1
00:00:04,320 --> 00:00:07,280
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.

2
00:00:07,440 --> 00:00:10,480
Speaker 1: Dave's here in spirit. So that's a short stuff quorum.

3
00:00:10,520 --> 00:00:13,960
Speaker 1: That's all you need. And this is short stuff. That's right,

4
00:00:14,640 --> 00:00:17,520
Speaker 1: and we're here. We're here to dispel the rumor that

5
00:00:17,960 --> 00:00:23,120
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus discovered America. That's so old. That is pretty old.

6
00:00:23,239 --> 00:00:25,400
Speaker 1: Are we really going to talk about that? No, No,

7
00:00:25,520 --> 00:00:27,080
Speaker 1: we don't have to do that. That was definitely a

8
00:00:27,120 --> 00:00:30,200
Speaker 1: two thousand eightish two thousand nine is kind of thing

9
00:00:30,240 --> 00:00:32,560
Speaker 1: to say. But what are we going to dispel? Well,

10
00:00:32,720 --> 00:00:35,800
Speaker 1: so I think one of the things we should at

11
00:00:35,880 --> 00:00:38,800
Speaker 1: least say, because not everybody knows this is like the

12
00:00:38,880 --> 00:00:45,160
Speaker 1: first Europeans definitively to reach North America. We're the Vikings.

13
00:00:45,920 --> 00:00:47,239
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people know that, but not

14
00:00:47,320 --> 00:00:50,839
Speaker 1: everybody knows that, Chuck. Not everybody knows that there's a

15
00:00:50,960 --> 00:00:53,880
Speaker 1: Viking settlement that was discovered. I think they suspected for

16
00:00:53,920 --> 00:00:56,200
Speaker 1: a long time because I think in the North Sagas

17
00:00:56,520 --> 00:01:00,000
Speaker 1: they basically said, yeah, we made it to Newfoundland, um

18
00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:03,280
Speaker 1: that the Vikings actually had made it to North America.

19
00:01:03,320 --> 00:01:05,880
Speaker 1: And then finally in the sixties, I think they found

20
00:01:05,880 --> 00:01:10,720
Speaker 1: a real deal bona fide, totally incontrovertible Viking settlement from

21
00:01:10,760 --> 00:01:14,280
Speaker 1: about one thousand CE at a place called Lanceo Meadows,

22
00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:17,240
Speaker 1: which I've always wanted to go to because I've always

23
00:01:17,280 --> 00:01:20,440
Speaker 1: wanted to go to to Newfoundland for one, but to

24
00:01:20,480 --> 00:01:24,120
Speaker 1: see like a Viking settlement in America would just that

25
00:01:24,160 --> 00:01:26,920
Speaker 1: would be something else that would be great. We could

26
00:01:26,959 --> 00:01:30,920
Speaker 1: go berserker, right, take a bunch of shrooms, get a

27
00:01:30,920 --> 00:01:34,399
Speaker 1: battle axe. Yeah, and and then celebrate the fact that

28
00:01:34,440 --> 00:01:38,479
Speaker 1: they were the very controvertibly, the very first Europeans to

29
00:01:38,480 --> 00:01:42,600
Speaker 1: touch that soil. And that's I was gonna wrap up

30
00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:45,840
Speaker 1: short stuff. You're right, there is a chance that the

31
00:01:45,959 --> 00:01:48,240
Speaker 1: Vikings were even beat So the Vikings would have beat

32
00:01:48,400 --> 00:01:51,920
Speaker 1: the age of exploration by about five hundred years. There's

33
00:01:51,920 --> 00:01:57,200
Speaker 1: a theory, and it's got some legs conceivably that somebody

34
00:01:57,200 --> 00:02:00,960
Speaker 1: else beat the Vikings by five years themselves, and that

35
00:02:01,160 --> 00:02:04,720
Speaker 1: some sometime in about the sixth century showed up somewhere

36
00:02:04,720 --> 00:02:08,880
Speaker 1: in North America. And who was that? Chuck the Oirish

37
00:02:08,919 --> 00:02:11,280
Speaker 1: And I don't buy this, but I think it's a

38
00:02:11,320 --> 00:02:14,320
Speaker 1: great story. You don't buy it, and now I think

39
00:02:14,360 --> 00:02:17,960
Speaker 1: it is folklore. But we'll we'll talk about it anyway,

40
00:02:17,960 --> 00:02:20,400
Speaker 1: because it is a fun story. But in the sixth century,

41
00:02:21,240 --> 00:02:26,200
Speaker 1: as the story legend tail goes, St. Brendan was an

42
00:02:26,200 --> 00:02:31,239
Speaker 1: Irish monk, very good sailor and seafair, uh very what

43
00:02:31,440 --> 00:02:38,760
Speaker 1: saley saintly, saintly and saley. Yeah, supposedly undertook this this voyage,

44
00:02:38,840 --> 00:02:43,320
Speaker 1: a joyous voyage of joyage, and with some fellow monks

45
00:02:43,919 --> 00:02:46,840
Speaker 1: and went looking for paradise, the land of promise of

46
00:02:46,840 --> 00:02:50,880
Speaker 1: the Saints, And after seven years came upon what he

47
00:02:50,960 --> 00:02:54,919
Speaker 1: thought was this place, an island so vast that they

48
00:02:55,000 --> 00:02:57,080
Speaker 1: did not reach the far shore after forty days of

49
00:02:57,120 --> 00:02:59,360
Speaker 1: walking the head a river that was too wide to

50
00:02:59,360 --> 00:03:03,640
Speaker 1: be crossed, a forested, wooded land with lush fruits, and

51
00:03:03,880 --> 00:03:06,639
Speaker 1: he and the fellows filled their boats full of gems

52
00:03:06,680 --> 00:03:10,280
Speaker 1: and returned home. So the Irish found it first, Yeah,

53
00:03:10,360 --> 00:03:12,440
Speaker 1: And I mean, like, if you like he ain't talking

54
00:03:12,480 --> 00:03:15,040
Speaker 1: about the Azores, you can definitely walk across them in

55
00:03:15,120 --> 00:03:18,760
Speaker 1: forty days. There's not a lot of islands in between

56
00:03:19,320 --> 00:03:24,160
Speaker 1: Ireland and North America, so it's really not clear. Uh

57
00:03:24,520 --> 00:03:28,560
Speaker 1: you know what same Brendan was talking about where he went,

58
00:03:29,080 --> 00:03:31,680
Speaker 1: and he wasn't like a dummy. He didn't accidentally stumble

59
00:03:31,760 --> 00:03:34,440
Speaker 1: onto Europe like he sailed to Europe before. He was

60
00:03:34,480 --> 00:03:39,080
Speaker 1: like a skilled navigator. So he is assumed as presumed

61
00:03:39,200 --> 00:03:42,640
Speaker 1: to know have known enough that he knew what direction

62
00:03:42,680 --> 00:03:44,760
Speaker 1: he was traveling in and that this really was like

63
00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:48,360
Speaker 1: an all new place that that that his kind had

64
00:03:48,400 --> 00:03:52,080
Speaker 1: never set foot in before. That's right. And in the

65
00:03:52,200 --> 00:03:57,160
Speaker 1: ninth century, so several hundred years later, there was an

66
00:03:57,480 --> 00:04:01,320
Speaker 1: this account, actual an account of this sir fist called

67
00:04:01,840 --> 00:04:08,560
Speaker 1: Travels of St. Brendan Uh Navigatio sancti brendani magna carta

68
00:04:08,760 --> 00:04:11,000
Speaker 1: master charge. If you take the bus, we all take

69
00:04:11,040 --> 00:04:13,640
Speaker 1: the bus. Uh. It was a big hit. It was

70
00:04:13,640 --> 00:04:17,880
Speaker 1: translated into a bunch of languages, and um, you know,

71
00:04:18,040 --> 00:04:19,800
Speaker 1: it was the account of the journey. They are all

72
00:04:19,800 --> 00:04:23,760
Speaker 1: sorts of crazy things in here, which, um, maybe we

73
00:04:23,800 --> 00:04:26,280
Speaker 1: should save that for the second half because that's where

74
00:04:26,279 --> 00:04:29,080
Speaker 1: it falls apart a bit with me. But should we

75
00:04:29,080 --> 00:04:32,200
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the vikings, uh, maybe lending

76
00:04:32,240 --> 00:04:36,200
Speaker 1: some support to this idea? Sure? Yeah, Um, so the

77
00:04:37,440 --> 00:04:40,560
Speaker 1: North have those sagas that I was talking about right

78
00:04:40,760 --> 00:04:43,200
Speaker 1: where it's basically like we did this, this is neat,

79
00:04:43,279 --> 00:04:46,280
Speaker 1: this is cool. Here's something else we did, and there's

80
00:04:46,320 --> 00:04:49,039
Speaker 1: like a lot of um, there's a lot of uh

81
00:04:49,080 --> 00:04:52,400
Speaker 1: like cre credulity to it, Like there's it's not just

82
00:04:52,480 --> 00:04:55,840
Speaker 1: like um Norse mythology, that's almost like a separate thing,

83
00:04:55,839 --> 00:04:59,280
Speaker 1: although it's definitely intertwined. Like they they think that these

84
00:04:59,320 --> 00:05:02,160
Speaker 1: are actual historical documents in a lot of cases, or

85
00:05:02,200 --> 00:05:06,920
Speaker 1: at least have a large kernel of historicity in them.

86
00:05:06,920 --> 00:05:10,440
Speaker 1: And so in those sagas they talked about arriving in

87
00:05:10,560 --> 00:05:14,159
Speaker 1: Greenland around a thousand see, around the same time they

88
00:05:14,160 --> 00:05:17,720
Speaker 1: would have set up the place in Newfoundland, um, and

89
00:05:17,800 --> 00:05:21,719
Speaker 1: finding Irish missions that were already there. It's a little odd.

90
00:05:21,760 --> 00:05:24,640
Speaker 1: And and also we should say the Norse were familiar

91
00:05:24,680 --> 00:05:27,200
Speaker 1: with the Irish already, so they would have known in

92
00:05:27,279 --> 00:05:31,599
Speaker 1: Irish mission if they came upon an Irish mission. Yeah. Sure,

93
00:05:31,800 --> 00:05:34,440
Speaker 1: So that that would suggest that the Irish beat them

94
00:05:34,480 --> 00:05:38,599
Speaker 1: to Greenland at least, which is pretty pretty significant. Yeah.

95
00:05:38,680 --> 00:05:41,800
Speaker 1: There was another saga where they talked about meeting some

96
00:05:41,839 --> 00:05:44,880
Speaker 1: of the Native Americans who already had seen white men.

97
00:05:44,920 --> 00:05:48,120
Speaker 1: They're like, we know guys like you, and we've encountered

98
00:05:48,120 --> 00:05:49,920
Speaker 1: guys sort of like you. They were dressed in white

99
00:05:49,920 --> 00:05:53,440
Speaker 1: and they came from Land across from their own or

100
00:05:53,800 --> 00:05:56,920
Speaker 1: our own I guess if I'm in character. And then

101
00:05:56,960 --> 00:05:59,520
Speaker 1: there was a third saga that talks about the Norse

102
00:05:59,640 --> 00:06:03,560
Speaker 1: encountering a tribe of Native Americans who spoke a language

103
00:06:03,560 --> 00:06:06,560
Speaker 1: that even sounded like Irish. Right, So a lot of

104
00:06:06,560 --> 00:06:08,640
Speaker 1: little clues here. Yeah, these are recorded by the North

105
00:06:08,720 --> 00:06:13,039
Speaker 1: and they definitely do suggest that there was possibly some

106
00:06:13,279 --> 00:06:16,200
Speaker 1: Irish who made their way over to the New World

107
00:06:16,240 --> 00:06:19,680
Speaker 1: before the Vikings even did. But like you said, there

108
00:06:19,839 --> 00:06:22,240
Speaker 1: is a lot of um. There's a heaping helping of

109
00:06:22,279 --> 00:06:25,960
Speaker 1: folklore along with all of this, and for people like you, Chuck,

110
00:06:26,040 --> 00:06:29,520
Speaker 1: it breaks down everything. I like to hold out hope

111
00:06:29,560 --> 00:06:32,239
Speaker 1: that this is possible and true. And let's talk about

112
00:06:32,240 --> 00:07:08,080
Speaker 1: it a little more after these commercial breaks. All right,

113
00:07:08,560 --> 00:07:13,840
Speaker 1: we're in a divided camp. How divided? Uh? This is

114
00:07:13,880 --> 00:07:17,720
Speaker 1: when the petroglyph comes in. Barry Fell, who was a

115
00:07:17,760 --> 00:07:23,680
Speaker 1: marine biologist at Havid University, found some petroglyphs, which are

116
00:07:24,800 --> 00:07:29,920
Speaker 1: rock carved writings in West Virginia, and he said, you

117
00:07:29,960 --> 00:07:33,280
Speaker 1: know what these are. This is ogam script. This is

118
00:07:33,400 --> 00:07:36,480
Speaker 1: this is an Irish alphabet and it was used from

119
00:07:36,520 --> 00:07:38,960
Speaker 1: the sixth to the eighth century. And I even think

120
00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:40,920
Speaker 1: I know what it's saying. They're talking about the Christian

121
00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:47,880
Speaker 1: Nativity write on a rock, sure, and that's Irish, clearly, Uh,

122
00:07:47,920 --> 00:07:51,800
Speaker 1: it's not, you know, from Native Americans. And Fell said, here,

123
00:07:51,840 --> 00:07:54,000
Speaker 1: everyone take a look at this stuff. And the academic

124
00:07:54,040 --> 00:07:57,440
Speaker 1: world said, I don't know about that. I don't even

125
00:07:57,480 --> 00:08:00,440
Speaker 1: know if this, I don't know about your methods is

126
00:08:00,440 --> 00:08:05,400
Speaker 1: definitely not a fact, I said, aren't you a marine biologists? Exactly?

127
00:08:06,400 --> 00:08:10,880
Speaker 1: And this could be ogam script, but it's really not

128
00:08:10,960 --> 00:08:16,480
Speaker 1: proving anything. No, so the the it's still not definitively

129
00:08:16,560 --> 00:08:19,720
Speaker 1: been shown. Who wrote that. It's called the Horse Creek

130
00:08:19,800 --> 00:08:24,600
Speaker 1: petroglyphs near Clear Fork, West Virginia, UM And they don't

131
00:08:24,760 --> 00:08:28,640
Speaker 1: know who wrote it. But I think the local um

132
00:08:29,240 --> 00:08:33,160
Speaker 1: Archaeological Society came out and said it's pretty racist to

133
00:08:33,200 --> 00:08:37,479
Speaker 1: assume that rather than the local indigenous people leaving these petroglyphs,

134
00:08:37,480 --> 00:08:41,840
Speaker 1: that it was some mythical Irish um monk who made

135
00:08:41,840 --> 00:08:45,040
Speaker 1: his way over here allegedly rather than the people we

136
00:08:45,120 --> 00:08:48,840
Speaker 1: know we're here in this area at that time. UM.

137
00:08:48,960 --> 00:08:52,559
Speaker 1: But regardless of whether that's the case or not, like

138
00:08:52,640 --> 00:08:54,559
Speaker 1: no one has said, oh, well, it was these people

139
00:08:54,559 --> 00:08:56,880
Speaker 1: and this is what it said, So there's still definitely

140
00:08:56,920 --> 00:08:59,960
Speaker 1: room for speculation. But from what I understand, there's there's

141
00:09:00,320 --> 00:09:03,640
Speaker 1: virtually no academic who who believes that this is in

142
00:09:03,720 --> 00:09:06,560
Speaker 1: fact ogham script, and even if it is an ogam,

143
00:09:06,640 --> 00:09:10,720
Speaker 1: that it doesn't necessarily talk about the Nativity, so we

144
00:09:10,760 --> 00:09:14,040
Speaker 1: can kind of discard that as evidence, like there's there's

145
00:09:14,120 --> 00:09:18,520
Speaker 1: not certainly not in controvertible evidence of Irish presence because

146
00:09:18,520 --> 00:09:22,319
Speaker 1: of that those petroglyphs. Yeah, and where it follows apart

147
00:09:22,440 --> 00:09:25,560
Speaker 1: for me, but not not. I've been thinking about it,

148
00:09:26,120 --> 00:09:29,280
Speaker 1: maybe not completely. Is when you start to look at

149
00:09:29,320 --> 00:09:33,320
Speaker 1: the account the Navagaccio, the Travels of St. Brendan, which

150
00:09:33,360 --> 00:09:36,920
Speaker 1: was the account of his voyage, it is it is

151
00:09:37,040 --> 00:09:40,720
Speaker 1: really out there and wacky. It talks about an island

152
00:09:40,720 --> 00:09:44,800
Speaker 1: with an Ethiopian devil, an island with monks who celebrated

153
00:09:44,880 --> 00:09:48,200
Speaker 1: Christmas who were just there. Uh, they fought a griffin

154
00:09:48,400 --> 00:09:52,480
Speaker 1: at one point and killed a griffin, um, all kinds

155
00:09:52,520 --> 00:09:55,640
Speaker 1: of fantastical stuff. They went to one island and set

156
00:09:55,720 --> 00:09:57,840
Speaker 1: up camp and then it turned out, oh, my goodness,

157
00:09:57,920 --> 00:10:00,400
Speaker 1: is not an island. We're actually on a giant whale.

158
00:10:00,640 --> 00:10:03,839
Speaker 1: So let's hold communion so let's have communion. I don't

159
00:10:03,880 --> 00:10:05,240
Speaker 1: know if that was where the communion was. It was

160
00:10:05,280 --> 00:10:07,440
Speaker 1: a bunch of whale stuff, but they definitely held communion

161
00:10:07,760 --> 00:10:09,160
Speaker 1: on a whale at some point. It might have been

162
00:10:09,200 --> 00:10:11,640
Speaker 1: that chapter. But it's kind of crazy stuff. And I

163
00:10:11,640 --> 00:10:14,880
Speaker 1: started looking into it. There were what it is is

164
00:10:14,920 --> 00:10:18,280
Speaker 1: an Irish im ram, which were the seventh and eighth

165
00:10:18,360 --> 00:10:23,000
Speaker 1: century uh seafaring adventure tales written by the Irish, and

166
00:10:23,920 --> 00:10:27,199
Speaker 1: it fits in with that, and so I immediately dismissed.

167
00:10:27,240 --> 00:10:29,199
Speaker 1: I was like, no, this is just an uh m

168
00:10:29,280 --> 00:10:31,400
Speaker 1: rom and it's you know, it's just made up. But

169
00:10:31,480 --> 00:10:34,280
Speaker 1: I thought, well, maybe not. Maybe it took the style

170
00:10:34,520 --> 00:10:38,040
Speaker 1: of that because that was what was popular, and maybe

171
00:10:38,040 --> 00:10:40,720
Speaker 1: it really did happen, but it just they gussies it

172
00:10:40,800 --> 00:10:43,800
Speaker 1: up with these fantastical tales. They dressed it up. Yeah.

173
00:10:43,840 --> 00:10:47,400
Speaker 1: And then Navogaccio was written about two to three hundred

174
00:10:47,520 --> 00:10:51,079
Speaker 1: years after St. Brennan would have lived, right, so it

175
00:10:51,160 --> 00:10:54,760
Speaker 1: certainly wasn't his own account of it. But the it's

176
00:10:54,760 --> 00:10:57,679
Speaker 1: almost like, to me, it's almost like Hamilton's Like if

177
00:10:57,679 --> 00:11:00,920
Speaker 1: you came along and saw Hamilton's the musical, You're like,

178
00:11:01,000 --> 00:11:05,960
Speaker 1: this is ridiculous. They didn't rap right. Um, You're like,

179
00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:07,880
Speaker 1: there's a larger point to and that there was a

180
00:11:07,960 --> 00:11:11,640
Speaker 1: person named Alexander and Alexander Hamilton's he did do these things,

181
00:11:11,760 --> 00:11:13,640
Speaker 1: you know, but it is dressed up to make it

182
00:11:13,720 --> 00:11:17,640
Speaker 1: palatable or understandable to people at the time and then embellished.

183
00:11:17,679 --> 00:11:20,719
Speaker 1: I'm sure, although I don't think Alexander Hamilton's would have

184
00:11:20,760 --> 00:11:23,640
Speaker 1: given commune on the back of a whale. Um, but

185
00:11:23,720 --> 00:11:26,440
Speaker 1: it's still in the same ballpark. And to me, just

186
00:11:26,480 --> 00:11:30,040
Speaker 1: because somebody came along and dressed it up with with folklore,

187
00:11:30,080 --> 00:11:34,000
Speaker 1: clearly folklore doesn't mean that there's It doesn't remove the

188
00:11:34,040 --> 00:11:36,839
Speaker 1: possibility that there is a lot of kernels of truth

189
00:11:36,920 --> 00:11:39,760
Speaker 1: still in there somewhere. Yeah, I kind of, I kind

190
00:11:39,760 --> 00:11:42,160
Speaker 1: of got there during the last eight minutes. I'm glad

191
00:11:42,160 --> 00:11:46,080
Speaker 1: about that. What is interesting is one of the things

192
00:11:46,120 --> 00:11:48,280
Speaker 1: that they kind of used to say no, this probably

193
00:11:48,280 --> 00:11:51,800
Speaker 1: couldn't have happened was the fact that the sailing technology

194
00:11:51,800 --> 00:11:53,840
Speaker 1: at the time, the boating technology that he would have

195
00:11:53,920 --> 00:11:57,880
Speaker 1: likely used is this little boat called a curoc and

196
00:11:58,200 --> 00:12:00,800
Speaker 1: it a see you are are a c h and

197
00:12:01,440 --> 00:12:04,080
Speaker 1: it's this you know, it's a it's a homemade boat.

198
00:12:04,240 --> 00:12:07,080
Speaker 1: Basically made out of wood with an ox hide and

199
00:12:07,160 --> 00:12:10,000
Speaker 1: like tar and stuff to put it together. And they're like,

200
00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:11,440
Speaker 1: there's no way this guy could have made it that

201
00:12:11,520 --> 00:12:16,720
Speaker 1: far in one of these crocs, and in UH, an author,

202
00:12:16,760 --> 00:12:19,600
Speaker 1: an adventurer named Tim Severin, said, you know what, I'm

203
00:12:19,600 --> 00:12:21,920
Speaker 1: going to see if this is possible, And he built

204
00:12:21,920 --> 00:12:24,560
Speaker 1: one of those, supposedly in the style that they would

205
00:12:24,559 --> 00:12:27,520
Speaker 1: have built them back then, and he retraced that route

206
00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:30,920
Speaker 1: that Brendan is believed to have taken from Ireland to

207
00:12:30,960 --> 00:12:36,040
Speaker 1: Iceland and Greenland and eventually Newfoundland, and he made it. Yeah,

208
00:12:37,240 --> 00:12:40,959
Speaker 1: he showed it is entirely possible. And again this this

209
00:12:41,160 --> 00:12:43,920
Speaker 1: same Brendan was supposed to be a very skilled navigator.

210
00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:49,480
Speaker 1: So it's possible at least that that that happened if

211
00:12:49,520 --> 00:12:54,079
Speaker 1: sing Brendan actually did exist. Like many stuff you should know,

212
00:12:54,120 --> 00:12:57,000
Speaker 1: shorties the ends with a big shoulder shrug, a big

213
00:12:57,040 --> 00:13:04,080
Speaker 1: shoulder shrug, puffy question mark with a heart for the dot. Amen. Uh.

214
00:13:04,200 --> 00:13:07,360
Speaker 1: And by the way, you can read this article um

215
00:13:07,360 --> 00:13:10,360
Speaker 1: that we found on how stuff works. I wrote it

216
00:13:10,480 --> 00:13:13,920
Speaker 1: myself back in the day and with that short Stuff

217
00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:19,760
Speaker 1: is out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of

218
00:13:19,800 --> 00:13:23,120
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit

219
00:13:23,160 --> 00:13:26,280
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen

220
00:13:26,320 --> 00:13:30,000
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. H