Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Speaker 1: Dave's here in spirit. So that's a short stuff quorum.
Speaker 1: That's all you need. And this is short stuff. That's right,
Speaker 1: and we're here. We're here to dispel the rumor that
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus discovered America. That's so old. That is pretty old.
Speaker 1: Are we really going to talk about that? No, No,
Speaker 1: we don't have to do that. That was definitely a
Speaker 1: two thousand eightish two thousand nine is kind of thing
Speaker 1: to say. But what are we going to dispel? Well,
Speaker 1: so I think one of the things we should at
Speaker 1: least say, because not everybody knows this is like the
Speaker 1: first Europeans definitively to reach North America. We're the Vikings.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people know that, but not
Speaker 1: everybody knows that, Chuck. Not everybody knows that there's a
Speaker 1: Viking settlement that was discovered. I think they suspected for
Speaker 1: a long time because I think in the North Sagas
Speaker 1: they basically said, yeah, we made it to Newfoundland, um
Speaker 1: that the Vikings actually had made it to North America.
Speaker 1: And then finally in the sixties, I think they found
Speaker 1: a real deal bona fide, totally incontrovertible Viking settlement from
Speaker 1: about one thousand CE at a place called Lanceo Meadows,
Speaker 1: which I've always wanted to go to because I've always
Speaker 1: wanted to go to to Newfoundland for one, but to
Speaker 1: see like a Viking settlement in America would just that
Speaker 1: would be something else that would be great. We could
Speaker 1: go berserker, right, take a bunch of shrooms, get a
Speaker 1: battle axe. Yeah, and and then celebrate the fact that
Speaker 1: they were the very controvertibly, the very first Europeans to
Speaker 1: touch that soil. And that's I was gonna wrap up
Speaker 1: short stuff. You're right, there is a chance that the
Speaker 1: Vikings were even beat So the Vikings would have beat
Speaker 1: the age of exploration by about five hundred years. There's
Speaker 1: a theory, and it's got some legs conceivably that somebody
Speaker 1: else beat the Vikings by five years themselves, and that
Speaker 1: some sometime in about the sixth century showed up somewhere
Speaker 1: in North America. And who was that? Chuck the Oirish
Speaker 1: And I don't buy this, but I think it's a
Speaker 1: great story. You don't buy it, and now I think
Speaker 1: it is folklore. But we'll we'll talk about it anyway,
Speaker 1: because it is a fun story. But in the sixth century,
Speaker 1: as the story legend tail goes, St. Brendan was an
Speaker 1: Irish monk, very good sailor and seafair, uh very what
Speaker 1: saley saintly, saintly and saley. Yeah, supposedly undertook this this voyage,
Speaker 1: a joyous voyage of joyage, and with some fellow monks
Speaker 1: and went looking for paradise, the land of promise of
Speaker 1: the Saints, And after seven years came upon what he
Speaker 1: thought was this place, an island so vast that they
Speaker 1: did not reach the far shore after forty days of
Speaker 1: walking the head a river that was too wide to
Speaker 1: be crossed, a forested, wooded land with lush fruits, and
Speaker 1: he and the fellows filled their boats full of gems
Speaker 1: and returned home. So the Irish found it first, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean, like, if you like he ain't talking
Speaker 1: about the Azores, you can definitely walk across them in
Speaker 1: forty days. There's not a lot of islands in between
Speaker 1: Ireland and North America, so it's really not clear. Uh
Speaker 1: you know what same Brendan was talking about where he went,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't like a dummy. He didn't accidentally stumble
Speaker 1: onto Europe like he sailed to Europe before. He was
Speaker 1: like a skilled navigator. So he is assumed as presumed
Speaker 1: to know have known enough that he knew what direction
Speaker 1: he was traveling in and that this really was like
Speaker 1: an all new place that that that his kind had
Speaker 1: never set foot in before. That's right. And in the
Speaker 1: ninth century, so several hundred years later, there was an
Speaker 1: this account, actual an account of this sir fist called
Speaker 1: Travels of St. Brendan Uh Navigatio sancti brendani magna carta
Speaker 1: master charge. If you take the bus, we all take
Speaker 1: the bus. Uh. It was a big hit. It was
Speaker 1: translated into a bunch of languages, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: it was the account of the journey. They are all
Speaker 1: sorts of crazy things in here, which, um, maybe we
Speaker 1: should save that for the second half because that's where
Speaker 1: it falls apart a bit with me. But should we
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the vikings, uh, maybe lending
Speaker 1: some support to this idea? Sure? Yeah, Um, so the
Speaker 1: North have those sagas that I was talking about right
Speaker 1: where it's basically like we did this, this is neat,
Speaker 1: this is cool. Here's something else we did, and there's
Speaker 1: like a lot of um, there's a lot of uh
Speaker 1: like cre credulity to it, Like there's it's not just
Speaker 1: like um Norse mythology, that's almost like a separate thing,
Speaker 1: although it's definitely intertwined. Like they they think that these
Speaker 1: are actual historical documents in a lot of cases, or
Speaker 1: at least have a large kernel of historicity in them.
Speaker 1: And so in those sagas they talked about arriving in
Speaker 1: Greenland around a thousand see, around the same time they
Speaker 1: would have set up the place in Newfoundland, um, and
Speaker 1: finding Irish missions that were already there. It's a little odd.
Speaker 1: And and also we should say the Norse were familiar
Speaker 1: with the Irish already, so they would have known in
Speaker 1: Irish mission if they came upon an Irish mission. Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: So that that would suggest that the Irish beat them
Speaker 1: to Greenland at least, which is pretty pretty significant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was another saga where they talked about meeting some
Speaker 1: of the Native Americans who already had seen white men.
Speaker 1: They're like, we know guys like you, and we've encountered
Speaker 1: guys sort of like you. They were dressed in white
Speaker 1: and they came from Land across from their own or
Speaker 1: our own I guess if I'm in character. And then
Speaker 1: there was a third saga that talks about the Norse
Speaker 1: encountering a tribe of Native Americans who spoke a language
Speaker 1: that even sounded like Irish. Right, So a lot of
Speaker 1: little clues here. Yeah, these are recorded by the North
Speaker 1: and they definitely do suggest that there was possibly some
Speaker 1: Irish who made their way over to the New World
Speaker 1: before the Vikings even did. But like you said, there
Speaker 1: is a lot of um. There's a heaping helping of
Speaker 1: folklore along with all of this, and for people like you, Chuck,
Speaker 1: it breaks down everything. I like to hold out hope
Speaker 1: that this is possible and true. And let's talk about
Speaker 1: it a little more after these commercial breaks. All right,
Speaker 1: we're in a divided camp. How divided? Uh? This is
Speaker 1: when the petroglyph comes in. Barry Fell, who was a
Speaker 1: marine biologist at Havid University, found some petroglyphs, which are
Speaker 1: rock carved writings in West Virginia, and he said, you
Speaker 1: know what these are. This is ogam script. This is
Speaker 1: this is an Irish alphabet and it was used from
Speaker 1: the sixth to the eighth century. And I even think
Speaker 1: I know what it's saying. They're talking about the Christian
Speaker 1: Nativity write on a rock, sure, and that's Irish, clearly, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not, you know, from Native Americans. And Fell said, here,
Speaker 1: everyone take a look at this stuff. And the academic
Speaker 1: world said, I don't know about that. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if this, I don't know about your methods is
Speaker 1: definitely not a fact, I said, aren't you a marine biologists? Exactly?
Speaker 1: And this could be ogam script, but it's really not
Speaker 1: proving anything. No, so the the it's still not definitively
Speaker 1: been shown. Who wrote that. It's called the Horse Creek
Speaker 1: petroglyphs near Clear Fork, West Virginia, UM And they don't
Speaker 1: know who wrote it. But I think the local um
Speaker 1: Archaeological Society came out and said it's pretty racist to
Speaker 1: assume that rather than the local indigenous people leaving these petroglyphs,
Speaker 1: that it was some mythical Irish um monk who made
Speaker 1: his way over here allegedly rather than the people we
Speaker 1: know we're here in this area at that time. UM.
Speaker 1: But regardless of whether that's the case or not, like
Speaker 1: no one has said, oh, well, it was these people
Speaker 1: and this is what it said, So there's still definitely
Speaker 1: room for speculation. But from what I understand, there's there's
Speaker 1: virtually no academic who who believes that this is in
Speaker 1: fact ogham script, and even if it is an ogam,
Speaker 1: that it doesn't necessarily talk about the Nativity, so we
Speaker 1: can kind of discard that as evidence, like there's there's
Speaker 1: not certainly not in controvertible evidence of Irish presence because
Speaker 1: of that those petroglyphs. Yeah, and where it follows apart
Speaker 1: for me, but not not. I've been thinking about it,
Speaker 1: maybe not completely. Is when you start to look at
Speaker 1: the account the Navagaccio, the Travels of St. Brendan, which
Speaker 1: was the account of his voyage, it is it is
Speaker 1: really out there and wacky. It talks about an island
Speaker 1: with an Ethiopian devil, an island with monks who celebrated
Speaker 1: Christmas who were just there. Uh, they fought a griffin
Speaker 1: at one point and killed a griffin, um, all kinds
Speaker 1: of fantastical stuff. They went to one island and set
Speaker 1: up camp and then it turned out, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: is not an island. We're actually on a giant whale.
Speaker 1: So let's hold communion so let's have communion. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that was where the communion was. It was
Speaker 1: a bunch of whale stuff, but they definitely held communion
Speaker 1: on a whale at some point. It might have been
Speaker 1: that chapter. But it's kind of crazy stuff. And I
Speaker 1: started looking into it. There were what it is is
Speaker 1: an Irish im ram, which were the seventh and eighth
Speaker 1: century uh seafaring adventure tales written by the Irish, and
Speaker 1: it fits in with that, and so I immediately dismissed.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, this is just an uh m
Speaker 1: rom and it's you know, it's just made up. But
Speaker 1: I thought, well, maybe not. Maybe it took the style
Speaker 1: of that because that was what was popular, and maybe
Speaker 1: it really did happen, but it just they gussies it
Speaker 1: up with these fantastical tales. They dressed it up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then Navogaccio was written about two to three hundred
Speaker 1: years after St. Brennan would have lived, right, so it
Speaker 1: certainly wasn't his own account of it. But the it's
Speaker 1: almost like, to me, it's almost like Hamilton's Like if
Speaker 1: you came along and saw Hamilton's the musical, You're like,
Speaker 1: this is ridiculous. They didn't rap right. Um, You're like,
Speaker 1: there's a larger point to and that there was a
Speaker 1: person named Alexander and Alexander Hamilton's he did do these things,
Speaker 1: you know, but it is dressed up to make it
Speaker 1: palatable or understandable to people at the time and then embellished.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, although I don't think Alexander Hamilton's would have
Speaker 1: given commune on the back of a whale. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's still in the same ballpark. And to me, just
Speaker 1: because somebody came along and dressed it up with with folklore,
Speaker 1: clearly folklore doesn't mean that there's It doesn't remove the
Speaker 1: possibility that there is a lot of kernels of truth
Speaker 1: still in there somewhere. Yeah, I kind of, I kind
Speaker 1: of got there during the last eight minutes. I'm glad
Speaker 1: about that. What is interesting is one of the things
Speaker 1: that they kind of used to say no, this probably
Speaker 1: couldn't have happened was the fact that the sailing technology
Speaker 1: at the time, the boating technology that he would have
Speaker 1: likely used is this little boat called a curoc and
Speaker 1: it a see you are are a c h and
Speaker 1: it's this you know, it's a it's a homemade boat.
Speaker 1: Basically made out of wood with an ox hide and
Speaker 1: like tar and stuff to put it together. And they're like,
Speaker 1: there's no way this guy could have made it that
Speaker 1: far in one of these crocs, and in UH, an author,
Speaker 1: an adventurer named Tim Severin, said, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: going to see if this is possible, And he built
Speaker 1: one of those, supposedly in the style that they would
Speaker 1: have built them back then, and he retraced that route
Speaker 1: that Brendan is believed to have taken from Ireland to
Speaker 1: Iceland and Greenland and eventually Newfoundland, and he made it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he showed it is entirely possible. And again this this
Speaker 1: same Brendan was supposed to be a very skilled navigator.
Speaker 1: So it's possible at least that that that happened if
Speaker 1: sing Brendan actually did exist. Like many stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: shorties the ends with a big shoulder shrug, a big
Speaker 1: shoulder shrug, puffy question mark with a heart for the dot. Amen. Uh.
Speaker 1: And by the way, you can read this article um
Speaker 1: that we found on how stuff works. I wrote it
Speaker 1: myself back in the day and with that short Stuff
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