WEBVTT - The Voynich Manuscript, Part 2 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:04.960 Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:13.600 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you welcome to 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:15.720 Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:18.320 and I'm Joe McCormick, and we are back with part 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.400 two of our exploration of the Voytage Manuscript or the 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:25.240 Vantage Manuscript. We've been saying both this medieval manuscript that 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:31.000 has fascinated UH scholars cryptographers for for decades now, or 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:33.959 actually not just decades, for centuries, but especially since it 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:37.720 was reintroduced to the world around nineteen twelve and has 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:41.240 become the subject of intense interest because it is full 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:45.760 of this text that has not been successfully decoded if 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:49.159 it is in fact a code, or has not been translated, 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:52.560 if it is in fact a language, accompanied with these 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:59.880 amazing strange illustrations of alien plants and and women bathing 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:04.040 in these strange horns with crocodile ten drils. Is this 0:01:04.160 --> 0:01:08.000 absolutely captivating document that is in a library at Yale 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:11.119 now and today. We wanted to go further by exploring 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.280 the history of people trying to understand this document, to 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:16.399 come up with a theory of its origin, or to 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:20.000 explain what it says if it says anything. Yeah, So again, 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:23.200 definitely listen to part one if you have not. Absolutely 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:25.800 this is definitely a part one, part two scenario. Yeah. 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:28.119 I think you'll probably be very confused if you try 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:29.920 to jump in in the middle here, So go back 0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:33.240 to part one first. But so I thought we should 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:39.319 start off today by separating the different theories of of 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:43.640 this manuscript into two basic camps. And then within these 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:47.160 camps there will be different theories. But the two main camps, 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:50.240 I think we should look at our signal theory and 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:54.440 noise theory. And so signal theory looks at the Voyage 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:58.440 manuscript and proposes that there is some underlying meaning to 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:02.000 the text that it could, at least in theory, actually 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:05.680 be translated to yield a signal signal or a message. 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:08.480 And of course it's not necessarily saying that we have 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:11.280 understood what the messages, or that we ever will understand 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:13.480 what the messages, but at least in theory it could 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:18.120 be understood. It says something that's signal theory. Noise theory, 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:22.000 we would say, proposes that there is no underlying message. 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:27.239 It's just gibberish, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Yeah, And and 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:29.080 an indeed, that does cut to the chase. Either this 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:32.360 is a document that means something or it means nothing, 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:35.919 and and both are are kind of enthralling possibilities. One 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:39.320 is filled with wonder and old and and gives way 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:42.120 to all sorts of you know, conspiracy theories if you 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:44.280 gaze into it long enough. And the other is is 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:48.359 kind of equally terrifying that this thing that has captivated 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:53.320 and just and overwhelmed so many you know, intensely intelligent 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:56.440 and in many cases that you know, very well educated individuals. 0:02:56.680 --> 0:02:59.240 They could old, but it could ultimately be a work 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:01.520 of nonsense, that it's just you know, it's kind of 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:04.480 like just pure chaos. And there could be multiple reasons 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:06.280 why it could be a work of nonsense or at 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.600 least nonsense to us. And I think we'll explore these individually, 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:11.200 But first I think we should look at some of 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:16.200 the possibilities for understanding this document under the signal theory, 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:18.640 the theory that it actually does say something. So what 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:21.320 would some of these explanations be. Well, one of the 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:24.200 big theories is that the cipher theory, the idea that 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:27.639 the text is protected by a letter based cipher. It's 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:30.079 a very popular approach to trying to figure out what's 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:32.400 going on with a vantage manuscript. Right, So the idea 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:36.520 could be that it's something like a letter substitution system. 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:39.920 So these characters that we don't recognize, that you know, 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:42.800 roughly maybe fifteen to twenty five or up to thirty 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:46.200 characters that are used to make the words in this 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:51.600 book somehow correspond to letters in a known language, or 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:56.400 letters in some coded language or or something like that 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:58.880 that that there's a way of breaking the code and 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:03.280 it detrains and it can be retranslated into an actual language. Ye. 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.240 Getting into the idea here that it could be in 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:08.520 a code and it requires a codebook, and since we 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:12.000 don't have the codebook, it's the cryptographers, uh, you know, 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:14.560 a goal to try and figure out what the code 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:17.039 might be. Oh okay, So a codebook could mean that 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.279 it wouldn't even necessarily have to be a straight like 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:24.120 letter substitution type cipher. It could just be that there 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:28.120 are you know, like known translations of certain word forms 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:32.040 or something like that to other known words. Another possibility 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.880 is that it's written in some form of shorthand that 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:40.440 that we have you know, lost understanding of. There's also uh, 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:44.839 the the idea of steganography. This is the idea that 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:48.719 the text itself is meaningless, but key signs would indicate 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:54.640 hidden useful information, like little details on the illustrations or 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:57.840 the text itself, or some combination. Um. This would be 0:04:57.920 --> 0:04:59.640 kind of, like, I guess, kind of like a you know, 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.720 a cheap spy novel. Version of this is like counting 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:06.359 the dotted eyes on a page sort of thing, and 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.240 that tells you something. Sure. Yeah. Another variation that is 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:12.440 brought up is that you could obtain the necessary info 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:16.320 info by placing a plate um over the page with 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:20.520 spaces in that plate to reveal the important characters. Oh yeah, okay, 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:22.480 so this would be you know, like one of those 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.440 uh uh, you know, decode or ring kinds of things. 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:28.080 Oh no, that that actually I think is letter substitution. 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:31.840 There are there are codes like this like this in 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:34.400 toys and stuff that you can buy that like, you 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:36.560 put a plate over it's got certain holes on, and 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:38.840 you read the letters that appear in the holes. Right. 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:41.360 And it's my understanding that if if those plates were 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:43.680 random enough, that in and of itself could make it 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.880 extremely difficult, if not impossible, to crack the code. Uh 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:51.080 you know the vantage managecript. Sure, but then there are 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:54.240 other theories that are less about code and that might 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:56.640 still present to us as codes, but maybe it wasn't 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:58.800 intended as a code. Yeah. Like a big one is 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:01.600 that it is some form of natural language that has 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:06.440 been forgotten in various possibilities from Eurasia have been presented. Yea. 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:09.359 So the idea here would just be we've got no 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.960 other documents written in this language or written in this uh, 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:17.400 in this transliteration of the language. Right. And then another idea, 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:19.520 to come back to something we discussed in the last episode, 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:23.240 is that it could be a constructed language, so like 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:26.640 a language that somebody made up on purpose, like Klingon 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:30.080 or doth Rocky, but the fifteenth century version of that 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:34.000 right now. And now, another intriguing idea, and this was 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:39.240 apparently presented by Jerry Kennedy and Rob Churchill, that it 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:43.320 could be a what is what is called a glossal alia. Yeah, 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:46.360 so this would have been essentially like a work that 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:50.120 is a stream of consciousness, work that is created via 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:54.400 speaking in tongues, similar to the work of Christian mystic 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.880 Hildegard of Bingen. Yeah, this would be uh, I mean 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.560 you could look at it as a form of automatic writing, 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:03.440 you know that that's so there there could be a 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:08.400 this could be a weird transcription of spoken gloss alia 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.520 like speaking in tongues, or it could be a written 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:14.000 version of it. Directly, it would be kind of weird 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:18.400 if it was a transliteration of sounds made orally by 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.880 gloss alia into a script that didn't exist anyway. But 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:25.040 you can imagine it's certainly being like automatic writing of 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:27.120 some kind of people, that the spirits are writing through 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:30.240 my hand. And I think that would mean in this 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:32.680 case that while it might not be meaningless to the 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:36.080 person writing it, it would be meaningless to any reader. 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:38.880 So I think this would fall under the noise category 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:41.200 right that there would be there is no way to 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:45.040 understand what this says because there is no underlying signal, 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:48.760 because in this case, presumably the context for the piece 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:53.000 would be very personal and then also would probably deal 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:56.560 a lot with personal reevaluation of the text. You know'd 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:59.680 be it's almost like like less than a dream journal 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.320 in a way, you know, where the dream is not 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:06.520 even even taken and put into the into the form 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:11.280 of language, but like the dream is is in language. Yeah, 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:13.760 it would be like if if you had a dream journal, yeah, 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:16.920 where you never translated it into any real language, You 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.400 just made notes about your dreams in random other symbols 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:23.080 that don't mean anything to anybody else. And then, of course, 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:26.120 another big idea is that it's simply a hoax, right, 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:29.240 that it doesn't mean anything. There's no encoded signals, just 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:34.200 noise because somebody was intentionally trying to create an object 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:38.040 that would maybe confuse people or trick them, or maybe 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.840 just trick them into thinking that it did say something. Right, 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:44.480 And if and if that is indeed the reason for 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:48.400 the origin story of this document, then it is still succeeding. 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:51.800 It's it's probably succeeded remarkably well, because if it is 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.800 a hoax, it is still tricking people to this day. 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:57.920 Another idea is that if it were a hoax, if 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:00.840 it were a completely fraudulent document, you could also make 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:02.480 a case that it was a you know, a way 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.120 to try and make a quick buck off of, you know, 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:08.600 a cult fanboys with a lot of money, such as 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:11.960 the Holy Roman Emperor who who purchased it, so we 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:14.079 know it was sold to Rudolph the Second. We think 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.720 around fifteen eighty six. That's when the historical records indicate. 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.400 But the carbon dating of the vellums says that this this, 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:25.120 this parchment at least was probably produced in like the 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:28.920 early fourteen hundreds. Now maybe maybe we think like it's 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:31.880 possible to parchment the vellums sat around for a long 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:34.480 time before it was made into this document. But if 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:36.960 you think that the creation of the pages on which 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:40.120 it was written was sometime close to when the document 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:42.840 was written, then it would have been written long before 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:45.280 there was a chance to sell it to Rudolph the second, 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:46.800 So it would be hard to imagine that it was 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:50.319 created specifically for that purpose. Now, one of the things 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:53.200 is that people have tried to do various kinds of 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:58.200 statistical analysis of the text to say, okay, does even 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:01.400 though we can't translate it yet, does this look like 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:04.160 a natural language? Does it look like it could somehow 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:08.400 be decoded to or translated to a natural language? And 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:11.360 I would say that the answer there is inconclusive. There 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:14.840 are pieces of evidence pointing both ways, right, Like one 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:19.080 commonly cited weird feature of the text that really makes 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:22.160 it look like not a natural language is the fact 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:25.880 that in some cases words are repeated in line up 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.880 to three times in a row? Is that normal for 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:33.400 a language? Is that normal? Normal? Normal? Not really really really, 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:38.280 I mean I don't know poetically lyrically uh shanty shanti shan. 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:41.480 I mean we can all think of examples from songs 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:45.640 and poetry and writing where that's interesting. You know, something 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:49.520 maybe said three times to to add emphasis. But I mean, 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:52.560 I I am not I'm not the expert comment commenting 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:56.880 on this from it's saying Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. This does 0:10:56.960 --> 0:10:58.840 remind me though, when I was a kid, sometimes I 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.920 would like trying eight like documents that looked like they 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:04.720 were you know, magical documents in another language, you know, 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:08.559 with weird rooms. Um. And actually I do that still sometimes, 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:10.960 like doodling, you know in the corners of a page, 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:13.960 if I'm supposed to be taking notes on something. Uh. 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:15.880 But I even even as a kid, I would I 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:17.520 would look back at what I had done and I 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:20.360 would realize, what this This doesn't look like language like, 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:24.280 it doesn't like there's not enough variety in the the 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.960 the signal, little signals that I've I've concocted, or something 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:30.640 that just essentially pulled out of my head they're like, 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:33.640 it's not matching up with what one would expect from 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:36.560 any kind of writing or coded writing system. Yeah, so 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:38.520 I mentioned in the last episode there was a good 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:41.440 article about this from two thousand eleven and skeptical inquirer 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:45.880 by the German computer scientist Klaus Schmai who who I 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:48.920 think he looked at a lot of the statistical qualities 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:51.960 of the text from a cryptography point of view, and 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:54.960 it seemed like he said, yeah, there there's evidence both ways, 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:57.840 and we can continue to talk about some of that 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:01.400 evidence as we go on in the episode. One interesting 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:04.520 claim I came across. I'm sorry that I feel like 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.480 I can't evaluate whether this is a correct claim or not, 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:10.560 but at least it's a claim that's made against the 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:14.479 noise theory or any theory recommending an interpretation of nonsense. 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:18.840 Is that the document uh at least appears to follow 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:23.880 something called Ziff's law, which concerns the statistical distribution of 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:27.360 words and natural languages. So basically, Ziff's law claims that 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:31.160 in any natural language, the frequency with which a word 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:35.120 is used will be directly proportional to how how high 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:37.920 it ranks in the ranking of most common words. So 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:40.679 the first most common word will be used twice as 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:43.480 often as the second most common word, three times as 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:46.040 often as the third most common word, and so forth. 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:49.280 Now this isn't exactly law in like the physical or 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.120 mathematical sense, but for some reason it does appear to 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:56.440 hold true for all or almost all natural languages. And 0:12:56.520 --> 0:12:59.280 so if and and the document appears to match this. 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:01.520 So like if you look at it from a Ziff's 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.360 law distribution, it lines up pretty close. So if the 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:07.559 frequency count of words in this document follows this law, 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:10.760 if that is, if that claim is correct, meaning it 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.640 has a similar distribution of words to real documents in 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:17.319 real languages. That seems to make it a little harder 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:20.120 to believe it's just total nonsense generated but out of 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:24.679 somebody's head. Another thing is that different words appear with 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:28.000 different frequencies in different sections. So remember we've got these 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:31.120 different sections of the document, like the astrological stuff versus 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:34.720 the herbal stuff, and so you have some words that 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:38.160 might appear in the supposed astrological section but not in 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:41.440 the plants section, and vice versa. This would I think 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.280 be expected if these were written in a real language 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:46.120 with a real message, like you would have maaze. You 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.120 would probably expect the words star to appear in the 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:52.240 astrological section, but not in the plants section. So, just 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:56.599 looking at the symbols, the frequency distribution of symbols and 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.800 how they break out, and how well they resemble a 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:02.559 real language, it seems like you can push us kind 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:05.320 of in both directions that we don't get a clear 0:14:06.320 --> 0:14:09.640 reading from either way. From that, and then and again, 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:13.840 this just comes back to what makes this document so mysterious. 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.520 It's so resistant to unraveling. So and a number of 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:20.920 theories have been put put forth for the origins and 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:23.680 the true nature of the text. Uh, you know, so 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:29.800 much so that in when American cryptologist and computer programmer married, 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:34.000 the Imperio composed the Voltage Manuscript and Elegant Enigma for 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:36.400 the U. S Military, which is commissioned by the US 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:40.880 Military Cryptography. I mean, that's a yeah, of massive state importance. 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:42.680 It is. Yeah. So this is not like some sort 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.920 of weird you know, Area fifty one type of Shenanigan 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:49.440 going on here. But in this uh, this paper, which 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:52.000 is readily available online, you can find a PDF of 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:55.680 the full thing. She admits that she quote unwittingly retraced 0:14:55.760 --> 0:15:00.400 the steps of all my predecessors, rediscovering their sources, peating 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:04.560 their experiments, growing excited over the same promising leads that 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:08.360 excited them, and learning only later that all these things 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:12.560 had already been tried and had failed, often several times. 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:15.880 And I found that to just be very, very fitting, 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:18.560 because this does seem to be a theme, uh is 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.520 that you know, certainly in the last century. Well, it's 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:23.880 not hard to see why. Again, this is like it's 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:27.760 sort of the holy grail of of of decoding, right, yeah, yes, 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:30.360 it's the mount Everest of code breaking. If you could 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:32.840 crack it, you'd be you would be like the hottest, 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:35.560 you know, code cracker in the world. Yeah. And so 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:38.640 code crackers have have tried, have taken a shot at it. 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:41.840 Linguists have have have taken a shot at it. Various 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:45.920 scholar all manner of scholars, amateurs, and of course outright 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:50.080 quacks have taken taken their hand to the Vantage Manuscript. 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:52.000 I think we alluded to this in the last episode, 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:54.520 but the Internet is full of people who claim to 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:57.600 have decoded the Voltage Manuscript to the point where when 0:15:57.640 --> 0:15:59.400 we were preparing for the episode, I mean a lot 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:02.000 of these were just like, you know, somebody in the 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:05.200 last year or two has published a you know, a 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:08.640 YouTube video or or an article somewhere where they're like, 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:11.520 I did it. I cracked it. Here's the answer. And 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:13.880 I'm like, I don't know. Maybe one of these people 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:16.880 actually did and it just hasn't really been analyzed or 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:19.200 reported on yet. I have no way of knowing because 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:21.760 I don't have an expertise obviously in the relevant fields, 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.960 so I can't like evaluate it on my own. But 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:28.000 it's funny, like there's so many people trying and claiming 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:30.680 to have done it that you somebody could have done 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:32.440 it and we might not even know for a while 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:34.920 because it would just get lost in the sea of 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:37.520 of of all these claims. All right, on that note, 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:39.440 we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:45.160 we're going to discuss the possibility, uh pretty much discredited 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:48.800 possibility that Roger Bacon actually had a hand in creating this. 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:52.720 Thank you, all right, we're back. Time to talk about 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:56.240 Mr Bacon. Now, you remember from the last episode the 0:16:56.520 --> 0:16:59.880 it came with a certificate of authenticity. Originally, when rude 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.920 Off the Second the Holy Roman Emperor bought this U 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:07.280 bought the Voytage manuscript for six hundred ducats or Ducket's 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:09.880 he it came along with a letter that said, well, 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:12.920 by the way, Roger Bacon made this. Yeah. And according 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:16.200 to Josephine Livingstone, who wrote a really nice piece in 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:18.200 The New Yorker about this, actually a couple of pieces. 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:19.960 One was kind of a follow up where she talked 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:24.840 about just internet fascination with the Voytage manuscript. She points out, yeah, 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:27.160 that this does not seem to be the case though, 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:29.639 uh though it was a kind of a popular idea 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:32.840 for a while, or it is like repopularized and you know, 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:37.360 well before the carbon dating actually took place. But one 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:41.440 William Romaine new Bold, a professor of intellectual and moral 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:46.280 philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He argued in favor 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:50.320 of the Bacon origin, believing it to be an anagrammed 0:17:50.760 --> 0:17:58.240 micrographic shorthand it required transposition, abbreviation, and microscopic notation. Yeah, 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:02.560 his method, from what I've read, was a little over 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:05.879 the I mean it's like he was like looking inside 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:12.240 the characters to see little micro like strokes of ink 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:17.639 that may have indicated actual letters or abbreviations. Of word phonemes, 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:21.040 and so his his method of decoding it, which he 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:25.760 claimed was successful, was incredibly complicated. Yeah, but he claimed 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:28.600 that he had translated, and he provided all these details 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:31.439 like drawing it into various you know, other writings and 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:35.359 ideas of Bacon. And he was apparently a brilliant individual. 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:39.760 But but no one could take his solution and reproduce 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:42.919 the same results using these methods. Right, it required so 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:46.879 many subjective judgment calls about what he was seeing on 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:50.159 the page in these micro notation marks, and what that 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:55.400 was supposed to correlate to. Yeah. Medieval medievalist John Matthews Manly, 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:59.280 one of the the Army's chief cryptologists during World War One, 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:03.800 conclude did that the quote decipherments were not discoveries of 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:07.199 secret hidden of secrets hidden by Roger Bacon, but the 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:11.679 products of new Bold's own intense enthusiasm and his learned 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:16.359 and ingenious subconscious. According to Schmay's article and Skeptical enquire 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:20.160 new Bold's translation had revealed that Roger Bacon already had 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:23.560 a telescope in the thirteenth century, predating the known invention 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:26.119 of the telescope in the first decade of the sixteen 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:29.639 hundreds by like centuries, and that Bacon had used this 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:33.040 telescope to discover the spiral structure of the Andromeda galaxy. 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:35.720 It's just hard to believe though, that like you could 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:41.440 generate generate text that complex, you know, just by subjective 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:44.560 interpretations of tiny things. And then of course, as we're saying, 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:47.760 like nobody else could could come up with the same 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:51.280 translations based on what he had. So I don't know, 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:54.400 it just seems like he was he was looking for 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:57.040 the text he wanted to find, almost like like it 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:02.760 spells like new Bold is great. Yeah, you know, another great, interesting, 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:06.320 insightful description of of this. Uh. This incident with new 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:09.920 Bold comes from Terence McKenna, who wrote about the manuscript 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:13.239 for Nosis magazine in nine eight in what is, by 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:17.480 the way, a purely historical linguistic article that has nothing 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:19.840 to do with any of his writings on psychedelics, although 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:22.240 I can absolutely see why McKenna would be interested in 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:26.040 the subject because it's this it's this manuscript that seems 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:28.800 to sit at the intersection of primitive science and magic 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:32.720 and plants. Yeah. Uh, this, this particular article is you 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:35.440 can find it online in PDF form. It's also collected 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:38.280 in the archaic revival. It is you know, dated. It's 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:42.639 so he was written prior to carbon dating. But he 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:45.359 sums up the new Bold case by saying, quote, the 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:48.240 problem with all of this was no one else could 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:51.679 extract the same plain text using Professor Newbold's method. It 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:54.800 involves so many choices from pools of letters at every 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:57.800 given point along the way that one could demonstrate that 0:20:57.920 --> 0:21:00.399 hundreds of different messages could be extract it from the 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:05.480 same passages. Nubold died a broken man, disgraced, his career shattered. 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:08.800 He had gone too far, and the Vontage manuscript had 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:13.280 claimed its first victim. Now McKenna is not actually arguing 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:16.040 that there's a curse on the document or anything here, 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:18.159 but I think he does get a little magic here 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:25.439 with it. Later on, I mean time Will talks in 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:27.840 this particular paper. He doesn't really tie it into any 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:32.960 of his more um you know, spiritual shamanistic ideas. It's 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:36.280 it's ultimately pretty straightforward, though again a dated piece because 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:40.399 when it was written, um but but but but he 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:42.679 does touch in this on this idea of it claiming 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:45.800 its first victim, on a pattern that one sees to 0:21:45.920 --> 0:21:49.480 this very day in vontage research. It draws so many 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:52.119 people in and certainly, while there are quacks and conspiracy 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:54.280 theory makers in the mix, you also see a lot 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:58.480 of very intelligent, educated, and disciplined people diving into the 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:02.160 text and initially claiming victory, only to realize that they 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:04.520 two have failed to see through its mysteries and and 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:07.960 in some cases are kind of broken on the manuscript. Again. Yeah, 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:09.760 mckenn i also tell I wish I could remember the 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:12.440 name of this, but he tells an anecdote. I don't 0:22:12.440 --> 0:22:14.760 know if this is one of the commonly circulated stories 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:18.040 about the translation attempts, but he tells an anecdote about 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:20.919 this one aging scholar who was in his nineties who 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:25.000 claimed to some colleagues to have cracked the code to 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:27.440 you know, to understand what it says. And then when 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:29.680 somebody was trying to follow up with him about that, 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:31.840