1
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:04,960
Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I

2
00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:14,040
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to

3
00:00:14,080 --> 00:00:16,520
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

4
00:00:16,560 --> 00:00:20,720
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today we have a conundrum to consider

5
00:00:21,320 --> 00:00:26,680
Speaker 1: a book that cannot be read by anyone. So it's

6
00:00:26,720 --> 00:00:28,760
Speaker 1: kind of a riddle in the dark, isn't it like

7
00:00:28,840 --> 00:00:32,960
Speaker 1: something that Gollum might ask of of Bilbo, or Bilbo

8
00:00:33,159 --> 00:00:36,760
Speaker 1: might cunningly ask of Gollum. Right, it's like I walk,

9
00:00:36,880 --> 00:00:39,120
Speaker 1: but I have no feed. I stand, but I have

10
00:00:39,240 --> 00:00:42,959
Speaker 1: no legs. So it but but, but it is an

11
00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:46,320
Speaker 1: intriguing kind of riddle. Why can't the book in question

12
00:00:46,440 --> 00:00:49,320
Speaker 1: be read? So we instantly can think to some of

13
00:00:49,400 --> 00:00:52,320
Speaker 1: like the tricks of riddles. Right, Well, perhaps the book

14
00:00:52,360 --> 00:00:56,400
Speaker 1: does not exist. You cannot read a non existent fictional

15
00:00:56,520 --> 00:01:00,120
Speaker 1: book such as your hey, Luis Borges, the Book of

16
00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:03,800
Speaker 1: sand or a thorough Perez rovertas the Book of Nine

17
00:01:03,800 --> 00:01:06,399
Speaker 1: Doors to the Kingdom of Shadows. These are books that

18
00:01:06,440 --> 00:01:09,959
Speaker 1: exist within stories or within other works that have no

19
00:01:10,120 --> 00:01:14,080
Speaker 1: reality in our world. Likewise, you cannot read a book

20
00:01:14,120 --> 00:01:16,760
Speaker 1: that no longer exists. You know, a book that has

21
00:01:16,800 --> 00:01:19,839
Speaker 1: become lost, such as you know, the various destroyed Maya

22
00:01:19,920 --> 00:01:24,120
Speaker 1: Codices or aristotle Second Book of Poetics, which, of course

23
00:01:24,120 --> 00:01:26,400
Speaker 1: the major plot point in burto Echo is the Name

24
00:01:26,400 --> 00:01:30,600
Speaker 1: of the Rose. But no, the book that we're talking

25
00:01:30,640 --> 00:01:35,480
Speaker 1: about here, it is real and it definitely exists. So

26
00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:37,960
Speaker 1: that might lead you to the next like level of

27
00:01:37,959 --> 00:01:41,160
Speaker 1: of contemplation here. Okay, Well, perhaps this book cannot be

28
00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:44,760
Speaker 1: read because it is forbidden. You know, some powerful librarian

29
00:01:44,840 --> 00:01:47,840
Speaker 1: or clerk keeps it hidden, perhaps alongside the Ark of

30
00:01:47,840 --> 00:01:50,520
Speaker 1: the Covenant or something. Right, Okay, so like that same

31
00:01:50,600 --> 00:01:53,640
Speaker 1: Aristotle text, but in the Name of the Rose, right, yeah,

32
00:01:53,640 --> 00:01:56,240
Speaker 1: where where somebody just preventing you from viewing it and

33
00:01:56,280 --> 00:01:59,120
Speaker 1: reading it. No, that's not the case with this book,

34
00:01:59,120 --> 00:02:01,160
Speaker 1: because plenty of p wooll have attempted to read it

35
00:02:01,400 --> 00:02:05,200
Speaker 1: and still attempt to. Any serious scholar, can you know,

36
00:02:05,360 --> 00:02:08,160
Speaker 1: they can actually travel to its physical location and and

37
00:02:08,200 --> 00:02:12,000
Speaker 1: go through the you know, the necessary of paperwork one presumes,

38
00:02:12,040 --> 00:02:15,639
Speaker 1: can examine it physically, and you, you, the listener, can

39
00:02:15,720 --> 00:02:18,120
Speaker 1: even attempt to read it on the internet, or you

40
00:02:18,120 --> 00:02:21,480
Speaker 1: can you can acquire a printed fac simile, many of

41
00:02:21,560 --> 00:02:24,360
Speaker 1: which are very nice to understand. Okay, I got one. Well,

42
00:02:24,400 --> 00:02:26,360
Speaker 1: there are a lot of texts from the ancient world

43
00:02:26,360 --> 00:02:31,079
Speaker 1: that only exist in some incredibly degraded format. Right. So

44
00:02:31,160 --> 00:02:34,400
Speaker 1: there we have evidence that a book existed, but you

45
00:02:34,400 --> 00:02:36,640
Speaker 1: you can't make out what's on the page anymore. Maybe

46
00:02:36,639 --> 00:02:39,680
Speaker 1: there's only a scrap of it left, right, it's been destroyed,

47
00:02:39,880 --> 00:02:41,920
Speaker 1: or it's been or perhaps you know, it's been scraped

48
00:02:41,919 --> 00:02:43,960
Speaker 1: away and other things have been printed on top of it.

49
00:02:44,280 --> 00:02:46,320
Speaker 1: But nope, that's not the case with this book. It's

50
00:02:46,360 --> 00:02:50,000
Speaker 1: it's actually quite well preserved for a centuries old manuscript. Okay,

51
00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:52,400
Speaker 1: here's one. Maybe you can't read it because it's not

52
00:02:52,480 --> 00:02:55,520
Speaker 1: made of language. Ah, that's that's a that's a clever,

53
00:02:56,400 --> 00:02:59,920
Speaker 1: clever guest picture book or something. Yeah, But at the

54
00:03:00,120 --> 00:03:04,080
Speaker 1: book actually contains quite a bit of text, okay, And

55
00:03:04,120 --> 00:03:07,639
Speaker 1: so that that leads us to the next level of

56
00:03:07,639 --> 00:03:10,320
Speaker 1: a contemplation here. Okay, then the text must be in

57
00:03:10,320 --> 00:03:14,880
Speaker 1: a language that is forgotten, or a nonsensical representation of language,

58
00:03:14,960 --> 00:03:18,000
Speaker 1: or perhaps what appears to be language is actually a

59
00:03:18,040 --> 00:03:20,600
Speaker 1: code for something else. Okay. So there is a book.

60
00:03:20,680 --> 00:03:23,000
Speaker 1: You can look at it, there is text in it,

61
00:03:23,240 --> 00:03:26,519
Speaker 1: but for some reason you can't make sense of the text. Right,

62
00:03:27,040 --> 00:03:29,280
Speaker 1: And in this we are getting to like the heart

63
00:03:29,400 --> 00:03:32,280
Speaker 1: of many of the discussions surrounding the book we're going

64
00:03:32,360 --> 00:03:35,840
Speaker 1: to be discussing today. This book is written in a

65
00:03:35,920 --> 00:03:39,880
Speaker 1: language or code or some other manner of textual form

66
00:03:40,240 --> 00:03:42,920
Speaker 1: that no one at least no one living or no

67
00:03:42,960 --> 00:03:45,360
Speaker 1: one that has lived in the in the previous centuries,

68
00:03:45,680 --> 00:03:48,760
Speaker 1: is capable of understanding. In fact, while various people have

69
00:03:48,840 --> 00:03:51,480
Speaker 1: claimed to have cracked it, or translated it, or figured

70
00:03:51,480 --> 00:03:54,320
Speaker 1: out some or all of its secrets, we can state

71
00:03:54,400 --> 00:03:57,720
Speaker 1: with a fair amount of certainty as of this recording,

72
00:03:57,760 --> 00:04:01,440
Speaker 1: and probably of you know, for you know, the duration,

73
00:04:01,520 --> 00:04:04,800
Speaker 1: for the shelf life of this episode, no one has

74
00:04:04,840 --> 00:04:06,960
Speaker 1: been able to read this book at least not for

75
00:04:07,080 --> 00:04:09,640
Speaker 1: many many centuries at least as far as we know.

76
00:04:09,760 --> 00:04:12,160
Speaker 1: And unless one of these people on like YouTube or

77
00:04:12,240 --> 00:04:14,920
Speaker 1: read it is onto something and nobody has really uh

78
00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:18,120
Speaker 1: nobody's given them credit yet. Yeah, where somebody has figured

79
00:04:18,120 --> 00:04:20,239
Speaker 1: it out but decided not to share it with anyone,

80
00:04:20,760 --> 00:04:22,880
Speaker 1: which is generally not the case. Generally, there are plenty

81
00:04:22,880 --> 00:04:26,080
Speaker 1: of people even today that are claiming to have some

82
00:04:26,240 --> 00:04:28,520
Speaker 1: theory as to h you know, that they have some

83
00:04:28,600 --> 00:04:31,160
Speaker 1: angles some in that's going to allow them to uh,

84
00:04:31,200 --> 00:04:34,440
Speaker 1: you know, to crack this nut. So what we're talking

85
00:04:34,520 --> 00:04:38,479
Speaker 1: about today is a real manuscript that exists in the world.

86
00:04:38,680 --> 00:04:40,880
Speaker 1: Some of you may well have heard of it. It's actually,

87
00:04:40,960 --> 00:04:43,480
Speaker 1: I think if you go back, it's something that listeners

88
00:04:43,480 --> 00:04:45,440
Speaker 1: have requested us to cover in the past. I don't

89
00:04:45,440 --> 00:04:48,160
Speaker 1: know if we've got to request recently, but in the

90
00:04:48,240 --> 00:04:49,719
Speaker 1: years I've been on the show, I know people have

91
00:04:49,760 --> 00:04:51,920
Speaker 1: written to us asking like, hey, what's your take on it?

92
00:04:52,240 --> 00:04:56,040
Speaker 1: And it is a manuscript known as the Voytage Manuscript

93
00:04:56,120 --> 00:04:58,320
Speaker 1: or the I've also heard it pronounced Vonage, but I

94
00:04:58,320 --> 00:05:02,720
Speaker 1: think we'll say Voytage v O y n I c H.

95
00:05:02,760 --> 00:05:05,719
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's just describe it to everyone. For starters,

96
00:05:05,839 --> 00:05:08,720
Speaker 1: we should just drive home that again, you can look

97
00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:10,600
Speaker 1: up a copy of this, it's what it's a bit

98
00:05:10,680 --> 00:05:13,840
Speaker 1: readily available on what our archive dot organ exactly, and

99
00:05:13,920 --> 00:05:16,080
Speaker 1: not only you can you should Well we'll talk more

100
00:05:16,080 --> 00:05:18,960
Speaker 1: about the contents of it in a minute, but maybe

101
00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:23,000
Speaker 1: we should start with just the base physical reality of

102
00:05:23,120 --> 00:05:26,320
Speaker 1: what this codex is. It's in the form of a codex, right,

103
00:05:26,320 --> 00:05:28,560
Speaker 1: so it's not a scroll. It's like a you know,

104
00:05:28,880 --> 00:05:32,560
Speaker 1: a folding book with pages that you can leave through. Yeah,

105
00:05:32,640 --> 00:05:37,120
Speaker 1: it's a roughly seven by ten inches, not a huge tone, right,

106
00:05:37,279 --> 00:05:39,240
Speaker 1: not huge. So a lot of these older books you

107
00:05:39,240 --> 00:05:41,440
Speaker 1: think of as being this big thing that you put

108
00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:44,520
Speaker 1: up on a lectern and you open the giant uh

109
00:05:44,680 --> 00:05:46,960
Speaker 1: cover of it that may be made of wood or whatever,

110
00:05:47,279 --> 00:05:50,240
Speaker 1: and you leave through the huge pages with their illuminations.

111
00:05:50,279 --> 00:05:52,440
Speaker 1: But no, this is a little thing, maybe to be

112
00:05:52,520 --> 00:05:57,160
Speaker 1: cradled in a wizard's knobby fingers. Uh. The precise dimensions

113
00:05:57,200 --> 00:05:59,760
Speaker 1: I was reading are it's like twenty three point five

114
00:06:00,080 --> 00:06:03,560
Speaker 1: meters by sixteen point two centimeters and about five centimeters thick.

115
00:06:03,839 --> 00:06:06,600
Speaker 1: So it's a little yeah, and that's what What was

116
00:06:06,600 --> 00:06:08,839
Speaker 1: the page count some of some of the neighborhood of

117
00:06:08,880 --> 00:06:12,520
Speaker 1: two forty seventy Yeah, it's so the number of pages

118
00:06:12,560 --> 00:06:15,200
Speaker 1: existing today. I've seen a couple of different counts of

119
00:06:15,279 --> 00:06:17,720
Speaker 1: two forty or two forty six pages. I think that

120
00:06:17,839 --> 00:06:20,800
Speaker 1: might be depending on what types of leafs you're counting

121
00:06:20,800 --> 00:06:24,640
Speaker 1: on the edges. But it's believed that some original pages

122
00:06:24,680 --> 00:06:27,960
Speaker 1: of this manuscript are lost. It may originally have had

123
00:06:28,240 --> 00:06:31,279
Speaker 1: around two hundred and seventy pages or so, but we

124
00:06:31,320 --> 00:06:34,320
Speaker 1: don't know for sure. And these pages are made of

125
00:06:34,440 --> 00:06:39,480
Speaker 1: parchment specifically of vellum, which was a common medieval writing material.

126
00:06:39,560 --> 00:06:42,680
Speaker 1: Parchment means a prepared version of an animal skin that

127
00:06:42,760 --> 00:06:46,280
Speaker 1: was used for writing vellums. Specifically, I think it's calf skin,

128
00:06:46,360 --> 00:06:50,120
Speaker 1: so these are calf skin pages with ink writing on them.

129
00:06:50,160 --> 00:06:52,400
Speaker 1: Also about the pages in this book, we should note

130
00:06:52,440 --> 00:06:55,799
Speaker 1: that in the format we have it today, some pages

131
00:06:55,960 --> 00:06:58,920
Speaker 1: appear to be out of order. So I think at

132
00:06:58,960 --> 00:07:03,560
Speaker 1: some point this manuscript was not fully bound. It's bound now,

133
00:07:03,600 --> 00:07:05,760
Speaker 1: but I think it has been through different binding over

134
00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:08,400
Speaker 1: the ages, and at some point it looks like some

135
00:07:08,480 --> 00:07:10,920
Speaker 1: pages got shuffled out of order, and the version we

136
00:07:10,960 --> 00:07:13,520
Speaker 1: have it now has pages that look like they're from

137
00:07:13,560 --> 00:07:16,720
Speaker 1: the wrong section in which they're currently placed. So that's

138
00:07:16,760 --> 00:07:19,680
Speaker 1: just just how it is as we have it. It's

139
00:07:19,720 --> 00:07:23,240
Speaker 1: probably due to some owner throughout the centuries making an

140
00:07:23,360 --> 00:07:26,200
Speaker 1: error and rearranging them when the pages became loose. The

141
00:07:26,240 --> 00:07:29,880
Speaker 1: text in the book is closely written and freerunning alphabetic script.

142
00:07:30,560 --> 00:07:33,280
Speaker 1: The number of letters, Uh, one source I was looking

143
00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:35,120
Speaker 1: at said nineteen to twenty eight letters. I don't know

144
00:07:35,120 --> 00:07:36,960
Speaker 1: if you found a different figure. Yeah, I've seen several

145
00:07:37,000 --> 00:07:40,760
Speaker 1: different estimates of like fifteen to twenty five or estimates

146
00:07:40,760 --> 00:07:44,160
Speaker 1: of thirty letters. I think it's difficult because there are

147
00:07:44,280 --> 00:07:47,520
Speaker 1: some symbols in there which could be copies of the

148
00:07:47,560 --> 00:07:51,800
Speaker 1: same letter you've already seen, or could be slightly different letters. Uh,

149
00:07:51,960 --> 00:07:53,640
Speaker 1: And it's hard to tell if you're not working with

150
00:07:53,680 --> 00:07:56,320
Speaker 1: a known alphabet, right, And that's part of it is

151
00:07:56,360 --> 00:07:58,640
Speaker 1: that like these for the most part, don't seem to

152
00:07:58,640 --> 00:08:02,560
Speaker 1: have real counterparts and European letter systems. Um. You know,

153
00:08:02,600 --> 00:08:05,680
Speaker 1: at first glance, it looks like like just standard texts

154
00:08:05,760 --> 00:08:09,440
Speaker 1: that should relate to some European language. But upon closer

155
00:08:09,480 --> 00:08:12,680
Speaker 1: inspection and things become more difficult. The letters have a

156
00:08:12,680 --> 00:08:16,440
Speaker 1: lot of fascinating loops and yeah, like they're they're full

157
00:08:16,440 --> 00:08:20,840
Speaker 1: of these uh, these knots and lassos. And then the illustrations,

158
00:08:20,840 --> 00:08:22,760
Speaker 1: of course, which have already alluded to, they has all

159
00:08:22,800 --> 00:08:25,680
Speaker 1: these these strange line drawings that have been colored in

160
00:08:25,800 --> 00:08:29,840
Speaker 1: with watercolors, and they consist of you know, plants, possible

161
00:08:29,920 --> 00:08:37,360
Speaker 1: astrological drawings, weird illustrations of naked women, uh seeming debay

162
00:08:37,520 --> 00:08:41,360
Speaker 1: their shower and what might be giant plants or other things. Well,

163
00:08:41,400 --> 00:08:45,040
Speaker 1: we'll get more into what the illustrations represent later on. Um.

164
00:08:45,120 --> 00:08:48,080
Speaker 1: Now it was it's written in ink. I think it

165
00:08:48,120 --> 00:08:51,560
Speaker 1: has watercolors in it. Yeah, the watercolors definitely to color

166
00:08:51,600 --> 00:08:54,480
Speaker 1: the illustrations. But then the ink itself I read was

167
00:08:54,520 --> 00:08:56,520
Speaker 1: a brown ink, and it seems to have been like

168
00:08:56,520 --> 00:08:59,680
Speaker 1: an inexpensive inc of the time. So nothing particularly notable. Okay,

169
00:08:59,760 --> 00:09:03,559
Speaker 1: now we've already mentioned that it is not a readable document.

170
00:09:03,720 --> 00:09:06,400
Speaker 1: It is in a language. If it is a language,

171
00:09:06,440 --> 00:09:12,440
Speaker 1: the language is unknown. Yes, sometimes called voia cheese, which

172
00:09:12,480 --> 00:09:15,240
Speaker 1: is just a modern appellation because we don't know what

173
00:09:15,280 --> 00:09:17,839
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, and uh, it's something like a hundred

174
00:09:17,840 --> 00:09:20,480
Speaker 1: and seventy thousand characters in the book. Some you know,

175
00:09:20,559 --> 00:09:22,880
Speaker 1: we already talked about the number of alphabetic characters, maybe

176
00:09:22,920 --> 00:09:26,520
Speaker 1: somewhere in the range of thirty uh, depending on what

177
00:09:26,559 --> 00:09:29,559
Speaker 1: you define as being a distinct alphabetic character. And then

178
00:09:29,720 --> 00:09:33,079
Speaker 1: roughly what thirty five thousand strings of characters of varying length,

179
00:09:33,320 --> 00:09:36,920
Speaker 1: which can be interpreted as words. These are usually thought

180
00:09:36,920 --> 00:09:39,960
Speaker 1: of as words, whether by the you know, cryptographers who

181
00:09:40,040 --> 00:09:43,320
Speaker 1: look at this, there are something like thirty five thousand

182
00:09:43,400 --> 00:09:45,880
Speaker 1: or like thirty seven thousand words, and they might not

183
00:09:46,080 --> 00:09:49,079
Speaker 1: correlate to real words. Now where you will where will

184
00:09:49,080 --> 00:09:51,360
Speaker 1: you find this book? Now? Well, you'll find it in

185
00:09:51,400 --> 00:09:54,880
Speaker 1: the United States. Yes, we'll get into the history of

186
00:09:54,920 --> 00:09:56,880
Speaker 1: the book that brought it to the United States, but

187
00:09:56,960 --> 00:10:00,199
Speaker 1: it is currently housed at the banecky Rare Book Whom

188
00:10:00,320 --> 00:10:03,280
Speaker 1: at Yale, New Haven, Connecticut. Yeah, so it's in a

189
00:10:03,360 --> 00:10:06,400
Speaker 1: library at Yale and it is open to being looked

190
00:10:06,400 --> 00:10:09,000
Speaker 1: at by scholars. I remember I read a couple of

191
00:10:09,000 --> 00:10:12,040
Speaker 1: sources talking about how later in his life Umberto Echo

192
00:10:12,320 --> 00:10:15,040
Speaker 1: went to view it personally. Yeah, he was visiting the library.

193
00:10:15,040 --> 00:10:16,920
Speaker 1: It's the only book in the library that he asked

194
00:10:16,920 --> 00:10:19,480
Speaker 1: to view, and you can find it the photos of

195
00:10:19,559 --> 00:10:23,559
Speaker 1: him Burto Echo reading or well looking at the book.

196
00:10:23,760 --> 00:10:26,000
Speaker 1: And of course it's a perfect thing for Umberto Echo

197
00:10:26,040 --> 00:10:28,040
Speaker 1: to show interest in. If you've read The Name of

198
00:10:28,040 --> 00:10:31,600
Speaker 1: the Rose, you know his love for mysterious manuscripts of

199
00:10:31,720 --> 00:10:35,120
Speaker 1: unknown medieval origin. And that gets to one of the

200
00:10:35,160 --> 00:10:38,319
Speaker 1: real mysteries of this text. This text is one of

201
00:10:38,360 --> 00:10:41,600
Speaker 1: the great standing mysteries of I don't know, I guess,

202
00:10:41,920 --> 00:10:48,000
Speaker 1: of medievalism, of of linguistics, of cryptography. It's just this

203
00:10:48,120 --> 00:10:51,440
Speaker 1: wonderful enigma that's still out there. And part of the

204
00:10:51,600 --> 00:10:54,920
Speaker 1: enigma is we don't know its actual origin. We we

205
00:10:55,040 --> 00:10:57,640
Speaker 1: pick up with it in history at a certain point

206
00:10:58,080 --> 00:11:00,640
Speaker 1: where we we know we're at first a i'ved and

207
00:11:00,840 --> 00:11:03,679
Speaker 1: was recorded, but we don't know who made it, or

208
00:11:03,720 --> 00:11:06,800
Speaker 1: how why they made it, or how they made it. Right. Yeah,

209
00:11:07,040 --> 00:11:09,640
Speaker 1: for the longest there was also no carbon dating of

210
00:11:09,679 --> 00:11:13,520
Speaker 1: the book, so estimates used to range. You know, usually

211
00:11:13,559 --> 00:11:16,480
Speaker 1: people were saying fifteenth century, so uh, some were saying

212
00:11:16,520 --> 00:11:18,960
Speaker 1: thirteenth century. And I think there's a reason for that

213
00:11:19,040 --> 00:11:22,680
Speaker 1: because it was originally attributed to the English monk and

214
00:11:22,760 --> 00:11:26,360
Speaker 1: philosopher Roger Bacon, you know, of course, considered by many

215
00:11:26,400 --> 00:11:28,959
Speaker 1: to be one of the fathers of modern science. And

216
00:11:29,040 --> 00:11:31,920
Speaker 1: since Roger Bacon lived in the thirteenth century, if he

217
00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:34,120
Speaker 1: had written it, this would place its origin in the

218
00:11:34,120 --> 00:11:37,320
Speaker 1: thirteenth century. But I don't think any modern scholars actually

219
00:11:37,360 --> 00:11:40,600
Speaker 1: believe Roger Bacon wrote it, and later radio carbon dating

220
00:11:40,640 --> 00:11:42,719
Speaker 1: would prove that right. And we'll get back to the

221
00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:46,520
Speaker 1: Roger Bacon connection in a bit. But yeah, in two

222
00:11:46,520 --> 00:11:49,240
Speaker 1: thousand nine, the vellum that it's printed on was carbon

223
00:11:49,280 --> 00:11:51,560
Speaker 1: dated to the University of Arizona, and it was carbon

224
00:11:51,640 --> 00:11:54,640
Speaker 1: dated to the early fifteenth century, so fourteen o four

225
00:11:54,800 --> 00:11:59,160
Speaker 1: to fourteen thirty eight roughly, and So one note on

226
00:11:59,200 --> 00:12:02,480
Speaker 1: how carbon date works, of course, is that carbon dating

227
00:12:02,600 --> 00:12:05,720
Speaker 1: is used to date things that were at some point

228
00:12:05,760 --> 00:12:09,880
Speaker 1: alive or at some point had carbon from carbon dioxide

229
00:12:09,880 --> 00:12:13,960
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere fixed into them. Because a certain because

230
00:12:13,960 --> 00:12:17,280
Speaker 1: a certain known proportion of this carbon is radioactive, it

231
00:12:17,360 --> 00:12:20,600
Speaker 1: decays at a known rate. So therefore you can tell

232
00:12:20,720 --> 00:12:23,320
Speaker 1: basically if it comes from a thing that was once alive,

233
00:12:23,640 --> 00:12:26,600
Speaker 1: when did the thing that it was made out of die? Right,

234
00:12:26,640 --> 00:12:30,520
Speaker 1: when did it stop incorporating new gas from the atmosphere

235
00:12:30,559 --> 00:12:33,640
Speaker 1: into itself. So you could say that it could have

236
00:12:33,679 --> 00:12:37,319
Speaker 1: been no earlier than this time that the document was produced,

237
00:12:37,360 --> 00:12:40,920
Speaker 1: but it could possibly have been later that the document

238
00:12:40,960 --> 00:12:43,760
Speaker 1: was produced, just as long as the vellum was actually

239
00:12:43,800 --> 00:12:45,920
Speaker 1: this old. Yeah, it kind of depends on how long

240
00:12:45,960 --> 00:12:48,120
Speaker 1: the vellum was sitting on the shelf. Right. Also, it's

241
00:12:48,160 --> 00:12:50,320
Speaker 1: bound in goat skin, though it also seems to have

242
00:12:50,440 --> 00:12:53,320
Speaker 1: once had a wooden cover based on some of the

243
00:12:53,360 --> 00:12:56,240
Speaker 1: details in the manuscript. Yeah, I think it's a different

244
00:12:56,280 --> 00:12:59,360
Speaker 1: binding over the centuries. Now. There used to be some

245
00:12:59,400 --> 00:13:03,480
Speaker 1: theories this was a modern forgery, maybe by the very

246
00:13:03,520 --> 00:13:06,480
Speaker 1: book collector it's now named after, who will discuss later on.

247
00:13:06,880 --> 00:13:10,200
Speaker 1: But that really seems unlikely now, given that it has

248
00:13:10,280 --> 00:13:13,760
Speaker 1: been carbon dated to the fifteenth century. Right now, in

249
00:13:13,880 --> 00:13:17,280
Speaker 1: terms of the author, well, that's part of the unknown origins.

250
00:13:17,440 --> 00:13:21,600
Speaker 1: Nobody signed it. Yeah, handwriting analysis has suggested as few

251
00:13:21,640 --> 00:13:24,280
Speaker 1: as two or many or as many as eight writers,

252
00:13:24,520 --> 00:13:26,880
Speaker 1: which of course I wouldn't really be that uncommon for

253
00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:29,559
Speaker 1: a you know, a book of this time period. Okay,

254
00:13:29,559 --> 00:13:32,360
Speaker 1: but at least the illustrations are signed. Right now, nobody

255
00:13:32,360 --> 00:13:36,040
Speaker 1: knows who made the illustrations. Uh, you know, the origin

256
00:13:36,160 --> 00:13:40,120
Speaker 1: is ultimately unknown. And when it comes to you know, copies, this,

257
00:13:40,120 --> 00:13:42,719
Speaker 1: this is it. This is the one copy of the

258
00:13:42,800 --> 00:13:47,079
Speaker 1: Voyage Manuscript. Now we mentioned, of course that Voytage that

259
00:13:47,160 --> 00:13:49,400
Speaker 1: what we call it now is the Voyage Manuscript, and

260
00:13:49,440 --> 00:13:52,560
Speaker 1: that name comes from a modern person, not from you know,

261
00:13:52,600 --> 00:13:56,040
Speaker 1: a medieval person. So what this book was originally called

262
00:13:56,280 --> 00:13:59,319
Speaker 1: was well, we don't know, unknown, Yeah, I mean, it's

263
00:13:59,360 --> 00:14:02,240
Speaker 1: had various sort of catalog numbers along the way, but

264
00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:05,440
Speaker 1: he knows what will come back to. Voytage refers to

265
00:14:05,760 --> 00:14:09,960
Speaker 1: Wilfred Michael Vonage. Uh, and it dates back to nineteen twelve.

266
00:14:10,080 --> 00:14:12,839
Speaker 1: So given the history of the book, uh cause it's

267
00:14:12,920 --> 00:14:16,560
Speaker 1: it's it's current name is relatively recent. I think maybe

268
00:14:16,559 --> 00:14:18,160
Speaker 1: we should take a quick break and when we come

269
00:14:18,200 --> 00:14:21,400
Speaker 1: back we can discuss more of the mystery of this

270
00:14:21,480 --> 00:14:27,080
Speaker 1: fascinating text. Alright, we're back. So we're talking today about

271
00:14:27,120 --> 00:14:31,560
Speaker 1: the Voyage Manuscript, a classic enigmatic text to believe now

272
00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:34,400
Speaker 1: to be from the fifteenth century or so due to

273
00:14:34,480 --> 00:14:37,520
Speaker 1: carbon dating. But we don't know who wrote it. We

274
00:14:37,600 --> 00:14:39,600
Speaker 1: don't know where it came from. We just know it's

275
00:14:39,640 --> 00:14:42,360
Speaker 1: sort of shows up at one point in history and

276
00:14:42,400 --> 00:14:45,440
Speaker 1: then trades hands for a while until it resurfaced around

277
00:14:45,560 --> 00:14:49,240
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve. Now, if you have never browsed through this book,

278
00:14:49,440 --> 00:14:52,080
Speaker 1: do yourself a favor and just pause the episode and

279
00:14:52,120 --> 00:14:55,400
Speaker 1: go do that. Now, a scan of it is of course,

280
00:14:55,680 --> 00:14:57,520
Speaker 1: you know, obviously not if you're driving or whatever. But

281
00:14:58,400 --> 00:15:02,680
Speaker 1: then just get the audio pot. Oh would that'd be great?

282
00:15:02,720 --> 00:15:06,640
Speaker 1: An audio version of the point, Yeah, amazing, we gotta

283
00:15:06,680 --> 00:15:09,400
Speaker 1: cash in on that. But so that you can look

284
00:15:09,440 --> 00:15:11,240
Speaker 1: it up on the internet, there's a full scan of

285
00:15:11,240 --> 00:15:13,800
Speaker 1: it that's hosted on archive dot org. You can flip

286
00:15:13,840 --> 00:15:15,440
Speaker 1: all the way through the book. I would say it

287
00:15:15,560 --> 00:15:18,880
Speaker 1: is almost a necessary experience, just the same way that

288
00:15:18,960 --> 00:15:21,320
Speaker 1: if you have the means, you should try to travel

289
00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:24,800
Speaker 1: and like expand your mind through seeing other cultures. If

290
00:15:24,800 --> 00:15:27,000
Speaker 1: you have the Internet, you should try to expand your

291
00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:30,280
Speaker 1: mind through this esoteric document. Yeah, I mean really, this

292
00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:32,000
Speaker 1: stuff like this is the reason we have the Internet.

293
00:15:32,120 --> 00:15:33,920
Speaker 1: That's the one on the benefits of the Internet is

294
00:15:33,960 --> 00:15:36,080
Speaker 1: being able to you know, a document like this can

295
00:15:36,080 --> 00:15:38,400
Speaker 1: be accessed by everybody. Yeah, now there are a few

296
00:15:38,400 --> 00:15:40,880
Speaker 1: things we can't if we're gonna be chasing the mystery

297
00:15:41,360 --> 00:15:44,400
Speaker 1: of who created this document? Can it be translated? What

298
00:15:44,440 --> 00:15:47,120
Speaker 1: does it mean? We should look at a few other

299
00:15:47,280 --> 00:15:51,200
Speaker 1: facts about the text itself. So it's in a script

300
00:15:51,280 --> 00:15:54,600
Speaker 1: that is clearly written from left to right and from

301
00:15:54,680 --> 00:15:57,600
Speaker 1: top to bottom, so much like English or like many

302
00:15:57,640 --> 00:16:00,640
Speaker 1: other European languages. But not all languages are like this.

303
00:16:00,800 --> 00:16:03,640
Speaker 1: Arabic is not like this, Rudu farci. I mean, there

304
00:16:03,640 --> 00:16:06,920
Speaker 1: are a bunch of examples of languages that go from

305
00:16:06,920 --> 00:16:09,520
Speaker 1: the right to the left, so it is probably not

306
00:16:09,680 --> 00:16:12,440
Speaker 1: drawing from that kind of tradition unless they just switched

307
00:16:12,440 --> 00:16:14,840
Speaker 1: it for no reason. No. Another fact that might seem

308
00:16:14,880 --> 00:16:17,000
Speaker 1: interesting to us about the text is that there are

309
00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:20,280
Speaker 1: no punctuation marks, But it turns out that's not necessarily

310
00:16:20,320 --> 00:16:22,920
Speaker 1: all that interesting. Given the time from which it comes,

311
00:16:22,960 --> 00:16:26,760
Speaker 1: because it's extremely common in older documents in many languages

312
00:16:26,800 --> 00:16:29,640
Speaker 1: for their not to be punctuation. Another thing is that

313
00:16:29,760 --> 00:16:33,680
Speaker 1: there are no chapter markings or subheadings, but based on

314
00:16:33,720 --> 00:16:38,240
Speaker 1: the illustrations, it's clear that there are sections that appear

315
00:16:38,280 --> 00:16:41,640
Speaker 1: to be about different subjects if they're about anything, and

316
00:16:41,680 --> 00:16:43,120
Speaker 1: I think maybe we should talk about some of those

317
00:16:43,160 --> 00:16:45,720
Speaker 1: different sections of the manuscript to try to help us

318
00:16:45,760 --> 00:16:48,840
Speaker 1: understand it as well. The first half of the book

319
00:16:48,920 --> 00:16:53,960
Speaker 1: is the the herbal section, and it's full of botanical illustrations.

320
00:16:54,080 --> 00:16:55,680
Speaker 1: You could say that, yeah, I mean, they clearly are

321
00:16:55,720 --> 00:16:58,400
Speaker 1: supposed to be plants, but we should stress that while

322
00:16:58,520 --> 00:17:01,840
Speaker 1: some of the illustrations of plans look kind of like

323
00:17:01,960 --> 00:17:05,000
Speaker 1: plants you would recognize, I'm not necessarily saying they are

324
00:17:05,160 --> 00:17:08,120
Speaker 1: illustrations of real plants, but they at least look like

325
00:17:08,440 --> 00:17:12,320
Speaker 1: terrestrial plants. Some of these illustrations do not look like

326
00:17:12,400 --> 00:17:15,520
Speaker 1: terrestrial plants. Some look like green ice snakes from the

327
00:17:15,560 --> 00:17:20,159
Speaker 1: methane likes of Titan, or like strange constricter caterpillars from

328
00:17:20,200 --> 00:17:24,520
Speaker 1: the heart of a comet. That truly weird alien drawings,

329
00:17:24,640 --> 00:17:27,320
Speaker 1: things that are sort of green and look like they

330
00:17:27,359 --> 00:17:31,840
Speaker 1: have leaves, but also have what looked like tentacles or eyeballs. Yeah,

331
00:17:31,880 --> 00:17:33,439
Speaker 1: they are. They are strange to be held. And this

332
00:17:33,520 --> 00:17:37,159
Speaker 1: is the most normal section of the script. Yeah, it

333
00:17:37,200 --> 00:17:41,760
Speaker 1: is so. The German computer scientist Klaus Schmi who wrote

334
00:17:41,760 --> 00:17:45,040
Speaker 1: a two thousand eleven article for Skeptical Enquirer about the

335
00:17:45,160 --> 00:17:48,280
Speaker 1: Voyage Manuscript. I'm gonna refer back to that article quite

336
00:17:48,320 --> 00:17:51,320
Speaker 1: a few times. But but he was writing about this section,

337
00:17:51,400 --> 00:17:54,959
Speaker 1: and he writes that none of the illustrations of plants

338
00:17:54,960 --> 00:17:58,520
Speaker 1: in the document have been conclusively identified by botanists, so

339
00:17:58,840 --> 00:18:01,000
Speaker 1: nobody has been able to look that and say, yep,

340
00:18:01,119 --> 00:18:05,120
Speaker 1: that is definitely a geranium. One theory by the botanist

341
00:18:05,240 --> 00:18:08,720
Speaker 1: Hugh O'Neill claimed to have identified two of the illustrations

342
00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:12,080
Speaker 1: as the sunflower and the capsicum plant, And of course

343
00:18:12,119 --> 00:18:14,560
Speaker 1: capsicum is a genus of plants in the night shade

344
00:18:14,600 --> 00:18:18,360
Speaker 1: family that produced peppers. Peppers are great, right, Except peppers

345
00:18:18,400 --> 00:18:22,240
Speaker 1: are not European, so both of these plants did not

346
00:18:22,359 --> 00:18:25,560
Speaker 1: spread to Europe until after contact with the America's which

347
00:18:25,560 --> 00:18:28,760
Speaker 1: would date the document a little bit later. But there

348
00:18:28,880 --> 00:18:32,360
Speaker 1: is not a general consensus that O'Neill's identification of these

349
00:18:32,359 --> 00:18:35,159
Speaker 1: illustrations is correct. It's just not clear at all that

350
00:18:35,240 --> 00:18:38,440
Speaker 1: these are actually drawings of sunflowers and pepper plants. So

351
00:18:38,960 --> 00:18:42,399
Speaker 1: generally the botanical section is big old question marks. Some

352
00:18:42,480 --> 00:18:45,040
Speaker 1: of them look like they could be real plants, but

353
00:18:45,160 --> 00:18:47,880
Speaker 1: there's none you can point to. There there are none

354
00:18:47,880 --> 00:18:49,480
Speaker 1: you can point to and say, yep, we know what

355
00:18:49,600 --> 00:18:51,679
Speaker 1: that is. Well, this trend kind of continues in the

356
00:18:51,720 --> 00:18:54,720
Speaker 1: next section, which is the astrological section, which is full

357
00:18:54,760 --> 00:18:59,520
Speaker 1: of circular illustrations that are often interpreted as being perhaps

358
00:18:59,600 --> 00:19:03,280
Speaker 1: astra logical in nature. But as as pointed out by

359
00:19:03,520 --> 00:19:07,800
Speaker 1: Josephine Livingstone in her New York Or article The Unsolvable

360
00:19:07,880 --> 00:19:11,480
Speaker 1: Mysteries of the Vantage Manuscript, of which I'll also refer

361
00:19:11,520 --> 00:19:15,320
Speaker 1: back to, she says that to call this section astrological

362
00:19:15,920 --> 00:19:20,360
Speaker 1: is generous, yes, because it doesn't. Now, there are illustrations

363
00:19:20,359 --> 00:19:25,520
Speaker 1: in it that do seem to correlate to classic astrological imagery,

364
00:19:25,560 --> 00:19:29,320
Speaker 1: but then again there are depictions of like astronomical objects

365
00:19:29,359 --> 00:19:32,239
Speaker 1: that don't appear to correlate to anything. For about eight

366
00:19:32,320 --> 00:19:34,439
Speaker 1: or nine years now, I should just say I've had

367
00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:36,960
Speaker 1: a page of the Voytage manuscript pinned up on the

368
00:19:36,960 --> 00:19:38,960
Speaker 1: backboard of my desk at work. I don't see it

369
00:19:39,000 --> 00:19:41,960
Speaker 1: as much now because now it's under the raised part

370
00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:44,959
Speaker 1: of my desk. Um. But it's a it's a page

371
00:19:45,040 --> 00:19:48,639
Speaker 1: from what is believed to be the astrological section. Specifically,

372
00:19:48,680 --> 00:19:51,160
Speaker 1: it's a page that just has a bunch of concentric

373
00:19:51,200 --> 00:19:57,320
Speaker 1: circles of these untranslatable words between megas looking dudes sitting

374
00:19:57,320 --> 00:20:00,760
Speaker 1: in buckets or dunk tanks or something with stars coming

375
00:20:00,760 --> 00:20:03,600
Speaker 1: out of their fingertips, and they're all ringed as if

376
00:20:03,600 --> 00:20:06,679
Speaker 1: in reverence, around the figure of a prancing goat with

377
00:20:06,720 --> 00:20:09,600
Speaker 1: a mouthful of green plant matter. And I figured that's

378
00:20:09,640 --> 00:20:13,320
Speaker 1: a good enough metaphor, is anything for the work we do? Alright?

379
00:20:13,600 --> 00:20:18,120
Speaker 1: The next section is often referred to as the baliological section, right,

380
00:20:18,840 --> 00:20:22,400
Speaker 1: and of course that refers to the study or field

381
00:20:22,560 --> 00:20:25,440
Speaker 1: of bathing, which if that sounds like, wait a minute,

382
00:20:25,480 --> 00:20:27,640
Speaker 1: could there be a field of that? Yeah, medieval text

383
00:20:27,720 --> 00:20:29,439
Speaker 1: there were a lot of thoughts about bathing. There were

384
00:20:29,480 --> 00:20:33,399
Speaker 1: thoughts about the restorative powers of certain types of waters

385
00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:36,440
Speaker 1: or mineral baths and all that kind of stuff. Oh yeah,

386
00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:38,800
Speaker 1: I mean it's you know, it's it's an important subject.

387
00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:41,640
Speaker 1: You're getting into the issues of hygiene, which of course

388
00:20:41,680 --> 00:20:46,040
Speaker 1: influence overall bodily health public health, but also hygiene has

389
00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:49,920
Speaker 1: has long been intertwined with our ideas of spiritual purity

390
00:20:49,960 --> 00:20:52,639
Speaker 1: as well. Now you might think, okay, well, this section

391
00:20:52,680 --> 00:20:54,280
Speaker 1: has got to be kind of normal because it's just

392
00:20:54,359 --> 00:20:58,560
Speaker 1: depicting people bathing, right, Bathing can't get that weird? Uh

393
00:20:58,600 --> 00:21:01,440
Speaker 1: It this is maybe the weird section of all Yeah,

394
00:21:01,560 --> 00:21:04,879
Speaker 1: because there are all these images of nude female figures

395
00:21:04,920 --> 00:21:09,040
Speaker 1: in pools of liquid I mean, or tubs of liquid,

396
00:21:09,320 --> 00:21:13,480
Speaker 1: but also possibly like large oversized flowers. And then there's

397
00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:18,359
Speaker 1: tubular plumbing that suggests plants or even like viscera of

398
00:21:18,720 --> 00:21:22,760
Speaker 1: some sort. Yeah, it's a very strange section of the manuscript.

399
00:21:22,840 --> 00:21:26,280
Speaker 1: The writing in this part, I noticed, suddenly gets very dense.

400
00:21:26,440 --> 00:21:28,960
Speaker 1: Whereas in previous pages there might have been a large

401
00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:32,679
Speaker 1: illustration of the plant and then some small, you know

402
00:21:32,840 --> 00:21:35,160
Speaker 1: if some lines of text around it. Here you've got

403
00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:38,159
Speaker 1: some densely packed text. And again I want to stress

404
00:21:38,240 --> 00:21:40,639
Speaker 1: that some of the illustrations of the section look like

405
00:21:40,680 --> 00:21:43,720
Speaker 1: they could be referring to real world objects and practices,

406
00:21:43,800 --> 00:21:46,919
Speaker 1: like some appear to just show nude women bathing, maybe

407
00:21:46,920 --> 00:21:50,119
Speaker 1: in mineral baths. Or in streams or in aqueducts or

408
00:21:50,160 --> 00:21:53,680
Speaker 1: along waterfalls. But others show things that I don't even

409
00:21:53,720 --> 00:21:56,120
Speaker 1: know how to describe. What Like I've got an example

410
00:21:56,200 --> 00:21:58,600
Speaker 1: here for Robert to look at that is it's like

411
00:21:58,640 --> 00:22:02,440
Speaker 1: a woman's standing in what looks like a giant instrument

412
00:22:02,640 --> 00:22:06,480
Speaker 1: horn that's growing out of something. It's the spreading horn

413
00:22:07,119 --> 00:22:09,560
Speaker 1: that I think maybe it's supposed to have water flowing

414
00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:12,280
Speaker 1: in it. But then also growing out of this horn

415
00:22:12,600 --> 00:22:17,560
Speaker 1: is like this alligator pod that, yeah, I don't know

416
00:22:17,600 --> 00:22:20,639
Speaker 1: how to I mean, the sort of green gray brown

417
00:22:20,760 --> 00:22:23,600
Speaker 1: with like holes that have water coming out of them,

418
00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:26,879
Speaker 1: but like a space tentacle with shower heads like bio

419
00:22:27,800 --> 00:22:30,560
Speaker 1: shower heads coming out of it, with like ridged alligator

420
00:22:30,600 --> 00:22:34,040
Speaker 1: scales on its back, and and yeah, like like lotus

421
00:22:34,080 --> 00:22:37,960
Speaker 1: like lotus pods that have water. Yeah, yeah, Like it

422
00:22:38,200 --> 00:22:40,320
Speaker 1: almost has kind of like a Susian or even like

423
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:43,719
Speaker 1: a gigeras quality to it. I was noticing in this

424
00:22:43,760 --> 00:22:46,600
Speaker 1: section how much the Voytage Manuscript, and I think this

425
00:22:46,720 --> 00:22:48,840
Speaker 1: is not an accident, how much it reminds me of

426
00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:52,200
Speaker 1: another book that I've liked for years, the Codex Seraphninus,

427
00:22:52,880 --> 00:22:57,399
Speaker 1: which is an entirely fictional and intentionally fictional encyclopedia created

428
00:22:57,400 --> 00:22:59,919
Speaker 1: by the Italian artist Luigi Serafini in the late night

429
00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:03,320
Speaker 1: teen seventies. I think it was published in nine. Basically,

430
00:23:03,440 --> 00:23:06,640
Speaker 1: it is like an artist's attempt to create a new

431
00:23:06,760 --> 00:23:11,000
Speaker 1: voyage manuscript type document. It's got a constructed language, lots

432
00:23:11,000 --> 00:23:15,199
Speaker 1: of alien illustrations of plants, animals, objects and processes that

433
00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:18,719
Speaker 1: don't exist on Earth. It's like an encyclopedia from another world.

434
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:21,920
Speaker 1: But that is basically what the voytage manuscript sort of

435
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:24,520
Speaker 1: appears to be. All Right, So we've had plants, We've

436
00:23:24,520 --> 00:23:28,240
Speaker 1: had possible charts of the stars and so forth, we've

437
00:23:28,240 --> 00:23:32,040
Speaker 1: had weird alien showers, and then at the at the

438
00:23:32,160 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 1: end here and that this final section is what, according

439
00:23:35,560 --> 00:23:38,919
Speaker 1: to Livingstone, seems to be related to practical instructions for

440
00:23:39,000 --> 00:23:42,200
Speaker 1: the use of the mysterious plants from earlier. It basically

441
00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:44,639
Speaker 1: looks like it has recipes at the end. Yeah, And

442
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:47,320
Speaker 1: I think this breaks down into multiple sort of subsections,

443
00:23:47,400 --> 00:23:49,440
Speaker 1: like there it is believed that there're some parts of

444
00:23:49,480 --> 00:23:52,679
Speaker 1: it are supposed to be pharmaceutical, like they depict the

445
00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:55,639
Speaker 1: creation of medicines and storage and viols, and other parts

446
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:59,400
Speaker 1: appear to be about cooking or something. Yeah, so it's

447
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:02,120
Speaker 1: just as mysteri is the rest of it. But yeah,

448
00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:05,640
Speaker 1: but at this point you don't really encounter any illustrations.

449
00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 1: It's more it's more textual in nature. But yeah, so

450
00:24:10,119 --> 00:24:12,480
Speaker 1: this is the book, and the book is is just

451
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:14,639
Speaker 1: so unique in its style. It does not seem to

452
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:18,960
Speaker 1: have any true surviving peers. It is not cleanly fit

453
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 1: with late medieval alchemical texts, because certainly there were other

454
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:25,399
Speaker 1: weird texts. Oh yeah, I mean that's something we should

455
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:27,680
Speaker 1: point out. I mean, if you're thinking, well, how could

456
00:24:27,800 --> 00:24:31,320
Speaker 1: a text be about plants and astrology and bathing and

457
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 1: hygiene and medicine and cooking all at the same time,

458
00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 1: that's a weird combination of subjects, I would say, Actually,

459
00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:39,199
Speaker 1: this is not unusual at all for the time it

460
00:24:39,240 --> 00:24:42,840
Speaker 1: was written. There were plenty of encyclopedia type documents that

461
00:24:43,040 --> 00:24:46,119
Speaker 1: collected diverse subject matter at the time, and there was

462
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:50,320
Speaker 1: a general blurring of the lines between science, medicine, magic,

463
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:53,760
Speaker 1: and household advice. All right, And if you were the

464
00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:56,560
Speaker 1: type of individual that either wrote or contributed to the

465
00:24:56,560 --> 00:24:58,720
Speaker 1: writing of a book, you likely had a lot to

466
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:01,760
Speaker 1: say about various topics or a lot to crib from

467
00:25:01,760 --> 00:25:04,440
Speaker 1: earlier encyclopedias, and a lot of times what you'll find

468
00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:07,639
Speaker 1: in some of these medieval encyclopedias is a mixture of

469
00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:12,440
Speaker 1: original observations with people like I don't know, reproducing encyclopedia

470
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:15,119
Speaker 1: entries by plenty or something and just saying like, and

471
00:25:15,160 --> 00:25:19,200
Speaker 1: here's the ancient wisdom of Scipio Africanus. Yeah, I mean

472
00:25:19,280 --> 00:25:21,560
Speaker 1: it comes back to a quote from burn Burno Ecco

473
00:25:21,640 --> 00:25:23,560
Speaker 1: in the name of the roads. The observation that books

474
00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:26,919
Speaker 1: speak to other books, you know that translations from other books,

475
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:30,119
Speaker 1: ideas from other books. But it does not seem that

476
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:32,240
Speaker 1: there were there were a lot of books, at least

477
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:35,040
Speaker 1: books that have survived, you know, that we're speaking to

478
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:38,320
Speaker 1: the voyage manuscript like it. It does seem to be

479
00:25:38,359 --> 00:25:41,560
Speaker 1: this singular thing that's left out. That's you know, that's

480
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:45,280
Speaker 1: it doesn't really fit in with manuscripts of the period. Uh.

481
00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:46,840
Speaker 1: You know, it's in many ways it's kind of like

482
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: an outside context book, at least to most of those

483
00:25:51,280 --> 00:25:55,240
Speaker 1: who have viewed it over the last several centuries. Um.

484
00:25:55,600 --> 00:25:57,960
Speaker 1: Of course, to be clear, many books of the past

485
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:02,240
Speaker 1: were lost, many languages were lost, Whole cultures have perished.

486
00:26:02,560 --> 00:26:04,560
Speaker 1: So just because it's one of a kind now does

487
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 1: not necessarily mean it was always one of a kind. Yeah,

488
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:09,520
Speaker 1: there could have been a whole library of voyage type

489
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:12,360
Speaker 1: books that just all got lost except for this one.

490
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:15,640
Speaker 1: And then likewise, the context of our texts are always

491
00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:18,639
Speaker 1: fading away. And that's why it's always instructive too. If

492
00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:21,480
Speaker 1: you pick up, say the works of William Shakespeare or uh,

493
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:23,119
Speaker 1: you know, you pick up a copy of you know,

494
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:26,520
Speaker 1: Dante is the Divine Comedy, it generally pays off to

495
00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 1: have some sort of reference guide if unless you were

496
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:32,040
Speaker 1: just schooled, say in Dante's case, in like you know,

497
00:26:32,080 --> 00:26:36,800
Speaker 1: in medieval culture and Italian politics and so forth, like

498
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:38,680
Speaker 1: you need something to help you make sense of all

499
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:42,600
Speaker 1: the references, you know, the cultural context, any symbols that

500
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 1: are trotted out, or the religious context. Yes, uh, in

501
00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:49,520
Speaker 1: a similar case can be it can be made for

502
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: the arts. You know, there are some of the stranger

503
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:55,600
Speaker 1: works of art from the past. Um, you know, they

504
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:59,119
Speaker 1: look extra strange to us because we generally don't have

505
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:02,119
Speaker 1: the same you know, textual understanding for the references and

506
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:04,919
Speaker 1: for the symbols, uh, you know, symbols and references that

507
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:08,000
Speaker 1: would have probably been known to the original intended audience,

508
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:12,000
Speaker 1: like we are not the intended audience of of those works.

509
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:15,639
Speaker 1: And then I think, along with most theories regarding the

510
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:18,160
Speaker 1: Vontage Manuscript, you can say that we are certainly not

511
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:21,679
Speaker 1: the intended audience of it today. Um, though there's at

512
00:27:21,760 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: least one I don't know, there's at least one theory

513
00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:26,919
Speaker 1: that maybe supports the idea that that the way that

514
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:30,040
Speaker 1: we are reacting to the Vontage manuscript is appropriate. But

515
00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:31,919
Speaker 1: but we'll get back to that, right. We are going

516
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:34,439
Speaker 1: to go on to try to parse out the different

517
00:27:34,480 --> 00:27:37,000
Speaker 1: theories that could explain its origin, all right, So I

518
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:39,840
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about a few more observations about the

519
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:43,720
Speaker 1: Voytage Manuscript or the Vantage Manuscript. From that article I

520
00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:47,120
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier by from two thousand eleven and Skeptical Inquirer

521
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:50,199
Speaker 1: by the German computer scientists Claus Schmi, I thought it

522
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 1: made quite a few good points, and one of the

523
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:55,439
Speaker 1: most interesting points that made I don't know why this

524
00:27:55,520 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: stuck out to me so much, but I I suspect

525
00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 1: will end up referring back to it. He pointed out

526
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:06,000
Speaker 1: that there are no visible corrections in the Voytage manuscript.

527
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 1: And this is pretty strange for a document produced by hand.

528
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:14,239
Speaker 1: Think about it. Could you write out a document of

529
00:28:14,400 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 1: thirty five thousand words in ink with no mistakes at all,

530
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:23,280
Speaker 1: no cross throughs or scratch outs. No, I mean yeah,

531
00:28:23,320 --> 00:28:25,879
Speaker 1: I mean it would certainly have. You would have to

532
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:28,560
Speaker 1: be something that was just so you know, wrote for you,

533
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:31,200
Speaker 1: that was just so uh, you know, formed in your

534
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 1: mind that you could just do it without any mistakes,

535
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:36,080
Speaker 1: or it would have to be something where mistakes didn't matter,

536
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:39,440
Speaker 1: such as if you were just making it all up exactly. Yeah.

537
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:42,160
Speaker 1: So I feel like this is a significant point because

538
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 1: when you look at handwritten or hand copied documents from

539
00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:48,480
Speaker 1: the ancient world, there are tons of emendations. You see,

540
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:51,960
Speaker 1: word is scratched out or cross through or or fixed.

541
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 1: I mean this is just common at a time when

542
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 1: documents were handwritten instead of produced by a printing press

543
00:28:57,680 --> 00:28:59,360
Speaker 1: or a computer. Yeah, it took a lot of time

544
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 1: to make these, took a lot of skill, and paper

545
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:05,960
Speaker 1: was expensive. Ink was expensive. Ultimately, if you had to

546
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 1: cross out of words, you crossed out of work. And

547
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 1: humans are imperfect copying machines. Now, again, we don't know

548
00:29:12,120 --> 00:29:15,480
Speaker 1: whether the voindage manuscript is an original document and that's

549
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:18,280
Speaker 1: like the original copy from the author, or it's a

550
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:21,960
Speaker 1: copy of another document. I would say this, this to

551
00:29:22,000 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 1: me very much argues against it being a copy from

552
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:29,080
Speaker 1: another document, just because, I mean, scribes, scribes make mistakes.

553
00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:32,240
Speaker 1: You're going thirty five thousand words, You're going to make

554
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 1: some mistakes and end up having to scratch them out

555
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 1: and rewrite the word. Yeah. So so this would this

556
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: would seem to argue for the idea that this was,

557
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: if not one of a kind, like this was at

558
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:45,680
Speaker 1: least a singular piece, right, yes, Or it might go

559
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 1: for one of the theories we'll talk about later on,

560
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:50,920
Speaker 1: the theory that there is not actually a meaning or

561
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:53,480
Speaker 1: message in the text. But then again, there are arguments

562
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:56,200
Speaker 1: against that, so we should not get committed to that.

563
00:29:56,200 --> 00:29:59,560
Speaker 1: That that endpoint. Another thing that she may points out

564
00:29:59,640 --> 00:30:02,040
Speaker 1: is that people have tried to source the book by

565
00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:05,240
Speaker 1: looking at the astrological imagery in it, but this hasn't

566
00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:08,160
Speaker 1: really turned up anything solid either. But a great note

567
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:12,400
Speaker 1: he has that some researchers believe to identify illustrations in

568
00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:17,280
Speaker 1: the book as Andromeda like or as Andromeda fog like

569
00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 1: the galaxy Andromeda or as the PLI E d s.

570
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: But again he says that this is just it's speculation,

571
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 1: kind of like the botanical thing, you know, where somebody

572
00:30:26,200 --> 00:30:28,600
Speaker 1: looks at an illustration and says, I think that could

573
00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:31,360
Speaker 1: be a capsicum plant, that could be a pepper, but

574
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 1: it's not clear enough that other scholars look at it

575
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:36,760
Speaker 1: and say, yeah, that's definitely what it is. And this

576
00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 1: is touching on a trend that will continue to discuss.

577
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 1: And I mean this in the in a completely non magical,

578
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:46,719
Speaker 1: non speculative way, right, But it does seem to be

579
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 1: the case that the longer you stare at the Advantage manuscript,

580
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:53,479
Speaker 1: the longer you deal with it, the more likely you

581
00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 1: are to find connections, the more likely you are to

582
00:30:56,080 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 1: see things. It's certainly encourages the conspue oratorial cast of

583
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:05,160
Speaker 1: mind or the well, I don't know. Again, there's a

584
00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:06,960
Speaker 1: nice way to frame that, in a in a bad

585
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:08,800
Speaker 1: way to frame that, like when when you want to

586
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 1: make connections between things. I mean, on one hand, I

587
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 1: feel like that's something I love doing on this show,

588
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 1: is making a connection you might not have expected between

589
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:19,840
Speaker 1: one idea or one thing and another, right, And it's

590
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:22,680
Speaker 1: how we solve that's how we figure out so many

591
00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:26,880
Speaker 1: ancient uh, you know, works of art or works of literature,

592
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:29,880
Speaker 1: to go back to the Rosetta stone. That is how

593
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 1: we eventually were able to do to solve the riddle

594
00:31:32,880 --> 00:31:35,960
Speaker 1: of Egyptian hieroglyphics. So yeah, this is the exercise of

595
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:41,840
Speaker 1: figuring things out. But the Vontage manuscript seems remarkably resistant

596
00:31:42,040 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 1: to such unraveling. Well right, I mean, and it seems

597
00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:49,280
Speaker 1: to encourage a perhaps unhealthy type of obsession also where

598
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:52,200
Speaker 1: I mean, if you take this principle of making connections

599
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:55,160
Speaker 1: too far, of course, where you end up is conspiracy

600
00:31:55,200 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 1: theory world right, like you're just finding crazy coincidences between things,

601
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:03,320
Speaker 1: or you even get into numerology. You know, oh it

602
00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:06,360
Speaker 1: looks it looks like there are you know, seventeen line

603
00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:09,080
Speaker 1: breaks on this page, and and that corresponds to the

604
00:32:09,160 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 1: number of wounds on Christ in this painting or something.

605
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 1: You know, that that kind of thing where you can

606
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:18,320
Speaker 1: find connections if you are determined to find connections, no

607
00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 1: matter how tenuous the link. Anyway, So to get back

608
00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: to uh, a few of these observations that I noted

609
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:28,840
Speaker 1: from Schmid's analysis. One is that the clothing and hairstyles

610
00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 1: worn by the people in the illustrations in the voyage

611
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:35,120
Speaker 1: manuscript seem to date the document to Europe in the

612
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:38,720
Speaker 1: period of about fourteen fifty to fifteen twenty, but it's

613
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 1: hard to be sure. But this is something that that

614
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 1: is done with other documents sometimes, like if you look

615
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 1: at the illustrations of people, what they're wearing, how they

616
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 1: wear their hair, that will tend to correlate to certain

617
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 1: styles from certain periods in places in history. A. Schmidt

618
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:55,920
Speaker 1: points out that the average word length in the document

619
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,320
Speaker 1: is about four to five letters, and this doesn't help

620
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:01,960
Speaker 1: us a whole lot because that could be consistent with

621
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:04,920
Speaker 1: a number of European languages. It just sort of makes

622
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:08,040
Speaker 1: it look like, yes, this is plausibly a language, but

623
00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: there there are some other things, Like one is that

624
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 1: it has fewer recurring words uh than would appear to

625
00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 1: be expected for a natural language, And this sort of

626
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 1: argues against the idea of the text being a simple

627
00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 1: letter substitution. But then again, maybe if it is a

628
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 1: real language, or if it is something in code, it's

629
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 1: not a simple letter substitution. Maybe it's a more complex

630
00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: type of cipher. But ultimately, Schmai concludes that no theory

631
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 1: has held up under scrutiny yet, which is a great

632
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:41,840
Speaker 1: place to be because now we get to discuss them absolutely.

633
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 1: So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take another break,

634
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:46,760
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're gonna first take us

635
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:50,360
Speaker 1: to take us through the known history of the Vantage Manuscript,

636
00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: like when when it first occurs, and some of the

637
00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: key points in history that we're we're you know, relatively

638
00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 1: sure of. Okay, alright, we're back, all right. So, as

639
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 1: we've mentioned before, we don't know who created the Voantage Manuscript.

640
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:05,760
Speaker 1: That is one of the great mysteries. We don't know

641
00:34:05,800 --> 00:34:08,719
Speaker 1: who wrote it. We don't know if it was the original,

642
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:11,320
Speaker 1: if the version we have now is the original copy,

643
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:13,360
Speaker 1: or if it's a copy of something. We don't know

644
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:17,399
Speaker 1: for sure. But some point in history this document just

645
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:20,160
Speaker 1: shows up and and I guess that's where we should

646
00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 1: dive in. So we're going to dive in in the

647
00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 1: sixteenth century. Right, the year is fifty six, and this

648
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:29,280
Speaker 1: is when the manuscript first pops up in the court

649
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:33,480
Speaker 1: of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph the Second of Bohemia, who,

650
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:37,040
Speaker 1: by my most accounts, was an eccentric monarch, which is

651
00:34:37,200 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 1: it's not hard to be an ecentric monarch. Monarchy tends

652
00:34:39,560 --> 00:34:43,480
Speaker 1: to invite eccentricity, and uh and but but this is

653
00:34:43,560 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 1: an individual who's very interested in the occult, in alchemy

654
00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:51,200
Speaker 1: and kept a great library, and I've also read was

655
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 1: was very fascinated by by giants and dwarves as well. Yeah,

656
00:34:54,600 --> 00:34:58,880
Speaker 1: he apparently collected little people. That seems like a strange

657
00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 1: kind of medieval monarch fascination. I guess Renaissance monarch here. Ye.

658
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:04,319
Speaker 1: So in many ways is weird as a weird guy,

659
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 1: but he's also sort of the character that you would

660
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:12,440
Speaker 1: expect from a medieval monarch. So the this document shows

661
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: up in his possession right and the we're not sure

662
00:35:16,840 --> 00:35:20,440
Speaker 1: who sold it to him, but the the the unknown

663
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:26,280
Speaker 1: seller sold it for six hundred gold. Duckets and duckets

664
00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:29,880
Speaker 1: are docts cats. I think it's gonna be duckets. Duckets.

665
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: I like thinking doct do cats? Yeah, well I always

666
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:36,879
Speaker 1: I always think ducketts. So six hundred, six hundred gold

667
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:40,799
Speaker 1: anyway to put it more like dungeons and dragons level. Now,

668
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: this came with like a certificate of authenticity, right, Yeah,

669
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:46,680
Speaker 1: essentially it came with a letter stating that it was

670
00:35:46,719 --> 00:35:51,520
Speaker 1: written by Roger Bacon. Roger Bacon, as we already alluded to, UH,

671
00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 1: was Franciscan Friar who lived twelve nineteen through twelve two roughly,

672
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,320
Speaker 1: and uh. He was also said to be a wizard.

673
00:36:01,040 --> 00:36:04,000
Speaker 1: Of course, this is kind of common with with learned individuals,

674
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:06,640
Speaker 1: and you know of that time, right like later on

675
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:09,000
Speaker 1: their stories about them, they not only were they learned,

676
00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 1: but perhaps they had powers as well well. As we've

677
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:14,720
Speaker 1: discussed on the show many times, in the medieval period

678
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:17,319
Speaker 1: and the Renaissance period, there was a significant amount of

679
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 1: blurring between the lines of science and magic. People who

680
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:24,879
Speaker 1: were genuinely making scientific observations about the world and about

681
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:28,960
Speaker 1: natural phenomena also sometimes believed in demonology and and just

682
00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:32,560
Speaker 1: kind of like grouped all this knowledge together. Yeah, but

683
00:36:32,680 --> 00:36:35,600
Speaker 1: at any rate, Bacon was an individual who in many

684
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:37,399
Speaker 1: ways he was an early advocate of what would become

685
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:41,880
Speaker 1: the scientific methodism. Yeah. The on the other hand, you know,

686
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 1: he was also interested in codes and secrets and uh,

687
00:36:46,520 --> 00:36:50,400
Speaker 1: and certainly later on became very associated with the occult,

688
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:53,520
Speaker 1: became sort of a focus of of occult interest. Now

689
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned that modern scholars do not think that

690
00:36:56,840 --> 00:36:59,800
Speaker 1: the Vointage Manuscript was written by Roger Bacon, and it

691
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:03,080
Speaker 1: also seems almost conclusively argued against by the carbon dating

692
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:05,879
Speaker 1: of it, which put it in the fifteenth century, right,

693
00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:08,239
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, I mean about the only thing

694
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:10,640
Speaker 1: you could make a case for would be what if

695
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 1: Roger Bacon had written it and this was like a

696
00:37:12,680 --> 00:37:16,040
Speaker 1: copy of that text, and but then we lost all

697
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 1: references to the original, you know, more leaps of of

698
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:24,760
Speaker 1: believability there. But in anyway, yeah, pretty pretty much nobody

699
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 1: is saying that Bacon had anything to do with the

700
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:30,400
Speaker 1: Vantage Manuscript other than him being cited in this letter

701
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:34,760
Speaker 1: that accompanied it on sale to the Holy Roll Roman Emperor.

702
00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:36,600
Speaker 1: So it would be like if you showed up with

703
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:39,480
Speaker 1: a document and you know, it's a weird document that

704
00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:43,279
Speaker 1: nobody can read, and you just said, George Washington wrote this.

705
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:45,719
Speaker 1: You can easily see how attaching the name of a

706
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 1: famous person to something could make the could get you

707
00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:50,600
Speaker 1: more money for it. So Rudolph the Second was, you know,

708
00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:53,120
Speaker 1: the type of individual who was you know, very excited

709
00:37:53,239 --> 00:37:56,600
Speaker 1: to to obtain this document. He probably put some of

710
00:37:56,640 --> 00:37:59,279
Speaker 1: his best minds to figuring it out, but nobody was

711
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:02,560
Speaker 1: able to crack it. He was a sixteenth century reditor. Definitely,

712
00:38:03,680 --> 00:38:06,160
Speaker 1: he's on the case, but but nobody was able to

713
00:38:06,160 --> 00:38:08,520
Speaker 1: figure it out. You know, it alluded experts of the time,

714
00:38:08,600 --> 00:38:11,960
Speaker 1: just as it has always alluded to experts. So he

715
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:15,360
Speaker 1: it ends up being passed on uh to a botanist

716
00:38:15,800 --> 00:38:20,319
Speaker 1: by the name of jacob Um Horriki. I think the

717
00:38:20,400 --> 00:38:25,880
Speaker 1: Latin name would be uh Jacobus Sinapius. But it was

718
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:28,520
Speaker 1: passed on to a botanist essentially because it does contain

719
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: a number of what seemed to be botanical illustrations. And

720
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: then the botanist keeps it for twenty years uh. And

721
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 1: during this time, Rudolph himself dies in sixteen twelve, and

722
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:42,040
Speaker 1: then the book passes on to an unknown person who

723
00:38:42,120 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 1: keeps it for yet another twenty years. And then in

724
00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 1: the sixteen twenties, the book enters the possession of Athanaceous Kircher,

725
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:52,480
Speaker 1: who lives sixteen two through sixtight. And this is this

726
00:38:52,520 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 1: is another just fascinating character. A German scholar and polly

727
00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:01,239
Speaker 1: math who who also set out to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics

728
00:39:01,239 --> 00:39:05,080
Speaker 1: at one point, and his assumptions ended up being incorrect,

729
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: but he actually made some correct connections between the Egyptian

730
00:39:09,560 --> 00:39:13,440
Speaker 1: hieroglyphics in the in the Coptic languages. He also studied

731
00:39:13,640 --> 00:39:18,080
Speaker 1: Chinese language as well as various artificial languages. His letters

732
00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:20,600
Speaker 1: show that he was quite interested in this particular book

733
00:39:21,080 --> 00:39:24,600
Speaker 1: acquired prior to obtaining it, but then five years after

734
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:28,600
Speaker 1: acquiring it, he published a Universal Study of Artificial Languages

735
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:32,520
Speaker 1: and apparently makes no mention of the Manage Manuscript. So

736
00:39:32,600 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 1: presumably it perplexed him, just as it perplexed so many others.

737
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:39,680
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So he's interested in this book, he's interested

738
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:43,200
Speaker 1: in artificial languages. That would make it seem like either

739
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:46,960
Speaker 1: he did not conclude that this was an artificial language,

740
00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:49,520
Speaker 1: or that he had to stay silent about it for

741
00:39:49,560 --> 00:39:52,279
Speaker 1: some reason. Well, and this is just my take. I

742
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 1: wonder I would think that maybe another reason would be

743
00:39:56,239 --> 00:39:59,120
Speaker 1: if he could not figure it out, Like he didn't

744
00:39:59,120 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 1: mention it, because who wants to be the expert on

745
00:40:01,239 --> 00:40:04,799
Speaker 1: artificial languages and say, you know I couldn't crack this, well, right,

746
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:07,600
Speaker 1: he could have the Isaac Newton mentality, where you know

747
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 1: Isaac Newton said, like, here's what I've figured out as

748
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,080
Speaker 1: for these other as for the cause of gravity, the

749
00:40:13,160 --> 00:40:16,520
Speaker 1: underlying cause. He just said, I do not feign hypotheses.

750
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:20,239
Speaker 1: Now you can kind of respect that. Now I do

751
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:22,920
Speaker 1: think it's something we should come back and discuss artificial

752
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:25,840
Speaker 1: languages at some point on the show, because it is

753
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:28,799
Speaker 1: is fascinating to to realize that here's this book on

754
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:31,360
Speaker 1: the study of artificial languages, and of course this is

755
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:35,399
Speaker 1: centuries before you know, we encountered cling On or doth

756
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:40,000
Speaker 1: Racki or any of the or Esperanto. So it would

757
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: be fun to come back to that. Well, I've actually

758
00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:45,160
Speaker 1: thought about the idea of covering artificially invented languages on

759
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:47,799
Speaker 1: Invention on our other podcast. That would be a good one.

760
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:50,480
Speaker 1: So keep keep an eye out over there. Invention, the

761
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:52,440
Speaker 1: other podcast that we do. You can find it at

762
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 1: an engine pod dot com. Uh, you can subscribe wherever

763
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: you subscribe to your podcast. It is uh, it is

764
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 1: human Techno His Street, One invention at a time. All right,

765
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 1: So Athanasious Kircher, He's got the Vointage manuscript and what

766
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:07,959
Speaker 1: happens to it? Then, well, he has it for a while,

767
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:09,839
Speaker 1: but then he becomes a Jesuit monk and he gives

768
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:13,279
Speaker 1: away all of his earthly possessions, which includes his books

769
00:41:13,320 --> 00:41:16,360
Speaker 1: and so his his library, and the Vontage manuscript itself

770
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 1: lands in the library of a Jesuit seminary, which I

771
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:24,160
Speaker 1: believe it is a Collegio Romano, just south of Rome,

772
00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:26,600
Speaker 1: and it remains there for something like two hundred and

773
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:31,400
Speaker 1: fifty years. Though according to Livingstone, the book quote appears

774
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:34,759
Speaker 1: to have bounced around Prague for a while. In sixty nine,

775
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 1: a person named uh Barcius described it as a is

776
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:42,160
Speaker 1: quote a certain riddle of the Sphinx, a piece of

777
00:41:42,200 --> 00:41:45,960
Speaker 1: writing and unknown characters unquote, and guests that quote the

778
00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: whole thing is medical unquote. The book's historical trail vanishes

779
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 1: in sixteen seventy up until the time that Vantage purchased it.

780
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:55,239
Speaker 1: And that's from that New Yorker article. Yes, that's from

781
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 1: the New Yorker piece. Okay, So then we get up

782
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:00,640
Speaker 1: to the twentieth century and this is it shows up

783
00:42:00,640 --> 00:42:05,799
Speaker 1: with the guy actually named Voyage, yet another fascinating weird

784
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:08,160
Speaker 1: individual to enter into the history. And we haven't even

785
00:42:08,200 --> 00:42:10,960
Speaker 1: covered some of the other weird individuals that factor into

786
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:13,600
Speaker 1: its history. So it ends up in the sort of

787
00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:17,280
Speaker 1: along with a purchase of other books in the hands

788
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:21,400
Speaker 1: of this eccentric book dealer named Wilfred Michael Voynage, Yeah,

789
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:25,040
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen sixty five through nineteen thirty And yeah,

790
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:28,399
Speaker 1: he publishes the entire library and uh and it ends

791
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:31,400
Speaker 1: up being moved to America. And this of course includes

792
00:42:31,520 --> 00:42:36,000
Speaker 1: the book that would take his name. So yeah, Polish born.

793
00:42:36,120 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 1: He's an interesting fellow to say the least. He knew.

794
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 1: He allegedly knew twenty different languages. Was at one point

795
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:46,719
Speaker 1: investigated by the FBI for possessing Bacon cipher, an actual cipher,

796
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:49,720
Speaker 1: for creating coded message that was devised by Roger Bacon

797
00:42:49,800 --> 00:42:52,960
Speaker 1: just to bring Roger Bacon back into everything. And he

798
00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:56,520
Speaker 1: even apparently sold a forgery to the British Museum at

799
00:42:56,560 --> 00:42:59,839
Speaker 1: one point, though perhaps by accident. Yeah, there there are

800
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 1: whole story. He was a very well traveled, adventuring individual.

801
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:05,759
Speaker 1: At some point, I think he was sent to a

802
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: prison in Siberia for his political activities. Uh. He somehow

803
00:43:10,239 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: escaped to England at some point and became a book collector.

804
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:18,720
Speaker 1: In that h that Josephine Livingstone article, she talks about

805
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:22,360
Speaker 1: this story that he would he would delight in showing

806
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:25,439
Speaker 1: off his wounds to people, and he would like lift

807
00:43:25,520 --> 00:43:27,840
Speaker 1: his shirt up and he would say here by sword,

808
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:33,560
Speaker 1: here by bullet. But yeah, so Voinice is a really

809
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 1: interesting guy. And at one point in hyping his manuscript,

810
00:43:37,160 --> 00:43:40,520
Speaker 1: this is also quoted in in Josphine Livingstone's piece, he

811
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:43,120
Speaker 1: was talking to the times and he said, when the

812
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:46,160
Speaker 1: time comes, I will prove to the world that the

813
00:43:46,200 --> 00:43:49,960
Speaker 1: black magic of the Middle Ages consisted in discoveries far

814
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:54,040
Speaker 1: in advance of twentieth century science. And I think speaks

815
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:57,239
Speaker 1: to a certain kind of attitude that documents like this

816
00:43:57,719 --> 00:44:01,399
Speaker 1: inspire and other historical mystery reads all kinds of things,

817
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 1: you know, the anti kate through a mechanism or untranslated documents.

818
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:08,400
Speaker 1: Anytime you've got this object from history that seems to

819
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:13,360
Speaker 1: contain information or learning or indicate information or learning, but

820
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 1: it's not fully solved at the time people are looking

821
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:19,360
Speaker 1: at it, it tends to to make people want to

822
00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:23,920
Speaker 1: go toward these almost conspiracy theory level ideas of like

823
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:28,160
Speaker 1: lost knowledge and and you know, like like ancient aliens

824
00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:31,320
Speaker 1: kind of territory. Why do we have such a tendency

825
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:33,840
Speaker 1: in those directions like why why is it? Why are

826
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: our brains wired to go to that conclusion rather than like, oh,

827
00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:40,759
Speaker 1: here's a strange document in code. Well, I mean, I

828
00:44:40,760 --> 00:44:42,759
Speaker 1: guess at one level, you know, we look to the

829
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 1: modern age and we we we had we tend to

830
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 1: regard our current scientific, technological understanding the world is superior

831
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: to that of the past. Um, you know, by and large,

832
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly there are areas where and we've discussed

833
00:44:57,440 --> 00:44:58,920
Speaker 1: some of these in the show, where we can point

834
00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:02,880
Speaker 1: to things in the modern world that are perhaps inferior

835
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:04,840
Speaker 1: to ways of dealing with things in the past, you know,

836
00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:09,040
Speaker 1: generally things that are more cultural or interpersonal. Uh. But

837
00:45:09,080 --> 00:45:10,560
Speaker 1: we we tend to think, you know, when it comes

838
00:45:10,600 --> 00:45:13,719
Speaker 1: to like figuring out how the world works, especially in

839
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 1: the natural world, like today is the day, and then

840
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 1: never have we had a greater understanding. And yet at

841
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:21,160
Speaker 1: the same time, there are things that we do not

842
00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:24,280
Speaker 1: understand about the world yet. And there are things, particularly

843
00:45:24,320 --> 00:45:28,239
Speaker 1: details from the past, details from history, that we can

844
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:31,000
Speaker 1: never fully understand, you know, that are going to just

845
00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:34,960
Speaker 1: remain you know, gaps essentially gaps in the fossil records

846
00:45:35,080 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 1: of of our literary and historical legacy. I've said this

847
00:45:39,719 --> 00:45:41,840
Speaker 1: on the show before, but I remain committed to to

848
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:46,239
Speaker 1: a middle position here between the sort of the condescending

849
00:45:46,280 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 1: modern idea that looks at the past and says ancient

850
00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:51,880
Speaker 1: and medieval people's they were just stupid, they didn't know anything,

851
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:54,279
Speaker 1: versus the one on the other hand, that tends toward

852
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:57,480
Speaker 1: believing in some lost golden age, you know, ancient loss

853
00:45:57,560 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 1: knowledge that far surpasses our own. I think the reality

854
00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:04,440
Speaker 1: is that it's not like there's an ancient lost Golden age.

855
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:07,359
Speaker 1: There wasn't an Atlantis where they had flying cars and

856
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 1: stuff like that. It's more like that people in the

857
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:14,040
Speaker 1: past were struggling with limitations that we don't face. They

858
00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:16,319
Speaker 1: had they didn't have the technology we have, but they

859
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:19,560
Speaker 1: were also incredibly smart. They were super clever and came

860
00:46:19,640 --> 00:46:22,920
Speaker 1: up with amazing workarounds and methods for things using the

861
00:46:22,960 --> 00:46:25,279
Speaker 1: limited technology they have. This is what I always think about,

862
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 1: you know, the classic construction of the Pyramids example. It's like, no,

863
00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:32,000
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that they had like alien technology. Just

864
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:34,319
Speaker 1: means that, like, these are smart people and they had

865
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 1: to figure out how to solve big problems with limited tools.

866
00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:39,759
Speaker 1: I think also we sometimes fall into this trap of

867
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:44,320
Speaker 1: thinking thinking about the you know, our modern world's contemplation

868
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:47,120
Speaker 1: of the past is kind of a battle between the

869
00:46:47,239 --> 00:46:49,840
Speaker 1: present and past, Like the past is an enemy to

870
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:52,640
Speaker 1: be defeated in our attempt to understand it, and they

871
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:54,680
Speaker 1: kind of make an adversary out of it. And I

872
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:57,000
Speaker 1: guess part of that is maybe, like you know, maybe

873
00:46:57,000 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 1: this part of it is just found in all cultures

874
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:02,280
Speaker 1: where the past is something an enemy to be overcome.

875
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:04,719
Speaker 1: Maybe it's part of the colonial legacy, or maybe it's

876
00:47:04,719 --> 00:47:07,840
Speaker 1: because of Indiana Jones, you know, with uh, you know,

877
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:11,160
Speaker 1: this idea of somebody like like physically combating the past

878
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:14,240
Speaker 1: in order to acquire its secrets. And then if something

879
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:18,560
Speaker 1: is resistant to this assault, then it must it must

880
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 1: have some sort of secret knowledge. It must there must

881
00:47:21,160 --> 00:47:24,120
Speaker 1: be something more than like the fault cannot be our own.

882
00:47:24,160 --> 00:47:27,880
Speaker 1: It must be some hidden power of the past. That's interesting.

883
00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:30,280
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we gotta get back to what happened

884
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:32,440
Speaker 1: to the Voytage manuscript, all right. So it was in

885
00:47:32,520 --> 00:47:36,000
Speaker 1: Vonic's possession, and then he dies and it passes to

886
00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:38,879
Speaker 1: his widow, Ethel, and he died in nineteen thirty, yes,

887
00:47:39,040 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 1: nine thirty, and then it passes from Ethel to a

888
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: close friend who then sells the book to an anti

889
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:48,319
Speaker 1: antique book dealer by the name of hands P. Krauss

890
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one. So Krauss, he tries to find

891
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:54,520
Speaker 1: a buyer for the book but cannot find a suitable buyer.

892
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 1: What nobody wanted it? Well, maybe not for his price. Yeah,

893
00:47:57,719 --> 00:47:59,080
Speaker 1: I don't know the details. I don't know if he

894
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:01,080
Speaker 1: was maybe if he was asking too much, or he

895
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:03,880
Speaker 1: wanted to sell it to the right type of collector,

896
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows, but not somebody who's gonna chop

897
00:48:07,080 --> 00:48:10,239
Speaker 1: it up and make make voytage manuscript sausage out of it.

898
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean he ends up donating it

899
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:15,960
Speaker 1: to get Yale University in nine nine. So without without

900
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:18,359
Speaker 1: knowing the details of a cross myself, and perhaps there's

901
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:20,719
Speaker 1: better documentation out there, you know, I would presume it

902
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:22,839
Speaker 1: was a situation of where he's like, I can't sell

903
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 1: it to the type of client, you know, the type

904
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:28,000
Speaker 1: of purchaser I want, so I'll sell it to Yale.

905
00:48:28,080 --> 00:48:30,440
Speaker 1: Or perhaps he reached the point where he's he realized

906
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:33,760
Speaker 1: like this book is is a truly fascinating historical specimen.

907
00:48:34,000 --> 00:48:36,560
Speaker 1: It does not belong in the hands of you know,

908
00:48:36,760 --> 00:48:38,520
Speaker 1: a rare occult book. It doesn't need to be in

909
00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:42,359
Speaker 1: another rare book dealers antique stash. It needs to be

910
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:45,279
Speaker 1: with a university. All right. Well, I guess that sort

911
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:47,719
Speaker 1: of brings us up to the modern period in which

912
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 1: there's been an enormous amount of scholarship on the Voyage Manuscript,

913
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:54,800
Speaker 1: of people trying to both to to translate it or

914
00:48:54,880 --> 00:48:59,040
Speaker 1: decrypt it, which in some ways are similar jobs, or

915
00:48:59,120 --> 00:49:01,600
Speaker 1: people trying to to figure out what it means or

916
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:04,680
Speaker 1: where it came from, who wrote it. A lot of

917
00:49:04,719 --> 00:49:08,160
Speaker 1: these mysteries remain, and there have been huge, hugely interesting

918
00:49:08,200 --> 00:49:11,239
Speaker 1: attempts to solve these questions over the decades. But on

919
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: that note, we're actually gonna have to call this episode

920
00:49:13,719 --> 00:49:16,560
Speaker 1: and return in a second episode where we'll get into

921
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:20,520
Speaker 1: these various attempts to unravel the manuscript. In the meantime,

922
00:49:20,600 --> 00:49:22,360
Speaker 1: you can check out other episodes of Stuff Toblew Your

923
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:24,839
Speaker 1: Mind at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. You

924
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:28,160
Speaker 1: can also, of course find this podcast wherever you get

925
00:49:28,200 --> 00:49:31,480
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Wherever you do find us, make sure that

926
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:33,520
Speaker 1: you rate and review us. That really helps us out.

927
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:36,560
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, if you want to discuss this

928
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:41,719
Speaker 1: episode with other users, other listeners. There's actually a Facebook

929
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:46,040
Speaker 1: discussion group called the discussion modules stuff to Blow your

930
00:49:46,040 --> 00:49:48,600
Speaker 1: Mind Discussion Module that's kind of a fun place to

931
00:49:48,680 --> 00:49:50,880
Speaker 1: check out. Hey, have you subscribed to our other podcast,

932
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:54,360
Speaker 1: Invention yet. If not, go subscribe to Invention. Subscribe to

933
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:58,360
Speaker 1: Invention huge. Thanks as always to our excellent audio producers,

934
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:01,400
Speaker 1: Maya Cole and Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like

935
00:50:01,480 --> 00:50:03,840
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this

936
00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:06,280
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

937
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:08,839
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at

938
00:50:09,239 --> 00:50:21,600
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff

939
00:50:21,640 --> 00:50:23,560
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radios

940
00:50:23,560 --> 00:50:25,919
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,

941
00:50:26,000 --> 00:50:28,759
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

942
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:38,839
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.