WEBVTT - The Voynich Manuscript, Part 1 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:04.960 Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:14.040 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:16.520 Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:20.720 Joe McCormick. And today we have a conundrum to consider 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:26.680 a book that cannot be read by anyone. So it's 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:28.760 kind of a riddle in the dark, isn't it like 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:32.960 something that Gollum might ask of of Bilbo, or Bilbo 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:36.760 might cunningly ask of Gollum. Right, it's like I walk, 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:39.120 but I have no feed. I stand, but I have 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:42.959 no legs. So it but but, but it is an 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:46.320 intriguing kind of riddle. Why can't the book in question 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:49.320 be read? So we instantly can think to some of 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:52.320 like the tricks of riddles. Right, Well, perhaps the book 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:56.400 does not exist. You cannot read a non existent fictional 0:00:56.520 --> 0:01:00.120 book such as your hey, Luis Borges, the Book of 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.800 sand or a thorough Perez rovertas the Book of Nine 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:06.399 Doors to the Kingdom of Shadows. These are books that 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:09.959 exist within stories or within other works that have no 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:14.080 reality in our world. Likewise, you cannot read a book 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:16.760 that no longer exists. You know, a book that has 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:19.839 become lost, such as you know, the various destroyed Maya 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:24.120 Codices or aristotle Second Book of Poetics, which, of course 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:26.400 the major plot point in burto Echo is the Name 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:30.600 of the Rose. But no, the book that we're talking 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:35.480 about here, it is real and it definitely exists. So 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:37.960 that might lead you to the next like level of 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:41.160 of contemplation here. Okay, Well, perhaps this book cannot be 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.760 read because it is forbidden. You know, some powerful librarian 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:47.840 or clerk keeps it hidden, perhaps alongside the Ark of 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:50.520 the Covenant or something. Right, Okay, so like that same 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:53.640 Aristotle text, but in the Name of the Rose, right, yeah, 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:56.240 where where somebody just preventing you from viewing it and 0:01:56.280 --> 0:01:59.120 reading it. No, that's not the case with this book, 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:01.160 because plenty of p wooll have attempted to read it 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:05.200 and still attempt to. Any serious scholar, can you know, 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:08.160 they can actually travel to its physical location and and 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:12.000 go through the you know, the necessary of paperwork one presumes, 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:15.639 can examine it physically, and you, you, the listener, can 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.120 even attempt to read it on the internet, or you 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:21.480 can you can acquire a printed fac simile, many of 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:24.360 which are very nice to understand. Okay, I got one. Well, 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:26.360 there are a lot of texts from the ancient world 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:31.079 that only exist in some incredibly degraded format. Right. So 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:34.400 there we have evidence that a book existed, but you 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:36.640 you can't make out what's on the page anymore. Maybe 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.680 there's only a scrap of it left, right, it's been destroyed, 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:41.920 or it's been or perhaps you know, it's been scraped 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:43.960 away and other things have been printed on top of it. 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:46.320 But nope, that's not the case with this book. It's 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:50.000 it's actually quite well preserved for a centuries old manuscript. Okay, 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:52.400 here's one. Maybe you can't read it because it's not 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:55.520 made of language. Ah, that's that's a that's a clever, 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:59.920 clever guest picture book or something. Yeah, But at the 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:04.080 book actually contains quite a bit of text, okay, And 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:07.639 so that that leads us to the next level of 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:10.320 a contemplation here. Okay, then the text must be in 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:14.880 a language that is forgotten, or a nonsensical representation of language, 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:18.000 or perhaps what appears to be language is actually a 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:20.600 code for something else. Okay. So there is a book. 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.000 You can look at it, there is text in it, 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.519 but for some reason you can't make sense of the text. Right, 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:29.280 And in this we are getting to like the heart 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:32.280 of many of the discussions surrounding the book we're going 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.840 to be discussing today. This book is written in a 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:39.880 language or code or some other manner of textual form 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:42.920 that no one at least no one living or no 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:45.360 one that has lived in the in the previous centuries, 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.760 is capable of understanding. In fact, while various people have 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:51.480 claimed to have cracked it, or translated it, or figured 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.320 out some or all of its secrets, we can state 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:57.720 with a fair amount of certainty as of this recording, 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:01.440 and probably of you know, for you know, the duration, 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:04.800 for the shelf life of this episode, no one has 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:06.960 been able to read this book at least not for 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:09.640 many many centuries at least as far as we know. 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.160 And unless one of these people on like YouTube or 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:14.920 read it is onto something and nobody has really uh 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:18.120 nobody's given them credit yet. Yeah, where somebody has figured 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:20.239 it out but decided not to share it with anyone, 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:22.880 which is generally not the case. Generally, there are plenty 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:26.080 of people even today that are claiming to have some 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:28.520 theory as to h you know, that they have some 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.160 angles some in that's going to allow them to uh, 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:34.440 you know, to crack this nut. So what we're talking 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:38.479 about today is a real manuscript that exists in the world. 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:40.880 Some of you may well have heard of it. It's actually, 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:43.480 I think if you go back, it's something that listeners 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:45.440 have requested us to cover in the past. I don't 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:48.160 know if we've got to request recently, but in the 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:49.719 years I've been on the show, I know people have 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:51.920 written to us asking like, hey, what's your take on it? 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:56.040 And it is a manuscript known as the Voytage Manuscript 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:58.320 or the I've also heard it pronounced Vonage, but I 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:02.720 think we'll say Voytage v O y n I c H. 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:05.719 All right, well, let's just describe it to everyone. For starters, 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:08.720 we should just drive home that again, you can look 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:10.600 up a copy of this, it's what it's a bit 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.840 readily available on what our archive dot organ exactly, and 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:16.080 not only you can you should Well we'll talk more 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:18.960 about the contents of it in a minute, but maybe 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:23.000 we should start with just the base physical reality of 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:26.320 what this codex is. It's in the form of a codex, right, 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:28.560 so it's not a scroll. It's like a you know, 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:32.560 a folding book with pages that you can leave through. Yeah, 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:37.120 it's a roughly seven by ten inches, not a huge tone, right, 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:39.240 not huge. So a lot of these older books you 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:41.440 think of as being this big thing that you put 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:44.520 up on a lectern and you open the giant uh 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:46.960 cover of it that may be made of wood or whatever, 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:50.240 and you leave through the huge pages with their illuminations. 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:52.440 But no, this is a little thing, maybe to be 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:57.160 cradled in a wizard's knobby fingers. Uh. The precise dimensions 0:05:57.200 --> 0:05:59.760 I was reading are it's like twenty three point five 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.560 meters by sixteen point two centimeters and about five centimeters thick. 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:06.600 So it's a little yeah, and that's what What was 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:08.839 the page count some of some of the neighborhood of 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:12.520 two forty seventy Yeah, it's so the number of pages 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:15.200 existing today. I've seen a couple of different counts of 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:17.720 two forty or two forty six pages. I think that 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.800 might be depending on what types of leafs you're counting 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:24.640 on the edges. But it's believed that some original pages 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:27.960 of this manuscript are lost. It may originally have had 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.279 around two hundred and seventy pages or so, but we 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:34.320 don't know for sure. And these pages are made of 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:39.480 parchment specifically of vellum, which was a common medieval writing material. 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:42.680 Parchment means a prepared version of an animal skin that 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:46.280 was used for writing vellums. Specifically, I think it's calf skin, 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:50.120 so these are calf skin pages with ink writing on them. 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:52.400 Also about the pages in this book, we should note 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:55.799 that in the format we have it today, some pages 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:58.920 appear to be out of order. So I think at 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:03.560 some point this manuscript was not fully bound. It's bound now, 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:05.760 but I think it has been through different binding over 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:08.400 the ages, and at some point it looks like some 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:10.920 pages got shuffled out of order, and the version we 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:13.520 have it now has pages that look like they're from 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:16.720 the wrong section in which they're currently placed. So that's 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:19.680 just just how it is as we have it. It's 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:23.240 probably due to some owner throughout the centuries making an 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:26.200 error and rearranging them when the pages became loose. The 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:29.880 text in the book is closely written and freerunning alphabetic script. 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:33.280 The number of letters, Uh, one source I was looking 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:35.120 at said nineteen to twenty eight letters. I don't know 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:36.960 if you found a different figure. Yeah, I've seen several 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.760 different estimates of like fifteen to twenty five or estimates 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:44.160 of thirty letters. I think it's difficult because there are 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:47.520 some symbols in there which could be copies of the 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:51.800 same letter you've already seen, or could be slightly different letters. Uh, 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:53.640 And it's hard to tell if you're not working with 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:56.320 a known alphabet, right, And that's part of it is 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:58.640 that like these for the most part, don't seem to 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:02.560 have real counterparts and European letter systems. Um. You know, 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:05.680 at first glance, it looks like like just standard texts 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:09.440 that should relate to some European language. But upon closer 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:12.680 inspection and things become more difficult. The letters have a 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:16.440 lot of fascinating loops and yeah, like they're they're full 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:20.840 of these uh, these knots and lassos. And then the illustrations, 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:22.760 of course, which have already alluded to, they has all 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:25.680 these these strange line drawings that have been colored in 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:29.840 with watercolors, and they consist of you know, plants, possible 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:37.360 astrological drawings, weird illustrations of naked women, uh seeming debay 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:41.360 their shower and what might be giant plants or other things. Well, 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:45.040 we'll get more into what the illustrations represent later on. Um. 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:48.080 Now it was it's written in ink. I think it 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.560 has watercolors in it. Yeah, the watercolors definitely to color 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:54.480 the illustrations. But then the ink itself I read was 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:56.520 a brown ink, and it seems to have been like 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:59.680 an inexpensive inc of the time. So nothing particularly notable. Okay, 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.559 now we've already mentioned that it is not a readable document. 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.400 It is in a language. If it is a language, 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:12.440 the language is unknown. Yes, sometimes called voia cheese, which 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:15.240 is just a modern appellation because we don't know what 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:17.839 it is. Yeah, and uh, it's something like a hundred 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:20.480 and seventy thousand characters in the book. Some you know, 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:22.880 we already talked about the number of alphabetic characters, maybe 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:26.520 somewhere in the range of thirty uh, depending on what 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:29.559 you define as being a distinct alphabetic character. And then 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:33.079 roughly what thirty five thousand strings of characters of varying length, 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:36.920 which can be interpreted as words. These are usually thought 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:39.960 of as words, whether by the you know, cryptographers who 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:43.320 look at this, there are something like thirty five thousand 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:45.880 or like thirty seven thousand words, and they might not 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:49.079 correlate to real words. Now where you will where will 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:51.360 you find this book? Now? Well, you'll find it in 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:54.880 the United States. Yes, we'll get into the history of 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:56.880 the book that brought it to the United States, but 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:00.199 it is currently housed at the banecky Rare Book Whom 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:03.280 at Yale, New Haven, Connecticut. Yeah, so it's in a 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.400 library at Yale and it is open to being looked 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:09.000 at by scholars. I remember I read a couple of 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:12.040 sources talking about how later in his life Umberto Echo 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:15.040 went to view it personally. Yeah, he was visiting the library. 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:16.920 It's the only book in the library that he asked 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:19.480 to view, and you can find it the photos of 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:23.559 him Burto Echo reading or well looking at the book. 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:26.000 And of course it's a perfect thing for Umberto Echo 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:28.040 to show interest in. If you've read The Name of 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:31.600 the Rose, you know his love for mysterious manuscripts of 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:35.120 unknown medieval origin. And that gets to one of the 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:38.319 real mysteries of this text. This text is one of 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.600 the great standing mysteries of I don't know, I guess, 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:48.000 of medievalism, of of linguistics, of cryptography. It's just this 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:51.440 wonderful enigma that's still out there. And part of the 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:54.920 enigma is we don't know its actual origin. We we 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:57.640 pick up with it in history at a certain point 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:00.640 where we we know we're at first a i'ved and 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:03.679 was recorded, but we don't know who made it, or 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:06.800 how why they made it, or how they made it. Right. Yeah, 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:09.640 for the longest there was also no carbon dating of 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:13.520 the book, so estimates used to range. You know, usually 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:16.480 people were saying fifteenth century, so uh, some were saying 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:18.960 thirteenth century. And I think there's a reason for that 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:22.680 because it was originally attributed to the English monk and 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:26.360 philosopher Roger Bacon, you know, of course, considered by many 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:28.959 to be one of the fathers of modern science. And 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.920 since Roger Bacon lived in the thirteenth century, if he 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:34.120 had written it, this would place its origin in the 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:37.320 thirteenth century. But I don't think any modern scholars actually 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:40.600 believe Roger Bacon wrote it, and later radio carbon dating 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:42.719 would prove that right. And we'll get back to the 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:46.520 Roger Bacon connection in a bit. But yeah, in two 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:49.240 thousand nine, the vellum that it's printed on was carbon 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:51.560 dated to the University of Arizona, and it was carbon 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:54.640 dated to the early fifteenth century, so fourteen o four 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:59.160 to fourteen thirty eight roughly, and So one note on 0:11:59.200 --> 0:12:02.480 how carbon date works, of course, is that carbon dating 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.720 is used to date things that were at some point 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.880 alive or at some point had carbon from carbon dioxide 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:13.960 in the atmosphere fixed into them. Because a certain because 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:17.280 a certain known proportion of this carbon is radioactive, it 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:20.600 decays at a known rate. So therefore you can tell 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:23.320 basically if it comes from a thing that was once alive, 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:26.600 when did the thing that it was made out of die? Right, 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:30.520 when did it stop incorporating new gas from the atmosphere 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.640 into itself. So you could say that it could have 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:37.319 been no earlier than this time that the document was produced, 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:40.920 but it could possibly have been later that the document 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:43.760 was produced, just as long as the vellum was actually 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:45.920 this old. Yeah, it kind of depends on how long 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:48.120 the vellum was sitting on the shelf. Right. Also, it's 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:50.320 bound in goat skin, though it also seems to have 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:53.320 once had a wooden cover based on some of the 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:56.240 details in the manuscript. Yeah, I think it's a different 0:12:56.280 --> 0:12:59.360 binding over the centuries. Now. There used to be some 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.480 theories this was a modern forgery, maybe by the very 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:06.480 book collector it's now named after, who will discuss later on. 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:10.200 But that really seems unlikely now, given that it has 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:13.760 been carbon dated to the fifteenth century. Right now, in 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:17.280 terms of the author, well, that's part of the unknown origins. 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:21.600 Nobody signed it. Yeah, handwriting analysis has suggested as few 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:24.280 as two or many or as many as eight writers, 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:26.880 which of course I wouldn't really be that uncommon for 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:29.559 a you know, a book of this time period. Okay, 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:32.360 but at least the illustrations are signed. Right now, nobody 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:36.040 knows who made the illustrations. Uh, you know, the origin 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:40.120 is ultimately unknown. And when it comes to you know, copies, this, 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:42.719 this is it. This is the one copy of the 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:47.079 Voyage Manuscript. Now we mentioned, of course that Voytage that 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:49.400 what we call it now is the Voyage Manuscript, and 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:52.560 that name comes from a modern person, not from you know, 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:56.040 a medieval person. So what this book was originally called 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:59.319 was well, we don't know, unknown, Yeah, I mean, it's 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:02.240 had various sort of catalog numbers along the way, but 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:05.440 he knows what will come back to. Voytage refers to 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:09.960 Wilfred Michael Vonage. Uh, and it dates back to nineteen twelve. 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:12.839 So given the history of the book, uh cause it's 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:16.560 it's it's current name is relatively recent. I think maybe 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:18.160 we should take a quick break and when we come 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.400 back we can discuss more of the mystery of this 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:27.080 fascinating text. Alright, we're back. So we're talking today about 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:31.560 the Voyage Manuscript, a classic enigmatic text to believe now 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.400 to be from the fifteenth century or so due to 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:37.520 carbon dating. But we don't know who wrote it. We 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:39.600 don't know where it came from. We just know it's 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.360 sort of shows up at one point in history and 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:45.440 then trades hands for a while until it resurfaced around 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:49.240 nineteen twelve. Now, if you have never browsed through this book, 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:52.080 do yourself a favor and just pause the episode and 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:55.400 go do that. Now, a scan of it is of course, 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:57.520 you know, obviously not if you're driving or whatever. But 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:02.680 then just get the audio pot. Oh would that'd be great? 0:15:02.720 --> 0:15:06.640 An audio version of the point, Yeah, amazing, we gotta 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:09.400 cash in on that. But so that you can look 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:11.240 it up on the internet, there's a full scan of 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:13.800 it that's hosted on archive dot org. You can flip 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:15.440 all the way through the book. I would say it 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:18.880 is almost a necessary experience, just the same way that 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.320 if you have the means, you should try to travel 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:24.800 and like expand your mind through seeing other cultures. If 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:27.000 you have the Internet, you should try to expand your 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:30.280 mind through this esoteric document. Yeah, I mean really, this 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:32.000 stuff like this is the reason we have the Internet. 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:33.920 That's the one on the benefits of the Internet is 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:36.080 being able to you know, a document like this can 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:38.400 be accessed by everybody. Yeah, now there are a few 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:40.880 things we can't if we're gonna be chasing the mystery 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:44.400 of who created this document? Can it be translated? What 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.120 does it mean? We should look at a few other 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:51.200 facts about the text itself. So it's in a script 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:54.600 that is clearly written from left to right and from 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:57.600 top to bottom, so much like English or like many 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:00.640 other European languages. But not all languages are like this. 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:03.640 Arabic is not like this, Rudu farci. I mean, there 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:06.920 are a bunch of examples of languages that go from 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:09.520 the right to the left, so it is probably not 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.440 drawing from that kind of tradition unless they just switched 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:14.840 it for no reason. No. Another fact that might seem 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:17.000 interesting to us about the text is that there are 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:20.280 no punctuation marks, But it turns out that's not necessarily 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:22.920 all that interesting. Given the time from which it comes, 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:26.760 because it's extremely common in older documents in many languages 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:29.640 for their not to be punctuation. Another thing is that 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:33.680 there are no chapter markings or subheadings, but based on 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:38.240 the illustrations, it's clear that there are sections that appear 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:41.640 to be about different subjects if they're about anything, and 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:43.120 I think maybe we should talk about some of those 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:45.720 different sections of the manuscript to try to help us 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:48.840 understand it as well. The first half of the book 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:53.960 is the the herbal section, and it's full of botanical illustrations. 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:55.680 You could say that, yeah, I mean, they clearly are 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:58.400 supposed to be plants, but we should stress that while 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:01.840 some of the illustrations of plans look kind of like 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.000 plants you would recognize, I'm not necessarily saying they are 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.120 illustrations of real plants, but they at least look like 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:12.320 terrestrial plants. Some of these illustrations do not look like 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:15.520 terrestrial plants. Some look like green ice snakes from the 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:20.159 methane likes of Titan, or like strange constricter caterpillars from 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:24.520 the heart of a comet. That truly weird alien drawings, 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:27.320 things that are sort of green and look like they 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:31.840 have leaves, but also have what looked like tentacles or eyeballs. Yeah, 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:33.439 they are. They are strange to be held. And this 0:17:33.520 --> 0:17:37.159 is the most normal section of the script. Yeah, it 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:41.760 is so. The German computer scientist Klaus Schmi who wrote 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:45.040 a two thousand eleven article for Skeptical Enquirer about the 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:48.280 Voyage Manuscript. I'm gonna refer back to that article quite 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:51.320 a few times. But but he was writing about this section, 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:54.959 and he writes that none of the illustrations of plants 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.520 in the document have been conclusively identified by botanists, so 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:01.000 nobody has been able to look that and say, yep, 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:05.120 that is definitely a geranium. One theory by the botanist 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:08.720 Hugh O'Neill claimed to have identified two of the illustrations 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:12.080 as the sunflower and the capsicum plant, And of course 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:14.560 capsicum is a genus of plants in the night shade 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:18.360 family that produced peppers. Peppers are great, right, Except peppers 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:22.240 are not European, so both of these plants did not 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:25.560 spread to Europe until after contact with the America's which 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:28.760 would date the document a little bit later. But there 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:32.360 is not a general consensus that O'Neill's identification of these 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:35.159 illustrations is correct. It's just not clear at all that 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:38.440 these are actually drawings of sunflowers and pepper plants. So 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:42.399 generally the botanical section is big old question marks. Some 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:45.040 of them look like they could be real plants, but 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:47.880 there's none you can point to. There there are none 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:49.480 you can point to and say, yep, we know what 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:51.679 that is. Well, this trend kind of continues in the 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:54.720 next section, which is the astrological section, which is full 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:59.520 of circular illustrations that are often interpreted as being perhaps 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:03.280 astra logical in nature. But as as pointed out by 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:07.800 Josephine Livingstone in her New York Or article The Unsolvable 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:11.480 Mysteries of the Vantage Manuscript, of which I'll also refer 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:15.320 back to, she says that to call this section astrological 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:20.360 is generous, yes, because it doesn't. Now, there are illustrations 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:25.520 in it that do seem to correlate to classic astrological imagery, 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:29.320 but then again there are depictions of like astronomical objects 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:32.239 that don't appear to correlate to anything. For about eight 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:34.439 or nine years now, I should just say I've had 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:36.960 a page of the Voytage manuscript pinned up on the 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:38.960 backboard of my desk at work. I don't see it 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:41.960 as much now because now it's under the raised part 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:44.959 of my desk. Um. But it's a it's a page 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:48.639 from what is believed to be the astrological section. Specifically, 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.160 it's a page that just has a bunch of concentric 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:57.320 circles of these untranslatable words between megas looking dudes sitting 0:19:57.320 --> 0:20:00.760 in buckets or dunk tanks or something with stars coming 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:03.600 out of their fingertips, and they're all ringed as if 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:06.679 in reverence, around the figure of a prancing goat with 0:20:06.720 --> 0:20:09.600 a mouthful of green plant matter. And I figured that's 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:13.320 a good enough metaphor, is anything for the work we do? Alright? 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:18.120 The next section is often referred to as the baliological section, right, 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:22.400 and of course that refers to the study or field 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:25.440 of bathing, which if that sounds like, wait a minute, 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:27.640 could there be a field of that? Yeah, medieval text 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:29.439 there were a lot of thoughts about bathing. There were 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:33.399 thoughts about the restorative powers of certain types of waters 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:36.440 or mineral baths and all that kind of stuff. Oh yeah, 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:38.800 I mean it's you know, it's it's an important subject. 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:41.640 You're getting into the issues of hygiene, which of course 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:46.040 influence overall bodily health public health, but also hygiene has 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:49.920 has long been intertwined with our ideas of spiritual purity 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:52.639 as well. Now you might think, okay, well, this section 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:54.280 has got to be kind of normal because it's just 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:58.560 depicting people bathing, right, Bathing can't get that weird? Uh 0:20:58.600 --> 0:21:01.440 It this is maybe the weird section of all Yeah, 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:04.879 because there are all these images of nude female figures 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:09.040 in pools of liquid I mean, or tubs of liquid, 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:13.480 but also possibly like large oversized flowers. And then there's 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:18.359 tubular plumbing that suggests plants or even like viscera of 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:22.760 some sort. Yeah, it's a very strange section of the manuscript. 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:26.280 The writing in this part, I noticed, suddenly gets very dense. 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:28.960 Whereas in previous pages there might have been a large 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:32.679 illustration of the plant and then some small, you know 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:35.160 if some lines of text around it. Here you've got 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:38.159 some densely packed text. And again I want to stress 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:40.639 that some of the illustrations of the section look like 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:43.720 they could be referring to real world objects and practices, 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:46.919 like some appear to just show nude women bathing, maybe 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.119 in mineral baths. Or in streams or in aqueducts or 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:53.680 along waterfalls. But others show things that I don't even 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:56.120 know how to describe. What Like I've got an example 0:21:56.200 --> 0:21:58.600 here for Robert to look at that is it's like 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:02.440 a woman's standing in what looks like a giant instrument 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:06.480 horn that's growing out of something. It's the spreading horn 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:09.560 that I think maybe it's supposed to have water flowing 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:12.280 in it. But then also growing out of this horn 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:17.560 is like this alligator pod that, yeah, I don't know 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:20.639 how to I mean, the sort of green gray brown 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:23.600 with like holes that have water coming out of them, 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:26.879 but like a space tentacle with shower heads like bio 0:22:27.800 --> 0:22:30.560 shower heads coming out of it, with like ridged alligator 0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:34.040 scales on its back, and and yeah, like like lotus 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:37.960 like lotus pods that have water. Yeah, yeah, Like it 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:40.320 almost has kind of like a Susian or even like 0:22:40.680 --> 0:22:43.719 a gigeras quality to it. I was noticing in this 0:22:43.760 --> 0:22:46.600 section how much the Voytage Manuscript, and I think this 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:48.840 is not an accident, how much it reminds me of 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:52.200 another book that I've liked for years, the Codex Seraphninus, 0:22:52.880 --> 0:22:57.399 which is an entirely fictional and intentionally fictional encyclopedia created 0:22:57.400 --> 0:22:59.919 by the Italian artist Luigi Serafini in the late night 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:03.320 teen seventies. I think it was published in nine. Basically, 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:06.640 it is like an artist's attempt to create a new 0:23:06.760 --> 0:23:11.000 voyage manuscript type document. It's got a constructed language, lots 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:15.199 of alien illustrations of plants, animals, objects and processes that 0:23:15.240 --> 0:23:18.719 don't exist on Earth. It's like an encyclopedia from another world. 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:21.920 But that is basically what the voytage manuscript sort of 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:24.520 appears to be. All Right, So we've had plants, We've 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:28.240 had possible charts of the stars and so forth, we've 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:32.040 had weird alien showers, and then at the at the 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:35.520 end here and that this final section is what, according 0:23:35.560 --> 0:23:38.919 to Livingstone, seems to be related to practical instructions for 0:23:39.000 --> 0:23:42.200 the use of the mysterious plants from earlier. It basically 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:44.639 looks like it has recipes at the end. Yeah, And 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:47.320 I think this breaks down into multiple sort of subsections, 0:23:47.400 --> 0:23:49.440 like there it is believed that there're some parts of 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:52.679 it are supposed to be pharmaceutical, like they depict the 0:23:52.720 --> 0:23:55.639 creation of medicines and storage and viols, and other parts 0:23:55.640 --> 0:23:59.400 appear to be about cooking or something. Yeah, so it's 0:23:59.400 --> 0:24:02.120 just as mysteri is the rest of it. But yeah, 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:05.640 but at this point you don't really encounter any illustrations. 0:24:05.680 --> 0:24:10.080 It's more it's more textual in nature. But yeah, so 0:24:10.119 --> 0:24:12.480 this is the book, and the book is is just 0:24:12.560 --> 0:24:14.639 so unique in its style. It does not seem to 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:18.960 have any true surviving peers. It is not cleanly fit 0:24:19.480 --> 0:24:23.040 with late medieval alchemical texts, because certainly there were other 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:25.399 weird texts. Oh yeah, I mean that's something we should 0:24:25.440 --> 0:24:27.680 point out. I mean, if you're thinking, well, how could 0:24:27.800 --> 0:24:31.320 a text be about plants and astrology and bathing and 0:24:31.400 --> 0:24:34.040 hygiene and medicine and cooking all at the same time, 0:24:34.440 --> 0:24:37.240 that's a weird combination of subjects, I would say, Actually, 0:24:37.280 --> 0:24:39.199 this is not unusual at all for the time it 0:24:39.240 --> 0:24:42.840 was written. There were plenty of encyclopedia type documents that 0:24:43.040 --> 0:24:46.119 collected diverse subject matter at the time, and there was 0:24:46.200 --> 0:24:50.320 a general blurring of the lines between science, medicine, magic, 0:24:50.440 --> 0:24:53.760 and household advice. All right, And if you were the 0:24:53.880 --> 0:24:56.560 type of individual that either wrote or contributed to the 0:24:56.560 --> 0:24:58.720 writing of a book, you likely had a lot to 0:24:58.760 --> 0:25:01.760 say about various topics or a lot to crib from 0:25:01.760 --> 0:25:04.440 earlier encyclopedias, and a lot of times what you'll find 0:25:04.440 --> 0:25:07.639 in some of these medieval encyclopedias is a mixture of 0:25:07.800 --> 0:25:12.440 original observations with people like I don't know, reproducing encyclopedia 0:25:12.600 --> 0:25:15.119 entries by plenty or something and just saying like, and 0:25:15.160 --> 0:25:19.200 here's the ancient wisdom of Scipio Africanus. Yeah, I mean 0:25:19.280 --> 0:25:21.560 it comes back to a quote from burn Burno Ecco 0:25:21.640 --> 0:25:23.560 in the name of the roads. The observation that books 0:25:23.560 --> 0:25:26.919 speak to other books, you know that translations from other books, 0:25:26.920 --> 0:25:30.119 ideas from other books. But it does not seem that 0:25:30.160 --> 0:25:32.240 there were there were a lot of books, at least 0:25:32.240 --> 0:25:35.040 books that have survived, you know, that we're speaking to 0:25:35.080 --> 0:25:38.320 the voyage manuscript like it. It does seem to be 0:25:38.359 --> 0:25:41.560 this singular thing that's left out. That's you know, that's 0:25:42.119 --> 0:25:45.280 it doesn't really fit in with manuscripts of the period. Uh. 0:25:45.320 --> 0:25:46.840 You know, it's in many ways it's kind of like 0:25:46.880 --> 0:25:51.240 an outside context book, at least to most of those 0:25:51.280 --> 0:25:55.240 who have viewed it over the last several centuries. Um. 0:25:55.600 --> 0:25:57.960 Of course, to be clear, many books of the past 0:25:58.000 --> 0:26:02.240 were lost, many languages were lost, Whole cultures have perished. 0:26:02.560 --> 0:26:04.560 So just because it's one of a kind now does 0:26:04.560 --> 0:26:07.000 not necessarily mean it was always one of a kind. Yeah, 0:26:07.040 --> 0:26:09.520 there could have been a whole library of voyage type 0:26:09.680 --> 0:26:12.360 books that just all got lost except for this one. 0:26:12.480 --> 0:26:15.640 And then likewise, the context of our texts are always 0:26:15.640 --> 0:26:18.639 fading away. And that's why it's always instructive too. If 0:26:18.640 --> 0:26:21.480 you pick up, say the works of William Shakespeare or uh, 0:26:21.480 --> 0:26:23.119 you know, you pick up a copy of you know, 0:26:23.200 --> 0:26:26.520 Dante is the Divine Comedy, it generally pays off to 0:26:26.600 --> 0:26:29.080 have some sort of reference guide if unless you were 0:26:29.119 --> 0:26:32.040 just schooled, say in Dante's case, in like you know, 0:26:32.080 --> 0:26:36.800 in medieval culture and Italian politics and so forth, like 0:26:36.880 --> 0:26:38.680 you need something to help you make sense of all 0:26:38.680 --> 0:26:42.600 the references, you know, the cultural context, any symbols that 0:26:42.600 --> 0:26:47.560 are trotted out, or the religious context. Yes, uh, in 0:26:47.600 --> 0:26:49.520 a similar case can be it can be made for 0:26:49.520 --> 0:26:51.800 the arts. You know, there are some of the stranger 0:26:51.800 --> 0:26:55.600 works of art from the past. Um, you know, they 0:26:55.680 --> 0:26:59.119 look extra strange to us because we generally don't have 0:26:59.200 --> 0:27:02.119 the same you know, textual understanding for the references and 0:27:02.160 --> 0:27:04.919 for the symbols, uh, you know, symbols and references that 0:27:05.160 --> 0:27:08.000 would have probably been known to the original intended audience, 0:27:08.040 --> 0:27:12.000 like we are not the intended audience of of those works. 0:27:12.480 --> 0:27:15.639 And then I think, along with most theories regarding the 0:27:15.680 --> 0:27:18.160 Vontage Manuscript, you can say that we are certainly not 0:27:18.200 --> 0:27:21.679 the intended audience of it today. Um, though there's at 0:27:21.760 --> 0:27:24.000 least one I don't know, there's at least one theory 0:27:24.040 --> 0:27:26.919 that maybe supports the idea that that the way that 0:27:26.960 --> 0:27:30.040 we are reacting to the Vontage manuscript is appropriate. But 0:27:30.240 --> 0:27:31.919 but we'll get back to that, right. We are going 0:27:31.960 --> 0:27:34.439 to go on to try to parse out the different 0:27:34.480 --> 0:27:37.000 theories that could explain its origin, all right, So I 0:27:37.000 --> 0:27:39.840 wanted to talk about a few more observations about the 0:27:39.880 --> 0:27:43.720 Voytage Manuscript or the Vantage Manuscript. From that article I 0:27:43.720 --> 0:27:47.120 mentioned earlier by from two thousand eleven and Skeptical Inquirer 0:27:47.160 --> 0:27:50.199 by the German computer scientists Claus Schmi, I thought it 0:27:50.240 --> 0:27:53.040 made quite a few good points, and one of the 0:27:53.080 --> 0:27:55.439 most interesting points that made I don't know why this 0:27:55.520 --> 0:27:58.000 stuck out to me so much, but I I suspect 0:27:58.040 --> 0:28:00.840 will end up referring back to it. He pointed out 0:28:01.440 --> 0:28:06.000 that there are no visible corrections in the Voytage manuscript. 0:28:06.600 --> 0:28:10.800 And this is pretty strange for a document produced by hand. 0:28:11.240 --> 0:28:14.239 Think about it. Could you write out a document of 0:28:14.400 --> 0:28:18.960 thirty five thousand words in ink with no mistakes at all, 0:28:19.080 --> 0:28:23.280 no cross throughs or scratch outs. No, I mean yeah, 0:28:23.320 --> 0:28:25.879 I mean it would certainly have. You would have to 0:28:25.880 --> 0:28:28.560 be something that was just so you know, wrote for you, 0:28:28.640 --> 0:28:31.200 that was just so uh, you know, formed in your 0:28:31.200 --> 0:28:33.320 mind that you could just do it without any mistakes, 0:28:33.800 --> 0:28:36.080 or it would have to be something where mistakes didn't matter, 0:28:36.160 --> 0:28:39.440 such as if you were just making it all up exactly. Yeah. 0:28:39.520 --> 0:28:42.160 So I feel like this is a significant point because 0:28:42.440 --> 0:28:45.600 when you look at handwritten or hand copied documents from 0:28:45.600 --> 0:28:48.480 the ancient world, there are tons of emendations. You see, 0:28:48.520 --> 0:28:51.960 word is scratched out or cross through or or fixed. 0:28:52.560 --> 0:28:54.680 I mean this is just common at a time when 0:28:54.720 --> 0:28:57.600 documents were handwritten instead of produced by a printing press 0:28:57.680 --> 0:28:59.360 or a computer. Yeah, it took a lot of time 0:28:59.360 --> 0:29:01.760 to make these, took a lot of skill, and paper 0:29:01.880 --> 0:29:05.960 was expensive. Ink was expensive. Ultimately, if you had to 0:29:06.000 --> 0:29:07.680 cross out of words, you crossed out of work. And 0:29:07.760 --> 0:29:11.480 humans are imperfect copying machines. Now, again, we don't know 0:29:12.120 --> 0:29:15.480 whether the voindage manuscript is an original document and that's 0:29:15.600 --> 0:29:18.280 like the original copy from the author, or it's a 0:29:18.320 --> 0:29:21.960 copy of another document. I would say this, this to 0:29:22.000 --> 0:29:25.240 me very much argues against it being a copy from 0:29:25.280 --> 0:29:29.080 another document, just because, I mean, scribes, scribes make mistakes. 0:29:29.560 --> 0:29:32.240 You're going thirty five thousand words, You're going to make 0:29:32.280 --> 0:29:34.360 some mistakes and end up having to scratch them out 0:29:34.400 --> 0:29:37.560 and rewrite the word. Yeah. So so this would this 0:29:37.600 --> 0:29:39.680 would seem to argue for the idea that this was, 0:29:40.600 --> 0:29:42.600 if not one of a kind, like this was at 0:29:42.680 --> 0:29:45.680 least a singular piece, right, yes, Or it might go 0:29:45.800 --> 0:29:47.840 for one of the theories we'll talk about later on, 0:29:47.880 --> 0:29:50.920 the theory that there is not actually a meaning or 0:29:51.000 --> 0:29:53.480 message in the text. But then again, there are arguments 0:29:53.480 --> 0:29:56.200 against that, so we should not get committed to that. 0:29:56.200 --> 0:29:59.560 That that endpoint. Another thing that she may points out 0:29:59.640 --> 0:30:02.040 is that people have tried to source the book by 0:30:02.040 --> 0:30:05.240 looking at the astrological imagery in it, but this hasn't 0:30:05.280 --> 0:30:08.160 really turned up anything solid either. But a great note 0:30:08.320 --> 0:30:12.400 he has that some researchers believe to identify illustrations in 0:30:12.440 --> 0:30:17.280 the book as Andromeda like or as Andromeda fog like 0:30:17.320 --> 0:30:20.440 the galaxy Andromeda or as the PLI E d s. 0:30:20.520 --> 0:30:23.640 But again he says that this is just it's speculation, 0:30:23.720 --> 0:30:26.200 kind of like the botanical thing, you know, where somebody 0:30:26.200 --> 0:30:28.600 looks at an illustration and says, I think that could 0:30:28.640 --> 0:30:31.360 be a capsicum plant, that could be a pepper, but 0:30:31.840 --> 0:30:34.400 it's not clear enough that other scholars look at it 0:30:34.440 --> 0:30:36.760 and say, yeah, that's definitely what it is. And this 0:30:36.800 --> 0:30:39.360 is touching on a trend that will continue to discuss. 0:30:39.480 --> 0:30:42.520 And I mean this in the in a completely non magical, 0:30:42.920 --> 0:30:46.719 non speculative way, right, But it does seem to be 0:30:46.800 --> 0:30:51.120 the case that the longer you stare at the Advantage manuscript, 0:30:51.120 --> 0:30:53.479 the longer you deal with it, the more likely you 0:30:53.520 --> 0:30:56.000 are to find connections, the more likely you are to 0:30:56.080 --> 0:31:01.120 see things. It's certainly encourages the conspue oratorial cast of 0:31:01.160 --> 0:31:05.160 mind or the well, I don't know. Again, there's a 0:31:05.240 --> 0:31:06.960 nice way to frame that, in a in a bad 0:31:06.960 --> 0:31:08.800 way to frame that, like when when you want to 0:31:08.840 --> 0:31:10.960 make connections between things. I mean, on one hand, I 0:31:11.000 --> 0:31:13.040 feel like that's something I love doing on this show, 0:31:13.520 --> 0:31:16.800 is making a connection you might not have expected between 0:31:16.880 --> 0:31:19.840 one idea or one thing and another, right, And it's 0:31:19.880 --> 0:31:22.680 how we solve that's how we figure out so many 0:31:22.760 --> 0:31:26.880 ancient uh, you know, works of art or works of literature, 0:31:27.040 --> 0:31:29.880 to go back to the Rosetta stone. That is how 0:31:29.920 --> 0:31:32.800 we eventually were able to do to solve the riddle 0:31:32.880 --> 0:31:35.960 of Egyptian hieroglyphics. So yeah, this is the exercise of 0:31:36.000 --> 0:31:41.840 figuring things out. But the Vontage manuscript seems remarkably resistant 0:31:42.040 --> 0:31:45.080 to such unraveling. Well right, I mean, and it seems 0:31:45.120 --> 0:31:49.280 to encourage a perhaps unhealthy type of obsession also where 0:31:49.640 --> 0:31:52.200 I mean, if you take this principle of making connections 0:31:52.240 --> 0:31:55.160 too far, of course, where you end up is conspiracy 0:31:55.200 --> 0:32:00.360 theory world right, like you're just finding crazy coincidences between things, 0:32:00.440 --> 0:32:03.320 or you even get into numerology. You know, oh it 0:32:03.320 --> 0:32:06.360 looks it looks like there are you know, seventeen line 0:32:06.400 --> 0:32:09.080 breaks on this page, and and that corresponds to the 0:32:09.160 --> 0:32:12.040 number of wounds on Christ in this painting or something. 0:32:12.200 --> 0:32:14.920 You know, that that kind of thing where you can 0:32:15.080 --> 0:32:18.320 find connections if you are determined to find connections, no 0:32:18.360 --> 0:32:21.480 matter how tenuous the link. Anyway, So to get back 0:32:21.520 --> 0:32:24.160 to uh, a few of these observations that I noted 0:32:24.200 --> 0:32:28.840 from Schmid's analysis. One is that the clothing and hairstyles 0:32:28.880 --> 0:32:31.840 worn by the people in the illustrations in the voyage 0:32:31.880 --> 0:32:35.120 manuscript seem to date the document to Europe in the 0:32:35.200 --> 0:32:38.720 period of about fourteen fifty to fifteen twenty, but it's 0:32:38.720 --> 0:32:41.760 hard to be sure. But this is something that that 0:32:41.920 --> 0:32:44.160 is done with other documents sometimes, like if you look 0:32:44.200 --> 0:32:47.080 at the illustrations of people, what they're wearing, how they 0:32:47.080 --> 0:32:50.000 wear their hair, that will tend to correlate to certain 0:32:50.080 --> 0:32:53.280 styles from certain periods in places in history. A. Schmidt 0:32:53.320 --> 0:32:55.920 points out that the average word length in the document 0:32:56.000 --> 0:32:59.320 is about four to five letters, and this doesn't help 0:32:59.400 --> 0:33:01.960 us a whole lot because that could be consistent with 0:33:02.000 --> 0:33:04.920 a number of European languages. It just sort of makes 0:33:04.920 --> 0:33:08.040 it look like, yes, this is plausibly a language, but 0:33:08.280 --> 0:33:10.320 there there are some other things, Like one is that 0:33:10.400 --> 0:33:15.280 it has fewer recurring words uh than would appear to 0:33:15.320 --> 0:33:17.840 be expected for a natural language, And this sort of 0:33:17.920 --> 0:33:21.360 argues against the idea of the text being a simple 0:33:21.520 --> 0:33:24.640 letter substitution. But then again, maybe if it is a 0:33:24.680 --> 0:33:27.200 real language, or if it is something in code, it's 0:33:27.240 --> 0:33:30.800 not a simple letter substitution. Maybe it's a more complex 0:33:30.840 --> 0:33:34.440 type of cipher. But ultimately, Schmai concludes that no theory 0:33:34.480 --> 0:33:37.720 has held up under scrutiny yet, which is a great 0:33:37.720 --> 0:33:41.840 place to be because now we get to discuss them absolutely. 0:33:41.920 --> 0:33:44.120 So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take another break, 0:33:44.160 --> 0:33:46.760 and when we come back, we're gonna first take us 0:33:46.800 --> 0:33:50.360 to take us through the known history of the Vantage Manuscript, 0:33:50.400 --> 0:33:52.960 like when when it first occurs, and some of the 0:33:53.040 --> 0:33:55.560 key points in history that we're we're you know, relatively 0:33:55.600 --> 0:33:59.880 sure of. Okay, alright, we're back, all right. So, as 0:34:00.000 --> 0:34:03.640 we've mentioned before, we don't know who created the Voantage Manuscript. 0:34:03.680 --> 0:34:05.760 That is one of the great mysteries. We don't know 0:34:05.800 --> 0:34:08.719 who wrote it. We don't know if it was the original, 0:34:08.760 --> 0:34:11.320 if the version we have now is the original copy, 0:34:11.440 --> 0:34:13.360 or if it's a copy of something. We don't know 0:34:13.400 --> 0:34:17.399 for sure. But some point in history this document just 0:34:17.560 --> 0:34:20.160 shows up and and I guess that's where we should 0:34:20.239 --> 0:34:22.080 dive in. So we're going to dive in in the 0:34:22.120 --> 0:34:26.120 sixteenth century. Right, the year is fifty six, and this 0:34:26.160 --> 0:34:29.280 is when the manuscript first pops up in the court 0:34:29.480 --> 0:34:33.480 of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph the Second of Bohemia, who, 0:34:33.520 --> 0:34:37.040 by my most accounts, was an eccentric monarch, which is 0:34:37.200 --> 0:34:39.520 it's not hard to be an ecentric monarch. Monarchy tends 0:34:39.560 --> 0:34:43.480 to invite eccentricity, and uh and but but this is 0:34:43.560 --> 0:34:47.680 an individual who's very interested in the occult, in alchemy 0:34:47.760 --> 0:34:51.200 and kept a great library, and I've also read was 0:34:51.200 --> 0:34:54.520 was very fascinated by by giants and dwarves as well. Yeah, 0:34:54.600 --> 0:34:58.880 he apparently collected little people. That seems like a strange 0:34:58.960 --> 0:35:02.480 kind of medieval monarch fascination. I guess Renaissance monarch here. Ye. 0:35:02.600 --> 0:35:04.319 So in many ways is weird as a weird guy, 0:35:04.320 --> 0:35:07.040 but he's also sort of the character that you would 0:35:07.080 --> 0:35:12.440 expect from a medieval monarch. So the this document shows 0:35:12.520 --> 0:35:16.600 up in his possession right and the we're not sure 0:35:16.840 --> 0:35:20.440 who sold it to him, but the the the unknown 0:35:20.440 --> 0:35:26.280 seller sold it for six hundred gold. Duckets and duckets 0:35:26.320 --> 0:35:29.880 are docts cats. I think it's gonna be duckets. Duckets. 0:35:30.000 --> 0:35:34.040 I like thinking doct do cats? Yeah, well I always 0:35:34.040 --> 0:35:36.879 I always think ducketts. So six hundred, six hundred gold 0:35:36.920 --> 0:35:40.799 anyway to put it more like dungeons and dragons level. Now, 0:35:40.920 --> 0:35:44.440 this came with like a certificate of authenticity, right, Yeah, 0:35:44.520 --> 0:35:46.680 essentially it came with a letter stating that it was 0:35:46.719 --> 0:35:51.520 written by Roger Bacon. Roger Bacon, as we already alluded to, UH, 0:35:51.800 --> 0:35:57.400 was Franciscan Friar who lived twelve nineteen through twelve two roughly, 0:35:57.480 --> 0:36:00.320 and uh. He was also said to be a wizard. 0:36:01.040 --> 0:36:04.000 Of course, this is kind of common with with learned individuals, 0:36:04.040 --> 0:36:06.640 and you know of that time, right like later on 0:36:06.760 --> 0:36:09.000 their stories about them, they not only were they learned, 0:36:09.280 --> 0:36:11.960 but perhaps they had powers as well well. As we've 0:36:12.000 --> 0:36:14.720 discussed on the show many times, in the medieval period 0:36:14.760 --> 0:36:17.319 and the Renaissance period, there was a significant amount of 0:36:17.320 --> 0:36:20.640 blurring between the lines of science and magic. People who 0:36:20.680 --> 0:36:24.879 were genuinely making scientific observations about the world and about 0:36:24.960 --> 0:36:28.960 natural phenomena also sometimes believed in demonology and and just 0:36:29.040 --> 0:36:32.560 kind of like grouped all this knowledge together. Yeah, but 0:36:32.680 --> 0:36:35.600 at any rate, Bacon was an individual who in many 0:36:35.600 --> 0:36:37.399 ways he was an early advocate of what would become 0:36:37.440 --> 0:36:41.880 the scientific methodism. Yeah. The on the other hand, you know, 0:36:41.920 --> 0:36:46.160 he was also interested in codes and secrets and uh, 0:36:46.520 --> 0:36:50.400 and certainly later on became very associated with the occult, 0:36:50.440 --> 0:36:53.520 became sort of a focus of of occult interest. Now 0:36:53.560 --> 0:36:56.759 we've already mentioned that modern scholars do not think that 0:36:56.840 --> 0:36:59.800 the Vointage Manuscript was written by Roger Bacon, and it 0:37:00.000 --> 0:37:03.080 also seems almost conclusively argued against by the carbon dating 0:37:03.120 --> 0:37:05.879 of it, which put it in the fifteenth century, right, 0:37:05.960 --> 0:37:08.239 I mean, I guess, I mean about the only thing 0:37:08.239 --> 0:37:10.640 you could make a case for would be what if 0:37:10.719 --> 0:37:12.640 Roger Bacon had written it and this was like a 0:37:12.680 --> 0:37:16.040 copy of that text, and but then we lost all 0:37:16.160 --> 0:37:20.400 references to the original, you know, more leaps of of 0:37:20.440 --> 0:37:24.760 believability there. But in anyway, yeah, pretty pretty much nobody 0:37:24.840 --> 0:37:26.920 is saying that Bacon had anything to do with the 0:37:27.000 --> 0:37:30.400 Vantage Manuscript other than him being cited in this letter 0:37:30.440 --> 0:37:34.760 that accompanied it on sale to the Holy Roll Roman Emperor. 0:37:34.840 --> 0:37:36.600 So it would be like if you showed up with 0:37:36.640 --> 0:37:39.480 a document and you know, it's a weird document that 0:37:39.480 --> 0:37:43.279 nobody can read, and you just said, George Washington wrote this. 0:37:43.760 --> 0:37:45.719 You can easily see how attaching the name of a 0:37:45.760 --> 0:37:48.200 famous person to something could make the could get you 0:37:48.239 --> 0:37:50.600 more money for it. So Rudolph the Second was, you know, 0:37:50.680 --> 0:37:53.120 the type of individual who was you know, very excited 0:37:53.239 --> 0:37:56.600 to to obtain this document. He probably put some of 0:37:56.640 --> 0:37:59.279 his best minds to figuring it out, but nobody was 0:37:59.320 --> 0:38:02.560 able to crack it. He was a sixteenth century reditor. Definitely, 0:38:03.680 --> 0:38:06.160 he's on the case, but but nobody was able to 0:38:06.160 --> 0:38:08.520 figure it out. You know, it alluded experts of the time, 0:38:08.600 --> 0:38:11.960 just as it has always alluded to experts. So he 0:38:12.160 --> 0:38:15.360 it ends up being passed on uh to a botanist 0:38:15.800 --> 0:38:20.319 by the name of jacob Um Horriki. I think the 0:38:20.400 --> 0:38:25.880 Latin name would be uh Jacobus Sinapius. But it was 0:38:25.920 --> 0:38:28.520 passed on to a botanist essentially because it does contain 0:38:28.560 --> 0:38:32.640 a number of what seemed to be botanical illustrations. And 0:38:32.680 --> 0:38:36.200 then the botanist keeps it for twenty years uh. And 0:38:36.400 --> 0:38:39.920 during this time, Rudolph himself dies in sixteen twelve, and 0:38:39.960 --> 0:38:42.040 then the book passes on to an unknown person who 0:38:42.120 --> 0:38:44.680 keeps it for yet another twenty years. And then in 0:38:44.719 --> 0:38:48.200 the sixteen twenties, the book enters the possession of Athanaceous Kircher, 0:38:48.640 --> 0:38:52.480 who lives sixteen two through sixtight. And this is this 0:38:52.520 --> 0:38:56.960 is another just fascinating character. A German scholar and polly 0:38:57.040 --> 0:39:01.239 math who who also set out to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics 0:39:01.239 --> 0:39:05.080 at one point, and his assumptions ended up being incorrect, 0:39:05.120 --> 0:39:09.520 but he actually made some correct connections between the Egyptian 0:39:09.560 --> 0:39:13.440 hieroglyphics in the in the Coptic languages. He also studied 0:39:13.640 --> 0:39:18.080 Chinese language as well as various artificial languages. His letters 0:39:18.120 --> 0:39:20.600 show that he was quite interested in this particular book 0:39:21.080 --> 0:39:24.600 acquired prior to obtaining it, but then five years after 0:39:24.640 --> 0:39:28.600 acquiring it, he published a Universal Study of Artificial Languages 0:39:28.840 --> 0:39:32.520 and apparently makes no mention of the Manage Manuscript. So 0:39:32.600 --> 0:39:36.680 presumably it perplexed him, just as it perplexed so many others. 0:39:36.680 --> 0:39:39.680 That's interesting. So he's interested in this book, he's interested 0:39:39.680 --> 0:39:43.200 in artificial languages. That would make it seem like either 0:39:43.400 --> 0:39:46.960 he did not conclude that this was an artificial language, 0:39:47.320 --> 0:39:49.520 or that he had to stay silent about it for 0:39:49.560 --> 0:39:52.279 some reason. Well, and this is just my take. I 0:39:52.320 --> 0:39:56.200 wonder I would think that maybe another reason would be 0:39:56.239 --> 0:39:59.120 if he could not figure it out, Like he didn't 0:39:59.120 --> 0:40:01.160 mention it, because who wants to be the expert on 0:40:01.239 --> 0:40:04.799 artificial languages and say, you know I couldn't crack this, well, right, 0:40:04.800 --> 0:40:07.600 he could have the Isaac Newton mentality, where you know 0:40:07.640 --> 0:40:10.680 Isaac Newton said, like, here's what I've figured out as 0:40:10.719 --> 0:40:13.080 for these other as for the cause of gravity, the 0:40:13.160 --> 0:40:16.520 underlying cause. He just said, I do not feign hypotheses. 0:40:17.280 --> 0:40:20.239 Now you can kind of respect that. Now I do 0:40:20.280 --> 0:40:22.920 think it's something we should come back and discuss artificial 0:40:22.960 --> 0:40:25.840 languages at some point on the show, because it is 0:40:25.840 --> 0:40:28.799 is fascinating to to realize that here's this book on 0:40:29.200 --> 0:40:31.360 the study of artificial languages, and of course this is 0:40:31.400 --> 0:40:35.399 centuries before you know, we encountered cling On or doth 0:40:35.480 --> 0:40:40.000 Racki or any of the or Esperanto. So it would 0:40:40.000 --> 0:40:41.560 be fun to come back to that. Well, I've actually 0:40:41.560 --> 0:40:45.160 thought about the idea of covering artificially invented languages on 0:40:45.239 --> 0:40:47.799 Invention on our other podcast. That would be a good one. 0:40:47.840 --> 0:40:50.480 So keep keep an eye out over there. Invention, the 0:40:50.480 --> 0:40:52.440 other podcast that we do. You can find it at 0:40:52.440 --> 0:40:56.040 an engine pod dot com. Uh, you can subscribe wherever 0:40:56.239 --> 0:40:59.080 you subscribe to your podcast. It is uh, it is 0:40:59.200 --> 0:41:01.960 human Techno His Street, One invention at a time. All right, 0:41:02.000 --> 0:41:05.520 So Athanasious Kircher, He's got the Vointage manuscript and what 0:41:05.640 --> 0:41:07.959 happens to it? Then, well, he has it for a while, 0:41:07.960 --> 0:41:09.839 but then he becomes a Jesuit monk and he gives 0:41:09.840 --> 0:41:13.279 away all of his earthly possessions, which includes his books 0:41:13.320 --> 0:41:16.360 and so his his library, and the Vontage manuscript itself 0:41:16.680 --> 0:41:20.440 lands in the library of a Jesuit seminary, which I 0:41:20.480 --> 0:41:24.160 believe it is a Collegio Romano, just south of Rome, 0:41:24.200 --> 0:41:26.600 and it remains there for something like two hundred and 0:41:26.600 --> 0:41:31.400 fifty years. Though according to Livingstone, the book quote appears 0:41:31.440 --> 0:41:34.759 to have bounced around Prague for a while. In sixty nine, 0:41:34.760 --> 0:41:39.160 a person named uh Barcius described it as a is 0:41:39.239 --> 0:41:42.160 quote a certain riddle of the Sphinx, a piece of 0:41:42.200 --> 0:41:45.960 writing and unknown characters unquote, and guests that quote the 0:41:46.000 --> 0:41:49.600 whole thing is medical unquote. The book's historical trail vanishes 0:41:49.640 --> 0:41:53.080 in sixteen seventy up until the time that Vantage purchased it. 0:41:53.280 --> 0:41:55.239 And that's from that New Yorker article. Yes, that's from 0:41:55.239 --> 0:41:57.920 the New Yorker piece. Okay, So then we get up 0:41:57.960 --> 0:42:00.640 to the twentieth century and this is it shows up 0:42:00.640 --> 0:42:05.799 with the guy actually named Voyage, yet another fascinating weird 0:42:05.840 --> 0:42:08.160 individual to enter into the history. And we haven't even 0:42:08.200 --> 0:42:10.960 covered some of the other weird individuals that factor into 0:42:10.960 --> 0:42:13.600 its history. So it ends up in the sort of 0:42:13.600 --> 0:42:17.280 along with a purchase of other books in the hands 0:42:17.320 --> 0:42:21.400 of this eccentric book dealer named Wilfred Michael Voynage, Yeah, 0:42:21.440 --> 0:42:25.040 who lived eighteen sixty five through nineteen thirty And yeah, 0:42:25.040 --> 0:42:28.399 he publishes the entire library and uh and it ends 0:42:28.480 --> 0:42:31.400 up being moved to America. And this of course includes 0:42:31.520 --> 0:42:36.000 the book that would take his name. So yeah, Polish born. 0:42:36.120 --> 0:42:38.520 He's an interesting fellow to say the least. He knew. 0:42:38.560 --> 0:42:41.880 He allegedly knew twenty different languages. Was at one point 0:42:41.920 --> 0:42:46.719 investigated by the FBI for possessing Bacon cipher, an actual cipher, 0:42:46.760 --> 0:42:49.720 for creating coded message that was devised by Roger Bacon 0:42:49.800 --> 0:42:52.960 just to bring Roger Bacon back into everything. And he 0:42:53.040 --> 0:42:56.520 even apparently sold a forgery to the British Museum at 0:42:56.560 --> 0:42:59.839 one point, though perhaps by accident. Yeah, there there are 0:43:00.160 --> 0:43:04.040 whole story. He was a very well traveled, adventuring individual. 0:43:04.360 --> 0:43:05.759 At some point, I think he was sent to a 0:43:05.800 --> 0:43:10.080 prison in Siberia for his political activities. Uh. He somehow 0:43:10.239 --> 0:43:14.200 escaped to England at some point and became a book collector. 0:43:14.600 --> 0:43:18.720 In that h that Josephine Livingstone article, she talks about 0:43:18.760 --> 0:43:22.360 this story that he would he would delight in showing 0:43:22.400 --> 0:43:25.439 off his wounds to people, and he would like lift 0:43:25.520 --> 0:43:27.840 his shirt up and he would say here by sword, 0:43:27.880 --> 0:43:33.560 here by bullet. But yeah, so Voinice is a really 0:43:33.600 --> 0:43:37.160 interesting guy. And at one point in hyping his manuscript, 0:43:37.160 --> 0:43:40.520 this is also quoted in in Josphine Livingstone's piece, he 0:43:40.600 --> 0:43:43.120 was talking to the times and he said, when the 0:43:43.200 --> 0:43:46.160 time comes, I will prove to the world that the 0:43:46.200 --> 0:43:49.960 black magic of the Middle Ages consisted in discoveries far 0:43:50.040 --> 0:43:54.040 in advance of twentieth century science. And I think speaks 0:43:54.080 --> 0:43:57.239 to a certain kind of attitude that documents like this 0:43:57.719 --> 0:44:01.399 inspire and other historical mystery reads all kinds of things, 0:44:01.480 --> 0:44:04.680 you know, the anti kate through a mechanism or untranslated documents. 0:44:04.719 --> 0:44:08.400 Anytime you've got this object from history that seems to 0:44:08.800 --> 0:44:13.360 contain information or learning or indicate information or learning, but 0:44:13.440 --> 0:44:16.719 it's not fully solved at the time people are looking 0:44:16.760 --> 0:44:19.360 at it, it tends to to make people want to 0:44:19.360 --> 0:44:23.920 go toward these almost conspiracy theory level ideas of like 0:44:24.080 --> 0:44:28.160 lost knowledge and and you know, like like ancient aliens 0:44:28.200 --> 0:44:31.320 kind of territory. Why do we have such a tendency 0:44:31.360 --> 0:44:33.840 in those directions like why why is it? Why are 0:44:33.840 --> 0:44:38.040 our brains wired to go to that conclusion rather than like, oh, 0:44:38.120 --> 0:44:40.759 here's a strange document in code. Well, I mean, I 0:44:40.760 --> 0:44:42.759 guess at one level, you know, we look to the 0:44:42.760 --> 0:44:46.000 modern age and we we we had we tend to 0:44:46.480 --> 0:44:50.880 regard our current scientific, technological understanding the world is superior 0:44:50.920 --> 0:44:55.080 to that of the past. Um, you know, by and large, 0:44:55.120 --> 0:44:57.400 I mean, certainly there are areas where and we've discussed 0:44:57.440 --> 0:44:58.920 some of these in the show, where we can point 0:44:58.920 --> 0:45:02.880 to things in the modern world that are perhaps inferior 0:45:02.920 --> 0:45:04.840 to ways of dealing with things in the past, you know, 0:45:04.880 --> 0:45:09.040 generally things that are more cultural or interpersonal. Uh. But 0:45:09.080 --> 0:45:10.560 we we tend to think, you know, when it comes 0:45:10.600 --> 0:45:13.719 to like figuring out how the world works, especially in 0:45:13.719 --> 0:45:16.000 the natural world, like today is the day, and then 0:45:16.080 --> 0:45:18.640 never have we had a greater understanding. And yet at 0:45:18.640 --> 0:45:21.160 the same time, there are things that we do not 0:45:21.360 --> 0:45:24.280 understand about the world yet. And there are things, particularly 0:45:24.320 --> 0:45:28.239 details from the past, details from history, that we can 0:45:28.320 --> 0:45:31.000 never fully understand, you know, that are going to just 0:45:31.120 --> 0:45:34.960 remain you know, gaps essentially gaps in the fossil records 0:45:35.080 --> 0:45:39.680 of of our literary and historical legacy. I've said this 0:45:39.719 --> 0:45:41.840 on the show before, but I remain committed to to 0:45:41.960 --> 0:45:46.239 a middle position here between the sort of the condescending 0:45:46.280 --> 0:45:49.040 modern idea that looks at the past and says ancient 0:45:49.080 --> 0:45:51.880 and medieval people's they were just stupid, they didn't know anything, 0:45:52.360 --> 0:45:54.279 versus the one on the other hand, that tends toward 0:45:54.360 --> 0:45:57.480 believing in some lost golden age, you know, ancient loss 0:45:57.560 --> 0:46:00.640 knowledge that far surpasses our own. I think the reality 0:46:00.760 --> 0:46:04.440 is that it's not like there's an ancient lost Golden age. 0:46:04.480 --> 0:46:07.359 There wasn't an Atlantis where they had flying cars and 0:46:07.360 --> 0:46:10.120 stuff like that. It's more like that people in the 0:46:10.160 --> 0:46:14.040 past were struggling with limitations that we don't face. They 0:46:14.080 --> 0:46:16.319 had they didn't have the technology we have, but they 0:46:16.360 --> 0:46:19.560 were also incredibly smart. They were super clever and came 0:46:19.640 --> 0:46:22.920 up with amazing workarounds and methods for things using the 0:46:22.960 --> 0:46:25.279 limited technology they have. This is what I always think about, 0:46:25.280 --> 0:46:29.160 you know, the classic construction of the Pyramids example. It's like, no, 0:46:29.280 --> 0:46:32.000 it doesn't mean that they had like alien technology. Just 0:46:32.040 --> 0:46:34.319 means that, like, these are smart people and they had 0:46:34.360 --> 0:46:36.960 to figure out how to solve big problems with limited tools. 0:46:37.280 --> 0:46:39.759 I think also we sometimes fall into this trap of 0:46:39.800 --> 0:46:44.320 thinking thinking about the you know, our modern world's contemplation 0:46:44.360 --> 0:46:47.120 of the past is kind of a battle between the 0:46:47.239 --> 0:46:49.840 present and past, Like the past is an enemy to 0:46:49.840 --> 0:46:52.640 be defeated in our attempt to understand it, and they 0:46:52.680 --> 0:46:54.680 kind of make an adversary out of it. And I 0:46:54.719 --> 0:46:57.000 guess part of that is maybe, like you know, maybe 0:46:57.000 --> 0:46:59.200 this part of it is just found in all cultures 0:46:59.239 --> 0:47:02.280 where the past is something an enemy to be overcome. 0:47:02.320 --> 0:47:04.719 Maybe it's part of the colonial legacy, or maybe it's 0:47:04.719 --> 0:47:07.840 because of Indiana Jones, you know, with uh, you know, 0:47:07.960 --> 0:47:11.160 this idea of somebody like like physically combating the past 0:47:11.200 --> 0:47:14.240 in order to acquire its secrets. And then if something 0:47:14.320 --> 0:47:18.560 is resistant to this assault, then it must it must 0:47:18.600 --> 0:47:21.160 have some sort of secret knowledge. It must there must 0:47:21.160 --> 0:47:24.120 be something more than like the fault cannot be our own. 0:47:24.160 --> 0:47:27.880 It must be some hidden power of the past. That's interesting. 0:47:28.040 --> 0:47:30.280 All right, Well, we gotta get back to what happened 0:47:30.280 --> 0:47:32.440 to the Voytage manuscript, all right. So it was in 0:47:32.520 --> 0:47:36.000 Vonic's possession, and then he dies and it passes to 0:47:36.040 --> 0:47:38.879 his widow, Ethel, and he died in nineteen thirty, yes, 0:47:39.040 --> 0:47:41.960 nine thirty, and then it passes from Ethel to a 0:47:41.960 --> 0:47:44.680 close friend who then sells the book to an anti 0:47:44.840 --> 0:47:48.319 antique book dealer by the name of hands P. Krauss 0:47:48.360 --> 0:47:51.719 in nineteen sixty one. So Krauss, he tries to find 0:47:51.760 --> 0:47:54.520 a buyer for the book but cannot find a suitable buyer. 0:47:54.719 --> 0:47:57.680 What nobody wanted it? Well, maybe not for his price. Yeah, 0:47:57.719 --> 0:47:59.080 I don't know the details. I don't know if he 0:47:59.120 --> 0:48:01.080 was maybe if he was asking too much, or he 0:48:01.120 --> 0:48:03.880 wanted to sell it to the right type of collector, 0:48:03.920 --> 0:48:07.040 I mean, who knows, but not somebody who's gonna chop 0:48:07.080 --> 0:48:10.239 it up and make make voytage manuscript sausage out of it. 0:48:10.440 --> 0:48:12.200 I don't know. I mean he ends up donating it 0:48:12.239 --> 0:48:15.960 to get Yale University in nine nine. So without without 0:48:16.000 --> 0:48:18.359 knowing the details of a cross myself, and perhaps there's 0:48:18.400 --> 0:48:20.719 better documentation out there, you know, I would presume it 0:48:20.800 --> 0:48:22.839 was a situation of where he's like, I can't sell 0:48:22.880 --> 0:48:25.040 it to the type of client, you know, the type 0:48:25.080 --> 0:48:28.000 of purchaser I want, so I'll sell it to Yale. 0:48:28.080 --> 0:48:30.440 Or perhaps he reached the point where he's he realized 0:48:30.440 --> 0:48:33.760 like this book is is a truly fascinating historical specimen. 0:48:34.000 --> 0:48:36.560 It does not belong in the hands of you know, 0:48:36.760 --> 0:48:38.520 a rare occult book. It doesn't need to be in 0:48:38.560 --> 0:48:42.359 another rare book dealers antique stash. It needs to be 0:48:42.960 --> 0:48:45.279 with a university. All right. Well, I guess that sort 0:48:45.320 --> 0:48:47.719 of brings us up to the modern period in which 0:48:47.800 --> 0:48:51.120 there's been an enormous amount of scholarship on the Voyage Manuscript, 0:48:51.120 --> 0:48:54.800 of people trying to both to to translate it or 0:48:54.880 --> 0:48:59.040 decrypt it, which in some ways are similar jobs, or 0:48:59.120 --> 0:49:01.600 people trying to to figure out what it means or 0:49:01.640 --> 0:49:04.680 where it came from, who wrote it. A lot of 0:49:04.719 --> 0:49:08.160 these mysteries remain, and there have been huge, hugely interesting 0:49:08.200 --> 0:49:11.239 attempts to solve these questions over the decades. But on 0:49:11.320 --> 0:49:13.680 that note, we're actually gonna have to call this episode 0:49:13.719 --> 0:49:16.560 and return in a second episode where we'll get into 0:49:17.000 --> 0:49:20.520 these various attempts to unravel the manuscript. In the meantime, 0:49:20.600 --> 0:49:22.360 you can check out other episodes of Stuff Toblew Your 0:49:22.360 --> 0:49:24.839 Mind at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. You 0:49:24.880 --> 0:49:28.160 can also, of course find this podcast wherever you get 0:49:28.200 --> 0:49:31.480 your podcasts. Wherever you do find us, make sure that 0:49:31.480 --> 0:49:33.520 you rate and review us. That really helps us out. 0:49:33.960 --> 0:49:36.560 And uh, you know, if you want to discuss this 0:49:36.640 --> 0:49:41.719 episode with other users, other listeners. There's actually a Facebook 0:49:42.000 --> 0:49:46.040 discussion group called the discussion modules stuff to Blow your 0:49:46.040 --> 0:49:48.600 Mind Discussion Module that's kind of a fun place to 0:49:48.680 --> 0:49:50.880 check out. Hey, have you subscribed to our other podcast, 0:49:50.960 --> 0:49:54.360 Invention yet. If not, go subscribe to Invention. Subscribe to 0:49:54.440 --> 0:49:58.360 Invention huge. 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