WEBVTT - Palimpsests: Reading History's Blank Pages 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:14.880 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:17.760 My name is Robert lam. Hey, I'm Christian Sager, and 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:19.960 this week i'm Stuff to bow your Mind. We're talking 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:24.320 about ancient text ancient books, ancient tones of knowledge, kind 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:26.600 of uh away, kind of spin off from our earlier 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:29.120 or more episode. Yeah, this is very connected and it 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:31.240 also made me it not only did it make me 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:34.600 think of that, but also like any fiction that surrounds 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:38.479 like occult texts or old ancient texts that have hidden 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:41.960 meetings or secrets hidden away in them, this is for you. Yeah, 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:45.360 because we're talking about lost text We're talking about texts 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:48.920 that have been written over, that have been erased, essentially 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:53.360 the data recovery of of texts dating back centuries or 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:56.959 even thousands of years. Yeah, and it's very specifically. These 0:00:56.960 --> 0:01:00.240 are called palamp sests. And I may pronounce that wrong 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.160 throughout the podcast, but I'm I think that's how you 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:09.920 say it. Yeah. Uh So these are essentially books that 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:13.680 were made with they were made from the hides of 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:17.640 sheep or cattle. Uh And and as such, you could 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.319 scrape off the ink of them and reuse the whole 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:23.600 thing all over again to write a whole new book 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:26.679 on top of it. Yeah. The word itself comes from 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:32.400 from the Greek um palem sessed, meaning scraped or rubbed again. Um, 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:35.440 although the membranes of the palem sessh that we're looking 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:39.000 at here, Uh, we're we're not usually scrubbed additional times. 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.000 But but sometimes it just depends on how much use 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:44.080 it was getting it. A lot of it really comes 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:48.000 down to just the value and the scarcity of of 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:51.400 of parchment. Yeah. Absolutely, there's a whole sort of I guess, 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:55.520 intellectual economy surrounding these things about what is important contextually 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:59.040 at the time, what is not, what what's valued the most? 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:01.040 You know, we'll see what a lot of these examples 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:04.080 that at the time that they were being erased, religion 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:10.520 was more valuable than say math, so math documents were erased. Yeah, 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:12.600 it's it's also helpful to think about it and in 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:16.920 the modern way that we use our various media and 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:19.840 and use it to record what's important to us. Um. 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:23.560 I instantly think about VHS tapes because I use so 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:27.840 much in my my youth, particularly like the imagine. A 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:29.560 lot of people can relate on this. We have those 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:31.840 really old tapes. They you had them for years and 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:35.280 years and you had what you know, six hours extended 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:38.560 play on there. And so the life of one of 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:41.760 those tapes um A lot of it's essentially lost because 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:44.440 you can't retrieve any information from it. But it might 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:47.120 start off by say, oh, there's a movie coming on 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:49.040 on T and T. I want to tape it, So 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:51.600 I'm gonna leave leave it on, I'm gonna start recording. 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.120 So you end up with two hours of some B 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:57.160 movie you want to see, followed by another two hour 0:02:57.240 --> 0:02:59.639 movie that you're not really that interested in, and then 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.680 like late nine infommercials right right, And then you had 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:05.280 to time it exactly right, you know, if you wanted 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:08.360 to record over the second movie so that you could 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:10.840 use the tape to its fullest extent or something like that. 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.640 I remember always trying to like reverse and and time 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:15.639 it just perfectly. You know. It's kind of like making 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.400 a mixtape in a way with these sets. Yeah, I mean, 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:20.560 if you got fancy, you you try and edit out 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:23.560 the commercials right and uh, and then every time you 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:25.359 would have like you would add new media. Because I 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:27.560 particularly remember it's like i'd have a tape that would 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:30.320 start with taping some movie and then I'm taping episodes 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:32.919 of Mystery Science Theater three thousand on there. Then I'm 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:38.000 taping like individual wrestling matches from late nineteen nineties, uh 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:41.640 pro wrestling TV shows, and so the connective tissue between 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:44.760 these things will be this like distorted see of of 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.840 weird fragments, right, Yeah, you get that effect, which I 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:51.600 believe our producer Tyler used a great effect in the 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:56.040 Monster Science series that you guys did if anybody hasn't 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:58.920 seen that, it's a video series that we did here 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:03.120 at How Stuff Works, where Robert explains the science behind 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:06.680 your favorite monsters. But Tyler used a really cool effect 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:10.040 by making it look like that VHS thing where it's 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:12.840 blending just between the two or maybe there's like maybe 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:15.880 there's that one little blip of white static just between 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:19.279 between the two recordings. You know. It also reminds me 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:22.840 of a bit from comedian Camail No Johnny, Yeah, if 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:24.719 you heard this, I have. I'm a I'm a big 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:28.279 fan of Camail's actually and his podcasts The Indoor Kids 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:30.760 and the X Files Files. Yeah, he does that bit 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.159 about how when he when he was a kid, he 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:36.479 used to like take like like like rated G family 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:41.560 movies and record porno reels in the middle of them, right, yeah, 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.720 like like he had a friend who had, you know, 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:49.240 through the sort of the underground connections there and in Pakistan, 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:51.840 had acquired these adult films and then he would take 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:55.560 the scenes safely in the middle of you know, like 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:58.000 the Lion King or something. Yeah, Lion King dress. The 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:01.239 kind of takes that you would innocently have at that age, 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:05.559 but he would use them to store this forbidden data. Yeah. Yeah, 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:08.599 So if anyone hasn't heard that, check out his his 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.600 comedy albums, because he has a whole bit about having 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:13.680 one of those tapes and and then the power going 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:16.279 off and being stuck in the family VCR. Yeah. I 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:19.400 think that album is called Beta Mail. Yeah, I believe 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:22.440 really good stuff, highly recommended. Well I don't. Of course, 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:26.719 podcasts themselves are palimpsests in a way. Right. Every time 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:29.520 you download a new episode of stuff to blow your 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:32.360 mind to your phone or your tablet or whatever, you've 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:34.240 got to make more room on the hard drive, so 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.440 you delete an older episode, whether it's you know, of course, 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:39.719 you're not deleting one of our episodes you're keeping all 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:42.640 the whole archive there. But but you know that I 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:44.760 end up doing that quite a bit where I go, Okay, 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:46.320 which one of these things do I want to keep? 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:48.599 Which one can I get rid of? You know that 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:52.280 I've listened to and I'm satisfied with. Uh. And so 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:53.960 in a way, they sound sort of work like that. 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:55.920 Although I wonder if there's going to be a period 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:57.920 of time, like two hundred three hundred years in the future, 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:00.560 where people are able to take our phones and sort 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:03.320 of like look at the hard drives and peel back 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:06.320 the layers to find these lost podcasts. Yeah, I mean, 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:10.280 data recovery with computers is obviously more complex than than 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:13.599 than VHS. You you have it like a deleted photo 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:16.640 card for a phone, uh, and it seems like you've 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:20.479 lost everything, but that data can sometimes be recovered. Yeah, yeah, 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.599 And and it's it's certainly more difficult than you know. Well, 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:27.679 although this sounds pretty difficult, like pouring acid on cattle skins, 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:30.000 are just scraping it with a knife. And in a 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:33.120 lot of cases, you know, present day cases that we'll 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:35.840 talk about, they're using some pretty high technology like infrared 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:39.120 imaging and things like that let's see the ink under 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:40.800 all the layers. But I like to mention of the 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:44.559 podcast example because because because some of the same energies 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:46.080 are going to be in played when we talk about 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:49.120 why particular texts were lost, why they were written over, 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:51.359 you know, because a lot of it comes down to, 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:53.280 you know, what am I into right now? Maybe I'm 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:56.600 not into Marin's podcast as much right now, So I'm 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:58.880 gonna delete it and then maybe I come back to 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:01.520 it later. Maybe I'm muh, I've already listened to it, 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:04.520 to this episode. I'm not interested in this new you 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:06.520 know ideas episodes, So I'm just gonna go ahead and 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.440 trash that now. Yeah. Yeah, it comes down to a 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:12.720 scarcity of resources, right, So like in in the time 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:15.800 that these were being made, it was a scarcity of 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:20.240 parchment in particular, and uh, and and also paper they 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:23.560 just we're barely using paper at all. And then there 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:27.800 was also the fluctuation of intellectual activity between these scholars. Yeah, 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:30.960 this was really interesting. Um. It's worth noting that palend 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:33.760 tests uh seemed to suggest you not only the scarcity 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:36.760 of paper, but also uh, the hunger for knowledge and 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:40.080 the demand for new texts demand that the even wealthy 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:43.200 centers of learning had difficulty keeping up with. And this 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.280 is backed up by the fact that the number of 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:49.160 palend tests appears to increase in greater ratio during periods 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:52.880 of intense intellectual activity, more so than it does did 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:57.440 during periods of economic decline. So there was more more 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:01.080 erasure and overwriting of texts just because yeah, just when 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:03.920 there was more exciting stuff. So it's kind of like 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:06.320 it's a golden age of podcast there's so many podcasts, 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.240 so we're it's has to do more with the what's 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:11.560 available to us rather than just how much space is 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:13.920 in the future, they're just going to find episodes of 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:16.280 Sereal and then they'll they'll peel them back and they'll 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:18.600 find our episodes underneath them. That's right, just a few 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:22.760 from not only serial exists, that's the only one. All 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:27.760 podcasts will be about investigations into murders. So we can 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:32.640 basically um discuss the reasons for erasure under three categories. 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:36.320 First of all, obsolescence, So a text is erased and 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.079 something else has written on top of it because well, 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:41.840 maybe it's it's legal, or it's liturgical in nature, and 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:44.480 it's just no longer relevant you know, it's like having 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:46.680 an old football game on a VHS tape. You know, 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:48.559 it's like you've already seen that game. It's not current, 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:52.040 wasn't a particularly great game anyway, Why should I keep it? Yeah? 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:55.520 Or it's an older translation. Yeah. In some of these cases, 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:58.480 the scholars that were scraping the palemp sets, you know, 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:03.360 it wasn't just that they thought, okay, this is unimportant. 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:06.199 They also thought, oh, maybe we actually already have copies 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:09.280 of this somewhere else, right, And as we'll learn, those 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:12.040 copies either ended up getting destroyed or lost in their 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:16.120 own way. Yeah. Other times it's an older translation. There's 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:17.880 a better version of that book. Why would you keep 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:20.079 the old one? Uh? The text is in a foreign 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:23.240 or just a lost language. So this text is just 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:26.520 taking up space on the on the bookshelf, in the 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:28.840 in the you know, why should I bother keeping it? 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:31.440 I can put something more valuable in there? Um Or 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:34.240 it's a it's an in familiar script, it's particularly difficult 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:38.280 to read, it's not a usable text, or it's largely 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:42.080 damaged and no longer useful as a tone of knowledge. 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.800 And then also literary texts plays a big role here. 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:49.559 So just as pagan myths often mingle with Christian beliefs, 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:53.760 so do too many pagan classics exist buried beneath Christian texts. 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:56.480 And they're kind of two ways of looking at that, right, 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:59.160 Like one is to say that it's kind of a 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:03.679 war on belief, right, that it's Christianity erasing, like literally 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:07.040 erasing and overriding older systems. Yeah, it's that old with 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:10.880 the adage goes the to the victor's go history or 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:14.240 history is written by the winners, that's it. Yeah, And 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:17.559 in that sense, they sort of won the philosophical war 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:20.040 at the time, so they were able to take the 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:22.599 information as it was and literally rewrite it. Yeah. And 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:24.199 you can kind of see it as you can just 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:25.640 kind of look at it from more of a nasty 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:29.720 perspective versus more just sort of than the nature of 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:31.520 what is popular and what is interesting. It's kind of 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:36.640 almost like gentrification, you know. Yeah, there's a um there, Yeah, 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:39.160 I think there there's something interesting going on, especially when 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:42.000 you consider the things that were being erased in some 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:45.119 of these examples, like the fact that we were erasing 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:51.920 Archimedes mathematical theories, shows what the culture valued at the time. 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:55.800 It's interesting to think, you know too, that we're living 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.920 in an age where a book could disappear, Like we're 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.920 living in a phenomen I'm an all period now where 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:05.880 it's increasingly hard for particularly popular text to vanish from 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:07.400 the face of the here. Yeah, do you think that 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:10.120 could happen now? Like, so, let's say I'm trying to 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:13.280 think of an enormously popular text that we've all read, 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:16.280 fifty Shades of All right, I've not read it, but 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:19.480 let's pretend I have fifty Shades of Gray. How do 0:11:19.559 --> 0:11:22.640 we it gets completely wiped off the face of the planet. 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:25.920 So we've got to destroy all the physical copies, We've 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.839 got to destroy the electronic copies that are out there 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:32.520 now because of the books. And then what else? Well, um, 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:34.760 I instantly turned to Ray Bradberry fare and h fourth 0:11:34.760 --> 0:11:37.079 fifty one. You'd have to go after the individuals who 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.720 have made it there their mission to memorize fifty Shades 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:42.679 of Gray and carry it around. That's actually quite a 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:46.880 few people, Okay, Okay, But then at that point we're 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:49.360 looking at this dystopian future in which no one's ever 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:53.559 heard of fifty Shades of Gray, but they somehow find 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:58.480 an old iPod that has sorry no, an old kindle 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:01.840 and they're able to somehow pull it up off of 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:04.600 the hard drive on that kindle and they find this 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:07.640 lost text. Yeah. Or you know, another way to think 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:09.640 about it too is you may have lost fifty shades 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:12.679 of gray, but you have reviews that refer to it 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:15.640 passages that have appeared from it, so you maybe have 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.400 little bits and pieces of it, but the entire text 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:20.959 itself is missing. That's sort of what's going on with 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:23.600 some of these examples. They knew that these books had 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:26.320 existed previously, but they didn't have copies of them, so 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:29.600 it's sort of like only the Amazon reviews were left online, 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:32.720 but the book itself was not right. You know. I 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:36.840 actually worked on a book kind of like this. Uh. 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:40.360 It was a previous life before I worked here at 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:43.120 How Stuff Works, and I was doing graphic design on 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:46.559 a book for Harvard University about the Iliad, and they 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.000 had found this was not a palace, sessed by the 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:50.800 way that it had not been written over, but it 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:55.640 was a very ancient copy of the Iliad UH called 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:59.480 the venus A And it was I believe in Venice, 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:02.840 Italy that they found it, and in order to make 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:06.440 it readable so that scholars could participate and kind of 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.199 look at it and compare and contrast it to other copies, 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:12.520 they had to scan it with like a like a 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:15.040 three D almost like a three D printer scanner. It 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:18.840 scanned the topography of the pages. Because the book is 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:21.960 so old and delicate, they couldn't move it. Okay, you 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:24.600 can't just throw it on the xerox machine, and yeah, 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:27.079 I mean, you like, moving a page in this book 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:30.120 is like, you know, a big deal because you could 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:33.640 potentially destroy it. It's so brittle. Um. So, just working 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:38.160 on that project and how delicately they treated the text 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:41.760 before they copied it, it really gave me kind of 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:44.400 an impression as I was reading about these examples here 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:50.360 of what these sort of archivist archaeologists almost went through 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:53.839 trying to dig up these old texts, which far more 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:58.600 difficult because they're literally buried under other layers of ink. Yeah, 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:01.680 I mean, with this example you've mentioned, I mean, to 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:04.520 touch the text is to risk destroying it absolutely, and 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:08.560 then to reveal something just beneath the visible text is 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:11.520 to destroy it a little bit. Yeah, exactly, they have 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:14.400 to make a decision like what what is of more 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:19.160 value destroying this ancient text, uh, so that we can 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:22.360 have access to an even older one, or is it 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:26.760 more valuable to hold onto this ancient text and maybe 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:31.120 not know what's underneath it? Now. One of the most 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:36.200 notable early examples of palm test recovery comes to us 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:41.320 from nineteenth century Italian priest and classical literature professor Angelo 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:45.680 my uh. And he made his name rediscovering medieval palms tests. 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:48.160 And he wasn't the first to find one, but he 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:50.880 was the first to really dig for them in earnest 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.720 So around eighteen nineteen, he's he's serving as a Vatican 0:14:55.800 --> 0:15:00.800 librarian and he comes across a copy of Augustine's Psalms. Um, 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:04.560 you know nothing, nothing particularly amazing about this book, but 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:10.280 underneath it, when he starts uh probing a little, um, 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:15.320 he discovers that there is a copy of Cicero's De Republica. 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:17.920 So how did he like, how do how do how 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:19.520 do you see this? But this is the hard part 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:21.680 for me, Like, and I was looking for imagery of 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:25.280 this too, I'm having a hard time imagining the scenario. 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:28.360 So he's looking at the parchment and he can see 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:34.400 like maybe faint traces of ink leftover underneath the newer 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:37.000 layer of ink. Yeah. Basically, I mean these texts are old, 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:39.440 and so they're decaying a little bit. Often are they've 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:43.600 been damaged here and there, and sometimes that damage reveals 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:48.400 the text underneath. Other times, especially with my like, he 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:50.360 knows those texts are out there, he knows those palum 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:53.400 tests are out there, so he's maybe actively scraping a 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:56.360 little bit here and there, trying to just just test 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:59.600 the waters and see if there's something interesting beneath the surface. 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:03.720 And in this case he did. He found a lost text. Uh, 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:08.920 Sister Rose d Republica, a controversial at the time dialogue 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:12.160 on Roman politics. Uh. And this is a this is 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:17.920 fourth century Roman Empire stuff. So all right, maybe this 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:20.880 is a good analogy for how this works, sort of 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.480 something that we can all picture. It's sort of like 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.200 if you take a notepad and somebody's written on the 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:30.520 first layer of paper on the notepad and then they 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:33.000 ripped that off, and then you take a pencil to 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:35.600 the next layer underneath, and you shade it in so 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:38.040 you can see the impression left behind by what was 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:40.600 written on top of it. This is like a reverse version. 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:45.680 You're of course, referring to the famous Jackie Treehorn. Exactly 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:47.720 what I was thinking of in my head was the 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:51.840 big Lebowski palam sesst Yes, so that's similar here. Instead 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:56.000 of finding, you know, a pornographic doodle, Yeah, he finds 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:59.400 a pivotal text stuff from the details, the rise of 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:01.800 Julius c. Easier, the eventual fall of the Roman Republic, 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:04.840 the emergence of the Roman Empire. Um. And this is 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:08.800 a book that the scholars knew had once existed because 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:11.840 it's referenced in other works, you know, as zim Burrow 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:15.320 echo points out, books speak of books as if they 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:18.399 spoke among themselves. Um. But anyway, it ends up getting 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:21.200 lost centuries later, and we have only fragments, and even 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:25.080 today only fragments of book four and five in the 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:28.800 Republic are available to us. I get. I couldn't find 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.480 any clear argument as to why this book was lost, 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:34.400 so maybe someone can fill us in on that. But um, 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:36.720 as discussed earlier, we can chalk this up to to 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:42.080 various reasons, to taste, to to the scarcity of materials, 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:46.359 ETCETERA possible political controversy too, Yeah, yeah, especially earlier it 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:49.840 was intentionally destroyed. Yeah, maybe so, yeah, especially given it's 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:53.040 it's an initial controversial nature. I wonder what umberto Echo 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:58.680 thinks about Amazon reviews. They're like importance in the philosophical 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:02.160 history of human nature. I don't know, Sam, have him 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:04.720 on the show and asking that that would be fabulous. 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:07.120 It's the kind of thing that he would, he would. 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:10.720 I'm sure he actually has opinions. Yeah, I'm being facetious, 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:12.760 of course, but I'm sure he actually has deep thoughts 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:14.960 about because that's a glorious thing about eco. It's like 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:19.520 he's interested in everything from medieval poverty heresies to hum 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:24.199 superhero superheroes adults. I mean, yeah, how to travel with 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:29.040 the salmon, it's, etcetera. Okay, So the next really important 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:34.360 example of a palum test is the modern restoration of Archimedes. 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:37.480 And I mentioned this earlier, but it was lost text. Uh. 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:41.080 You know, Archimedes is one of the most celebrated mathematicians 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:43.120 of his time. But also you know, we all learn 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:46.000 about him when we're in school, at least I guess 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:49.119 we're supposed to. Uh. And you know, he invented everything 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:52.200 from the screw to catapults and other weapons. I saw 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:53.800 that you put a note here that he invented a 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:56.320 death ray. Yeah, it's it's been a while since I've 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:58.800 done any material and that I think we referenced it 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:00.840 in a podcast a while back. But their the their 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:04.400 arguments that he may have devised a quote unquote death ray, 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:09.200 may have just imagining this like this, like like arcane 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:13.040 system of mirrors, like generating a laser beam off of 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:15.480 the sun's heat or something like. Yeah, like I think 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:20.560 it was essentially a means of blinding or more messing 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:23.919 with ships that were well. And then of course he 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:27.520 also estimated the value of pie, which is fairly important. 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:31.000 It's far more important than theoretical death rays. Well yeah, yeah, 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:35.160 you could argue that. Um. So you know he's got 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:37.080 let's let's list a couple of his books here, just 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:40.280 you know, it's possible that people out there have read 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:42.800 them and just don't particularly recognize our comedy's name. But 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:46.000 he's got on the method of mechanical theorems on floating 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:48.439 bodies and the measurement of the circle. That's probably the 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:51.919 pie one on the sphere, and the cylinder on spiral lines. 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:55.280 They all there's a theme here on the on the 0:19:55.320 --> 0:20:01.000 equilibrium of planes. That's the other one so important guy. Right. However, 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:05.879 there were only throughout the dark ages of medieval history 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:11.240 three surviving works by our comedian. Uh. And one of 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:15.080 these three d was lost when Constantinople was sacked in 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:18.600 twelve oh four. And this particular palmp test was made 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.080 out of goat skin. So what ends up going on? 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:25.159 This is the book that has the method of mechanical theorems, 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:27.919 the first one I mentioned, So it's got. It describes 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:30.520 how the law of levers works. It describes how to 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:34.680 calculate a body's center of gravity. Uh. There's fourteen pages 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:37.919 in it that are rare commentaries by him on the 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:41.080 logic of categorization. Now, so this stuff, you know, maybe 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:42.960 just kind of sounds like I'm breezing through a list 0:20:43.040 --> 0:20:45.159 of bullet points here, but this is important stuff in 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:49.760 the history of mathematics. Um. There's ten pages recording two 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:54.800 unknown speeches by a guy named hyper perridities Hyperides, who 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:58.280 is an order from fourth century BC. And two things 0:20:58.359 --> 0:20:59.680 that we're in this book that I thought that were 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:04.320 particularly unusual. Apparently he had a unique way of describing 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:09.480 infinity that mathematicians or his historians had not seen before 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:11.760 in a text like this. So that was an important 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:13.960 aspect of this. The other one was that there was 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:16.359 a like a math puzzle that he made in there 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:19.720 that was called still Mansion. And I had not heard 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:22.359 of this before, but like our comedies, was having some 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:24.639 fun math games, you know. It was like his version 0:21:24.680 --> 0:21:27.800 of candy crush, and he had it in this in 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:31.920 this palam test. Unfortunately, all that stuff got scraped off. 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:36.800 What happened was Constantinople gets sacked. The book makes its 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:39.719 way to Bethele him. Nobody knows how, but a Greek 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:42.720 priest there scraped and washed the pages so they could 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:47.239 apply liturgical text to it instead. Right, so it just 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:51.440 is gone for centuries. People don't even know that it exists. Yeah, 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:53.560