Unlocking The Secrets Of Ancient Manuscripts | Our History

in the blue ridge mountains of virginia is this treasure hunter about to claim his bounty does this ancient slab of viking writing mean america was born in minnesota and could this coded book reveal the elixir of life like all old buildings the dutch house near my home in colombo hides many secrets amassed over three centuries since the days when the dutch were the rulers of this much colonized island within these walls the dutch stored this piece of paper which must have been classified as top secret it's a treaty they signed with the local rulers in the version the dutch made public they agreed to destroy all the forts in the island but in this one which was for dutch eyes only there's no mention of any such promise and the dutch of course held onto the forts and to power we wanted to read both versions of this treaty to find the truth of the matter but all over the world there are writings inscriptions coded communications mysterious maps and weird manuscripts which are fascinated obsessed and usually frustrated the experts who have tried to crack their secrets in this fairy tale castle deep in the forests of southern germany kirsten siva hopes to find the key to the world's most controversial map but across the atlantic in washington dc dr bob mcgee contests her solution to the mystery they disagree over this piece of parchment known as the finland map it's claimed to be the first documentary proof that the vikings discovered america in the far west this scrap of land can only be north america its outline matches the newfoundland coast but the map has been dated to 1440 50 years before columbus set sail in the top left hand corner an inscription says that the map is based on information passed down from viking explorers [Music] on columbus day 1965 yale university announced it had bought the map an outcry ensued from the first there were those who doubted the map's authenticity and demanded to know its history but this man lawrence whitton who sold the map to yale would not explain where it came from tess proved the parchment was medieval but scientists disagree about the age of the ink archaeologist bob mcgee rests his case on historical facts he believes the map may well be genuine well the norse were quite expert at navigating east west across the atlantic along single lines of latitude so the latitude of locations would be the type of information which we can see being very carefully passed on to later generations of sailors and this information would have been available to european map makers of the time and if we look at the latitudes of the finland configuration on this map and compare them with those of europe it's quite remarkable how they do line up if we look at the southern tip of finland and go across to europe we come to brittany or the northern end of the bay of biscay here and if we look at a modern map across here from the northern end of the bay of biscay and go west we find that it matches almost exactly the southern tip of newfoundland now the northern tip of newfoundland matches with about the south coast of ireland and if we go back to the finland map and look at this first big inlet and measure across uh to europe we find that it matches with the south coast of ireland so this configuration from baya biscay up to the south coast of ireland correlates very nicely with the island of newfoundland it's known that the vikings did reach north america in the 1960s archaeologists found the remains of their settlement to mcgee the dates are everything now if a forger had drawn this map back in the 1920s or 1930s and wanted the latitudes to match up with what they thought at that time the north had known the island of finland would have been placed much further south because it was fairly commonly accepted that finland would have been somewhere down cape cod the mid-atlantic states perhaps whereas since that time uh all archaeological evidence and most scholarly uh evidence now uh concludes that finland must have been the island of newfoundland or the gulf of st lawrence well north of where it used to be thought to be and exactly where it is shown on the finland map mcgee's theories are thought small beer in bavaria kirsten seaver is quite sure that the map is a fake it would be like the virgin birth it has no tradition behind it it has [Music] no reality around it it would not it cannot be siva is convinced she knows who forged the finland map a jesuit priest who died here at wolfhead castle only he fitted the profile of the forger the person had to be interested in maps secondly he or she had to be fluent in latin thirdly the person had to know where all the bones of contention lay buried when it came to the finland voyages in the 1930s father joseph fisher was a world expert on maps he devoted his days to teaching history until the nazis closed his college taken under the wing of wolf eggs prince and princess he spent his last years in the bosom of their family he left some vital clues here at wolford castle they have many of father fisher's letters his handwriting is of course of great interest if we want to pin the finland map on him as you can see it's a very impatient handwriting with a very characteristic d like that it's full of strong lateral strokes the d that you see in this letter is so similar to the d that you see in this map that for starters it is an interesting coincidence you will also see that he writes on paper with line guides the more tidily written legends such as the one at finland are written with a line guide exactly two millimeters apart that is not a medieval form father fisher would not have thought that it was wrong to make such a map because he was convinced that such a map in some form had existed i believe he decided to fill in the gap essentially he made the map he'd been looking for all his life i'd like to see a solution to the mystery of the vietnam map it's more important than simply deciding whether university wasted good money on a fake if it's genuine the map would banish myths and illusions of geographical history it would not only show how much of america the ancient norse explored it might also mean that christopher columbus didn't come across the new world by chance but actually knew where he was going but perhaps as another answer to the mystery of how far the ancient norse explorers penetrated america is to be found in a weird inscription which brings the tourists from far and wide to a small town in minnesota alexandria cherishes its links with scandinavia it's where in the 19th century many immigrant swedes made their home the tanz museum boasts an extraordinary tourist attraction this stone slab is covered with runes the lettering of the ancient norse translated it says that a party of vikings were attacked by indians and forced to flee to their longboats the date carved into the stone is 1362. the people of alexandria have a proud boast they believe the vikings visited their hometown and left their calling card i will show you the runestone that was found near kensington minnesota it proves that the vikings were here the stone was found in 1898 by a swedish immigrant called olaf oman he said he found the slab buried in the roots of a tree the discovery brought fame to the oman family but some people doubted the story of the find they suggested it was oman's own work [Music] the oman farm where the runestone was found is preserved for posterity by the town grandson lalad kolberg won't hear a word against olaf oman my grandfather was an honest man and he was a hard-working man the kensington runestone is a true viking stone found by my grandfather on the oman farm and it it would be to add that my grandmother was a very religious person so they can't say that my grandfather made that stone there's no way because he was not educated enough to do it things like that eina bakker remembers oman from childhood well he was a real honest man as far as i'm concerned he didn't wasn't for practical jokes of any kind i'm sure he would not sit in carver rock like that i possibly was genuine as far as a woman was concerned but in lanson meadows newfoundland where it's known the vikings landed norse expert burgeta wallace is skeptical of oman's claims with the help of stonemason nathaniel paty she is conducting a runic test [Applause] when i first saw the kensington room stone one thing that struck me as very unusual was the very very long inscription normally a runestone only says so-and-so erected this stone in memory of so-and-so but that's it when i saw that the runes were cut into a weathered surface but the runes themselves had not weathered it suggested to me immediately that they were quite recent rune marks as we know them from scandinavia were all done with a pick hammer that makes a u-shaped much more uneven cross-section this was a very clear straight v-shaped cut burguta suspected the runes were carved with a modern chisel so i went and got one and lo and behold they fit perfectly in size all the upright ones had been made with a regular north american one inch chisel burgers research in sweden uncovered secrets from oman's past they strengthened the case against him all of oman has been portrayed as a simple and rather dumb farmer who couldn't even in his wildest dreams have thought of something like a runestone but he was very interested in history and read very deep philosophical things he wrote poetry and a very little known fact is that oula forman was not a farmer to begin with he was a stone mason i think that the kensington stone is proof not that the vikings went to minnesota but that minnesota had a very large scandinavian immigrant population in the 19th century when you're dealing with the runes it's always wise to be wary in 1953 swedish experts announced they'd found an inscription dating back almost a thousand years but the translation soon revealed a very different story the message actually read joe dokes went east 1953 he discovered europe holy smoke [Music] in the blue ridge mountains of virginia there may be gold coded clues left in 1822 by a man called thomas beale have drawn hundreds of treasure hunters to bedford county albert atwell believes his detector can find precious metals buried deep underground i came here looking for the build treasure 148 times in the last six years and i've hunted all four different directions and i've tried to break the codes try to locate the treasure by it so maybe one day we'll find it i'm gonna keep looking for it in my spare time uh practically every weekend or at least five times of summer cause i still believe it's here it's gonna be fine albert is not the only treasure hunter sergeant cooper of the sheriff's department knows this only too well field treasure is a nuisance and it's uh part of our job you know just uh more or less take care of the complaints one man called in that uh someone had dug six or seven holes on his property uh it was another incident where a man called that someone before his cattle was there if the cows would have fell in it he would have lost some cows i mean there was one incident where they was digging up a cemetery at a local church i arrested a man a woman plus this small dog had to put their dog pound in the early 1800s thomas beale is said to have found gold silver and precious jewels on a trip out west three ciphers tell where he hid the treasure in his native virginia the seemingly incomprehensible lists of numbers are thought to say where it's buried somewhere in these hills code breaking has become a community hobby farmer jimmy luck thinks he might have the answer i've been working with cheyenne indian from colorado for a good many years and he deciphered the code and all the information we get of the code we have found and it has led us to a certain spot to where we think the treasure is buried we're 90 sure maybe a little more that we're in the right spot all jimmy needs now is the landowner's permission to dig it is really frustrating to know where it is and not have your hands on it because after so many after the years you worked on it and tried so hard to find it and you think you've come up with it and then somebody just cuts you off from it we'll keep on working to find the treasure as long as we're here uh i think someday we'll be able to to dig uh at the place we think the treasure is buried at and come up with the gold beals cryptic ciphers have been scrutinized by one of the world's leading experts and writers on code breaking dr stephen matias has tried to put himself in the mind of thomas beale he believes he knows how the cipher was concocted the key that i have come up with is a 10 by 10 key the alphabet in this key consists of letters some syllables some words and common phrases that would have appeared in beals messages matias admits that his key depends on intelligent guesswork his code breaking experience and common sense after much trial and error he believes he's on the right track so for example the number 21 refers to the letter in row number two and column number one which is the letter t number 17 refers to the letter a that appears in row one and column seven and if you continue in this manner and decipher each of the numbers you get a message that reads take the road to finn castle the vault is beneath a big round stone with the initials tjb but matchus's ingenious work may yet be in vain the beal ciphers could be a hoax if beal ever existed and if the treasure ever existed i feel confident that the solution method that i am proposing will be the method shown to to lead to an actual decipherment of paper number one and will be the basis for leading to the treasure some can't afford to wait albert has hired a backhoe [Music] uh we're hopeful to build treasure could be right here more than likely it is here we have to even find if out don't find it here today we'll go back to work on the codes and uh buy better equipment and then hunt somewhere else i'm never going to give up hunting for the treasure until somebody finds it or i do [Music] at yale university one building stands out from all the rest the bainicky library is a forbidding place susan santiris knows it well this library does mean a lot to me as a child i came here and saw the books of course you couldn't touch anything or breathe in there and then as an undergraduate student i spent hours and hours of my life i still remember every one of them pouring over a particular manuscript that was there and trying to make make some sense of it the voynich manuscript is an exquisite book first heard of in prague in the 1600s the writing seems unintelligible but the weird illustrations point relentlessly to a hidden meaning theories include a medieval herbal guide an astrological handbook or even the elusive recipe for the elixir of life only one man has claimed to be close to the answer robert brumbaugh was a classics professor at yale he died in 1992 but his fascination with the voynich lives on in his children robert and susan they find it hard to leave their father's notes untouched well the first thing that hits you when you see it is it should be something that you could just pick up and read with just a bit more effort the illustrations are beautiful and vivid there's a combination of scientific work and there's a humor to it that that's very arresting together susan and her father identified 14 distinct characters in the voynich some seemed close to our own writing others quite strange brumbaugh's inspiration was to use numbers to translate the manuscript with robert he began to construct a key father tried several possible arrangements um came out with this one which turned out to work the best now in this box you see that one number represents any one of these three letters matching numbers to the voynich characters was much more difficult but the family had a stroke of luck one of the most important clues helping to match the characters in the manuscript with numerical values uh is a set of marginal notes on one of the folios um of the manuscript that appear to be arithmetic problems the discovery of these equations was a watershed brumbaugh used them to help confirm his suspicions he thought he could now understand some of the voynich characters and fill in his code breaking key he tested his ideas on the lettering beside one of his favorite pictures if you take the letters that are in here or the squiggles the scrolls they look like this pi a two each one of those being a distinct form if you then ascribe to them the numerical values that appeared on the chart that my father developed you have seven five seven seven five two one of the possible readings of it the only one is pepper and interestingly enough this actually looks very much like a pepper my father had a feeling he could read more and more of it but it remained slow going he read bits and pieces here and there he read labels he read some of the star maps then he began reading pages but as he went some of it was almost distressing in its ambiguity because toward the end of some pages he thought that perhaps the author lapsed into a kind of gibberish does that mean that perhaps the code needed adjusting or that the author was performing a major hoax on the reader we've deciphered enough to show that underneath is a very heavily padded or repetitive message which either conceals a second level message or perhaps doesn't conceal anything [Music] the mysteries in this program show the extraordinary lengths to which people will go when they want to keep secrets and we've even more secrets to keep today as we exchange information by computers telephone lines and satellites the more we need uncrackable codes to make sure that our messages are read only by the people they're sent to so these puzzles from the past may one day help to guide us on the information superhighway so [Music] you

Channel: Our History

Views: 8,197

Keywords: our history, documentary, world history documentary, documentary channel, award winning, life stories, best documentaries, story, full documentary, history, historical, history documentary, the voynich manuscript, ancient bible discoveries, recent discoveries, planet earth, ancient civilizations, secrets of nature, manuscript, new bible discoveries, bible discoveries 2021, documentales, archaeological discoveries, the lost symbol, linda mouton howe, bible discoveries

Id: CAjAAEeGvKs

Length: 25min 3sec (1503 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2022