker 1: and it passes to his widow, Ethel, and he died

891
00:48:05,719 --> 00:48:09,440
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty, yes, nineteen thirty, and then it passes

892
00:48:09,480 --> 00:48:12,040
Speaker 1: from Ethel to a close friend who then sells the

893
00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:15,000
Speaker 1: book to an antique antique book dealer by the name

894
00:48:15,040 --> 00:48:19,120
Speaker 1: of hands P. Krauss in nineteen sixty one. So Krauss,

895
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:21,000
Speaker 1: he tries to find a buyer for the book, but

896
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 1: cannot find a suitable buyer. What nobody wanted it? Well,

897
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:26,720
Speaker 1: maybe not for his price. Yeah, I don't know the details.

898
00:48:26,760 --> 00:48:28,200
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was maybe if he was

899
00:48:28,239 --> 00:48:30,160
Speaker 1: asking too much, or he wanted to sell it to

900
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:33,000
Speaker 1: the right type of collector. I mean, who knows, But

901
00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:36,680
Speaker 1: not somebody who's gonna chop it up and make make

902
00:48:36,760 --> 00:48:39,319
Speaker 1: Voytage manuscript sausage out of it. I don't know. I mean,

903
00:48:39,400 --> 00:48:42,280
Speaker 1: he ends up donating it to Yale University in nineteen

904
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:45,960
Speaker 1: sixty nine. So without without knowing the details of Kross myself,

905
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:48,279
Speaker 1: and perhaps there's better documentation out there, you know, I

906
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:50,560
Speaker 1: would presume it was a situation of where he's like,

907
00:48:50,600 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 1: I can't sell it to the type of client, you know,

908
00:48:53,040 --> 00:48:55,800
Speaker 1: the type of purchaser I want, so I'll sell it

909
00:48:55,880 --> 00:48:57,719
Speaker 1: to Yale, Or perhaps he reached the point where he's

910
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:01,000
Speaker 1: he realized, like this book is is a truly fascinating

911
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:04,080
Speaker 1: historical specimen. It does not belong in the hands of

912
00:49:04,640 --> 00:49:06,640
Speaker 1: you know, a rare occult book. It doesn't need to

913
00:49:06,640 --> 00:49:10,319
Speaker 1: be in another rare book dealers antique stash. It needs

914
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 1: to be with the university. All right, Well, I guess

915
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:15,719
Speaker 1: that sort of brings us up to the modern period,

916
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:18,320
Speaker 1: in which there's been an enormous amount of scholarship on

917
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:21,920
Speaker 1: the Voyage Manuscript, of people trying to both to to

918
00:49:22,120 --> 00:49:25,440
Speaker 1: translate it or decrypt it, which in some ways are

919
00:49:25,520 --> 00:49:29,160
Speaker 1: similar jobs, or people trying to figure out what it

920
00:49:29,280 --> 00:49:32,680
Speaker 1: means or where it came from, who wrote it. A

921
00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:34,960
Speaker 1: lot of these mysteries remain, and there have been huge,

922
00:49:35,360 --> 00:49:39,080
Speaker 1: hugely interesting attempts to solve these questions over the decades.

923
00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:41,200
Speaker 1: But on that note, we're actually gonna have to call

924
00:49:41,280 --> 00:49:44,400
Speaker 1: this episode and return in a second episode where we'll

925
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 1: get into these various attempts to unravel the manuscript. In

926
00:49:48,280 --> 00:49:50,480
Speaker 1: the meantime, you can check out other episodes of Sufchable

927
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:52,399
Speaker 1: your Mind at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

928
00:49:53,000 --> 00:49:56,200
Speaker 1: You can also, of course find this podcast wherever you

929
00:49:56,280 --> 00:49:59,640
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Wherever you do find us, make sure

930
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:01,799
Speaker 1: that you rate and review us. That really helps us out.

931
00:50:02,239 --> 00:50:04,759
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, if you want to discuss this

932
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:10,000
Speaker 1: episode with other users other listeners, there's actually a Facebook

933
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:14,200
Speaker 1: discussion group called the discussion module Stay Stuff to Bow

934
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:16,799
Speaker 1: your Mind Discussion Module. That's kind of a fun place

935
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:19,160
Speaker 1: to check out. Hey, have you subscribed to our other podcast,

936
00:50:19,239 --> 00:50:22,640
Speaker 1: Invention yet. If not, go subscribe to Invention. Subscribe to

937
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:26,640
Speaker 1: Invention huge. Thanks as always to our excellent audio producers,

938
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:29,640
Speaker 1: Maya Cole and Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like

939
00:50:29,760 --> 00:50:32,080
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this

940
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:34,560
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

941
00:50:34,960 --> 00:50:37,080
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at

942
00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:49,920
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff

943
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:51,880
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's

944
00:50:51,880 --> 00:50:54,200
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,

945
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:57,000
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

946
00:50:57,080 --> 00:51:14,160
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. The pay four foot fo